Linguistic ideologies, personae and practices in seventeenth-century France

What is it about?

New insights into the analysis of linguistic variation and change in the past are afforded through the lens of ideologies and personae. Kathryn Woolard (1998) argues that studies of attitudes, prestige, standards, etc. could profit from a rethinking within an explicitly social-theoretical frame of ideology analysis. In this article I outline how in seventeenth-century French metalinguistic writing the ideology of the standard, prescription and purism infuse the hierarchization of linguistic variants and the presentation of the qualities of what constitutes ‘good usage’. I next examine how the increasingly value-laden standard language creates linguistic insecurity in French speakers. The sociohistorical context at once shapes and reflects the dominant intersecting linguistic ideologies and thus the discussion of language in seventeenth-century French metalinguistic texts. In the ideological and sociohistorical context of seventeenth-century French society, a number of personae emerge who feature widely in courtesy books, literary discussions and metalinguistic texts, notably the honnête homme, the honnête femme, and the précieuse. These personae are at once created by literary and metalinguistic texts, and recognized and labelled by them as existing personae. Having demonstrated the benefits of using this approach for sociohistorical linguistics, the picture is then nuanced through consideration of the realities of both linguistic practices and the way they are described and analysed in metalinguistic texts. While, perhaps predictably, the linguistic reality is more complex than the ideologies which overlay it, the socio-theoretical framework of ideology analysis, when used sensitively, provides a fruitful lens for reading variation and change in the past.

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Why is it important?

The lens of ideologies and personae adds new insights to our understanding of seventeenth-century French metalinguistic writing and other text types including courtesy books and literary texts.