«A holistic sociolinguistic perspective on the grammarians and ouisme in the phonetic history of French»

Kormi Anipa
«A holistic sociolinguistic perspective on the grammarians and ouisme in the phonetic history of French»
Revue Roumaine de Linguistique, vol LXI, n.º 4 (Octobre–Décembre 2016)

Revue Roumaine de Linguistique | Institutul de Lingvistică „Iorgu Iordan - Al. Rosetti” | Bucureşti | RUMANIA


Extracto de apartados en páginas 335, 336-337 y 352-357 de la publicación en PDF. Véanse las referencias y notas en la publicación original del texto.

«ABSTRACT

»This study investigates early-modern grammarians of French and their accounts of an intriguing and famous phenomenon called ‘ouisme’. The research targets a gap in the field, as ‘ouisme’ has remained, paradoxically, little investigated. Drawing on sociolinguistic principles, the evidence base for the phenomenon is expanded, by treating the grammarians as legitimate subjects of study; scrutiny of their sociolinguistic attitude and behaviour is made an integral part of the explanation and analysis of ‘ouisme’, a vibrant variant of a linguistic variable, whose usage is examined in a complex social context. The results are rewarding, in two main respects: on the one hand, a completely new understanding of the phenomenon, its usage and the terminology employed to characterize it; on the other hand, the methodology of focusing on the grammarians’ testimonies and sociolinguistic attitude and behaviour provides a potential template for future work on historical features of French and other languages.

»KEYWORDS: ouisme, grammarians, French, historical sociolinguistics, descriptivism, prescriptivism, proscriptivism, sociolinguistic behaviour, linguistic variation.

»THE PHENOMENON

»Attribute d to Tabourot (1587), oüisme was, apparently, a pejorative term applied to the use of ou, in place of o, in a number of French words, such as amour, as soupir, beaucoup, Bourdeaux, chouse, goudron, Roume. There has been absolute unanimity amongst modern historians of the language that the spelling ou was pronounced [u], during the 16th and 17th centuries (see, for example, Brunot 1906, 1947; Rosset 1911; Dauzat 1930; Fouché 1956; Pope 1934; Holder 1970; Ayres– Bennett 1987, 1990, 1996, 2004, 2011; Lodge 1993, 2004; Posner 1997; Fournier 2007; Boudreau 2009; Cichocki and Beaulieu 2010; Keating 2011). A closer examination of the feature indicates, however, that modern understanding of the term might not be entirely correct. It becomes necessary to investigate whether ou in Tabourot’s ‘ouysme’ was based on a different pronunciation and, if so, whether we could be dealing with a misnomer and its implications for an aspect of the history of French.

»CONCLUDING REMARKS

»This research has transcended, by a fair margin, the frontiers of traditional practice in the field, not only in the approach adopted (who the grammarians were, what they represented and should represent, and the nature and usage of oüisme, as a linguistic feature), but also in the results obtained. Launched from established insights of (historical) sociolinguistics, and based on close examination of the implicatures of the grammarians’ accounts, the subject of oüisme has been holistically studied, from the perspective of applied macro-sociolinguistics (i.e., the social embedding of attitudes and behaviours towards language variation and variants of linguistic variables, moral and aesthetic judgements, the ideology of standard, standardization processes) and of applied micro-sociolinguistics (i.e., oüisme as a variant of a linguistic variable, the status of the variants in question, evidence for inter-personal variation in the usage of those variants, evidence for intra-personal variation, the eventual net effects on the language).

»Sociolinguistic attitudes and behaviours of the grammarians of French have been placed under the microscope (individually and collectively). The grammarians of French have been appropriately treated not only as informants, but as legitimate subjects of study and not as authorities on spoken French of their day. And the nature of oüisme has been seriously re-examined, beyond the existing boundaries of their treatment. The overall results are significant. On the one hand, the grammarians did not only proscribe oüisme and prescribe another variant in its place, but they also objectively described it. We have the unique benefit of eye witnesses’ accounts of what really was happening on the ground, in terms of actual usage. On the other hand, it has emerged that the grammarians left behind, in their accounts, a deep footprint of their sociolinguistic behaviours about oüisme, recording (sometimes inadvertently) how variation in usage of the feature permeated French society, diatopically, diastratically, inter-personally, intra-personally, and even diachronically and diaphasically.

»It is equally worthwhile noting that the fact that variation in the variable in question persisted in speech for so long is a sociolinguistic fact. Saussure (1972 [1915]: 109) acknowledged this sociolinguistic reality, reiterating and emphasizing it in his linguistic thought: “Ce qui domine dans toute altération, c’est la persistance de la matière ancienne; l’infidélité au passé n’est que relative. Voilà pourquoi le principe d’altération se fonde sur le principe de continuité”.

»This research has also discovered that the so–called ‘querelle des ouistes contre les non-ouistes’ was far from reality, because, upon closer examination, there never was a dividing line between advocates of the two perceived rival camps (see Pope 1934: 211). On the contrary, the so-called non-oüistes were equally oüistes; and the so-called oüistes, such as Meigret, were equally non-oüistes. Even more intriguing is the fact that, whilst the name (and region) of the perceived archetypal non-oüiste Tabourot was oüisme induced (i.e., Tabourot< Taborot), conversely, the name of the perceived archetypal oüiste Meigret, the ‘champion de l’ouisme’, as Fournier (2007: 95) has characterized him, was non-oüisme induced (i.e., Loys > Louis).

»Apart from just one brief indication of self-awareness, the grammarians, so much engrossed in disparaging others’ speech habits, seemed to have been oblivious of their own usage of ou. They were almost entirely unaware of the fact that everyone is inescapably caught up in a ‘tug-of-war of linguistic variability’ (Anipa 2001), or that ‘each individual is a battle-field for conflicting linguistic types and habits’ (Martinet 1953). In other words, they were victims of ‘a combination of other perception and self-deception’ (Labov 1966: 471). The brief indication of self-awareness, on the part of the grammarians, was an instance, when Tabourot, having just prescribed oüisme, through the back door (“Quelques-vns riment avec les mots en ouse, ostant l’u, et disent Tholose, espose, et tout le contraire des ouystes” ‒ 1587, in Thurot 1881: 245), and realized his selfcontradiction, went into a defensive mode, with a circular argument that, by prescribing oüisme, he did not intend to become an oüiste: “non pas que ie vueille deuenir ouyste, mais parce que nos poetes françois tout au contraire rendent ou en o”) (ibid., p. 250).

»Similar evidence has been unearthed for Vaugelas, when he, on different occasions, implied ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘yes’ to oüisme. There is nothing linguistically bad or unusual or strange about such lack of consistency on the part of the grammarians, because “[i]n linguistic matters consistency (so-called) means inaccuracy” (Jones 1917: x). This means that the grammarians’ inconsistent accounts are more accurate than our expectations of consistency in their judgements of oüisme. That being the case, the wide-ranging discrepancies between Vaugelas’s manuscript and his published Remarques (as duly reported by Ayres-Bennett 1987) should be viewed as a manifestation of his internal linguistic tug-of-war. A focused, micro-study of Vaugelas’s inconsistencies (in the metalanguage of his manuscript and definitive Remarques) could be an important contribution to the field.

»In their bid to impose an imagined usage of a vaguely defined privileged elite (see Ayres–Bennett 1987) on society, the grammarians had no other choice, but to make a range of what Haugen called embarrassing decisions (see section 4.2, above) and pronouncements. One of those can be seen in Trévoux’s prescription of oüisme, in the word form Bourdeaux /bou–/ (see section 4.3, above), despite acknowledging that the natives of Bordeaux, themselves, pronounced the name of their city without oüisme /bo–/.The mere weirdness of someone arguing that the natives of a place do not pronounce the name of their own community properly is self-evident.

»Of most interest is the fact that the grammarians have been very influential on modern historians of languages. The challenge is that of resisting successfully the ideological influence of early-modern grammarians, because “[u]nsurprisingly, there have been discernible effects of their views on scholars of later generations, who have been influential in their turn” (Milroy 2002:13). That formidable challenge has been successfully resisted in this investigation.

»Scrutiny of oüisme has ascertained that the term, as has been known and employed in modern French, is a misnomer and that it resulted from a misconstruction of Tabourot’s label. Specifically, the problem was first generated by the received knowledge that the Medieval /ou/ monophthongized early, by the end of the 14th century (see Brunot 1905; Pope 1934), and exacerbated by the lack of diaeresis on the u of Tabourot’s ‘ouysme’ / ‘ouyste’ / ‘ouyster’. Consequently, it transpires from the evidence presented, that what the so–called oüistes and non– oüistes argued over were variant pronunciations /o/ versus /ou/, and not /o/ versus /u/.

»Equally interesting is the observation by Rosset (1911: 67–68) that ‘jamais ou ne remplace o’ in words containing eau and iau, even in the Agréables conferences. Although, surprisingly, he did not provide any thoughts as to the possible reasons for what he had observed, this is an important piece of information. To begin with, an obvious, but necessary, disambiguation: the Agréables conférences were politically-motivated writings, produced by welleducated intellectuals, and not by the low-class people, whose speech habits the authors purported to mimic. In linguistic terms, therefore, every word in those writings should be attributed to the authors, not to the characters in the stories, and should be appreciated as part of the linguistic repertoires of those intellectuals29. With that in mind, it should be appreciated that the authors of the Agréables conferences were aware that ou could not alternate with eau and iau. And there is a viable linguistic explanation for that, which is that eau / iau had not yet monophthongized into /o/, to have been associated with /ou/.

»Because of that, it was beyond the wildest imagination of speakers of French–however low their social class or status–to have identified eau and iau with /o/. In other words, it would have been scandalous on the part of the authors of the Agréables conferences to have attempted to introduce instances of alternation between ou and eau / iau, as in bou* (for beau, biau), Poirou* (for poireau), or morçou* (for morciaux), since those authors were aware that the readership of their works (the upper classes, in the main, rather than the lower classes) would have found such inventions absolutely ludicrous, not without consequences for the reception of their writings.

»It appears that early scholarship on the history of French, including Rosset’s work, was too firmly anchored in modern French pronunciation to have contemplated an explanation for the reason why ou never alternated with eau / iau. Thurot (1881: 281), for his part, explicitly stated that, in the 16th century, eau was pronounced as a triphthong. In his effort to reinvent oüisme as a typically low– class feature, Rosset leaned rather heavily on the Mazarinades as the archetypal source of the feature.

»As recapitulated in these concluding remarks, this research has made several discoveries, including the fact that the correct pronunciation of Tabourot’s labelshould be [owism], based on a diphthong /ou/, and not [wism], based on a monophthong /u/. This calls for the term to be spelt differently, as oüisme (with a diaeresis on u), in order to reflect that fact; the grammarians were absolutely clear about that, making ‘ouisme’, as known and used in modern times, a (costly) misnomer. Balzac’s observation about widespread oüismeis an important indicator, in that respect. The notion of ‘ouistes’ and ‘non-ouistes’ is not accurate either, since every so-called ‘ouiste’ was, at the same time, a ‘non-ouiste’, and vice versa.

»And, rather than being authorities on how French should be spoken, the grammarians were an integral part of the vast speech community and, by being intrepid enough to have put their heads above the parapet, exhibited a wide range of sociolinguistic attitudes and behaviours in their accounts. This is a special portal of essential information and clues to be harvested towards enhancing research in the field. Considered together, their accounts unequivocally tell a different story of oüisme in early-modern French from that of traditional histories: no ‘ouïsme’ [wism], but widespread oüisme [owism], across the full spectrum of speakers of French.

»All in all, if the notion of ‘observer nettement les faits’, from Brunot’s (1906: 251) “les grammairiens du temps, emportés par leurs passions et leurs querelles, ne sont pas arrivés à observer nettement les faits”, is scientifically applied, then, the grammarians did just that (both individually and collectively). They did so by having observed and reported the rather messy facts on the ground: pervasive pronunciation, across the entirety of France (as stated by Balzac), of the diphthong /ou/, alongside its monophthong counterpart /o, ɔ/, in addition to sometimes conflictive and far from unidirectional attitudes of speakers towards not just one, but both, variants of the variable. Objective facts do not necessarily have to be pretty. What remain to be accomplished by historians of the French langauge are the exploiting and processing the rich mine of eye-witness accounts.

»It is gratifying that the grammarians, by the very nature of their operations, experienced no inhibition, when they carried out their discussions and recorded their observations. This is because they could not have contemplated the possibility of their accounts ever being scrutinized by sociolinguists, many centuries after them.

»That renders their records even more special, comparable to the recording of speakers without their knowledge, obviously, ethically unacceptable in present–day practice, but, none the less, the ideal authentic language use and linguistic behaviour per se. The broad-based, historical macro-cum-micro-sociolinguistic methodology employed in this study could be a useful template for future studies towards achieving that goal of harnessing systematically the treasure trove of eye-witness testimonies ‒ the grammarians’ ‘lumière directe’, in Thurot’s words – toward simproving our knowledge of sociolinguistic facts in the past.»