Cover not available

In:Norms and Usage in Language History, 1600–1900: A sociolinguistic and comparative perspective
Edited by Gijsbert Rutten, Rik Vosters and Wim Vandenbussche
[Advances in Historical Sociolinguistics 3] 2014
► pp. 223–248

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

From local to supra-local

Hybridity in French written documents from the nineteenth century

Published online: 19 December 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ahs.3.10mar
This article discusses the ‘hybrid’ writing practices of two socially distinct (groups of) writers from nineteenth century French Canada; we specifically focus on their acceptance of (supra-)local language norms. We argue that the writers from the well-known bourgeois Papineau family progressively distanced themselves from a local norm (and moved towards a supra-local norm instead) over a time span of four generations. A semi-literate writer (peu-lettré), on the other hand, used writing practices as an object of social belonging, while at the same time his lack of control over the medium prevented him from getting full access to a supra-local norm. It appears, then, that the socially and geographically mobile writers (like the Papineau family) lead the way and that (access to) social networks was intrinsically related to literacy and access to supra-local norms.
References (63)
References
Anderson, Benedict. 2003 [1983]. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London/New York: Verso.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Auer, Peter. 2005. Europe’s sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations. In Nicole Delbecque, Johan van der Auwera & Dirk Geeraerts (eds.), Perspectives on variation: Sociolinguistic, historical, comparative, 7–42. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ayres-Bennett, Wendy. 2004. Sociolinguistic variation in seventeenth century France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baribeau, Claude. 1995. Denis-Benjamin Papineau 1789–1854. Montebello: Société historique Louis-Joseph-Papineau.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bauche, Henri. 1920. Le langage populaire. Paris: Payot.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bell, David Avrom. 2001. The cult of the nation in France: Inventing nationalism, 1680–1800. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benoît, Virgil, Yves Frenette & France Martineau. To appear. Les voyages de Charles Morin, charpentier. Montréal: Septentrion.
Blommaert, Jan. 2003. Commentary: A sociolinguistics of globalization. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7.607–623. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bouchard, Chantal. 2012. Méchante langue: La légitimité linguistique du français parlé au Québec. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2002. La langue et le nombril: Une histoire sociolinguistique du Québec. Montréal: Fides.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Branca-Rosoff, Sonia & Nathalie Schneider. 1994. L'écriture des citoyens: Une analyse linguistique de l'écriture des peu-lettrés pendant la période révolutionnaire. Paris: Klincksieck, Publications de l’INALF.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clapin, Sylva. 1913. Ne pas dire mais dire: Inventaire de nos fautes les plus usuelles contre le bon langage. Worcester, Mass.: J.A. Jacques.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1974 [1894]. Dictionnaire canadien-français. Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dossena, Marina. 2012. The study of correspondence: Theoretical and methodological issues. In Marina Dossena & Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti (eds.), Letter writing in Late Modern Europe, 13–29. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dunn, Oscar. 1880. Glossaire franco-canadien et vocabulaire de locutions vicieuses usitées au Canada. Québec: Imprimerie A. Côté et Cie.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eastman, Carol & R.F. Stein. 1993. Language display. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 14.187–202. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ernst, Gerhard. 2010. “Qu’il ny a ny ortographe ny virgule encorre moins devoielle deconsol et pleinne delacunne”: La norme des personnes peu lettrées (XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles). In M. Iliescu, H. Siller-Runggaldier & P. Danler (eds.), Actes du XXVe Congrès International de Linguistique et de Philologie Romanes, 3.543–552. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fairman, Tony. 2007. Writing and ‘the Standard’: England, 1795–1834. Multilingua 26.167–201. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fitzmaurice, Susan. 2007. Questions of standardization and representativeness in the development of social networks based corpora: The story of the network of eighteenth-century English texts. In J.C. Beal, K. Corrigan & H. Moisl (eds.) Creating and digitizing unconventional corpora. Volume 2: Diachronic corpora. London: Palgrave.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Francard, Michel. 2001. Le français de référence: Formes, normes et identités. In Michel Francard, Geneviève Geron & Régine Wilmet (eds.), Le français de référence: Constructions et appropriations d’un concept, Cahiers de l’Institut de Linguistique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve) 27.223–240. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frenette, Yves. 1998. Brève histoire des Canadiens français. Montréal: Boréal.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Furet, François & Jacques Ozouf. 1977. Lire et écrire: L’alphabétisation des Français de Calvin à Jules Ferry. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gadet, Françoise. 1992. Le français populaire. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gagnon, Serge. 1999. De l’oralité à l’écriture: Le manuel de français à l’école primaire (1830–1900). Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Galarneau, Claude. 2000. L’école, gardienne de la langue. In Michel Plourde (ed.), Le français au Québec: 400 ans d’histoire et de vie, 99–103. Conseil Supérieur de la langue française,Montréal: Fides.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gendron, Jean-Denis. 2007. D’où vient l’accent des Québécois? Et celui des Parisiens? Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Graff, Harvey J. 1979. The literacy myth: Literacy and social structure in the nineteenth-century city. New York/London: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Juneau, Marcel. 1972. Contribution à l’histoire de la prononciation française au Québec. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
King, Ruth, France Martineau & Raymond Mougeon. 2011. A sociolinguistic analysis of first person plural pronominal reference in European French. Language 87.470–509. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koch, Peter & Wulf Oesterreicher. 2001. Langage parlé et langage écrit. Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik, 1.584–627. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lepailleur, François-Maurice. 1996. Journal d’un patriote exilé en Australie 1839–1845, Georges Aubin (ed.). Montreal: Septentrion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Linteau, Paul-André. 2008. Quatre siècles d’immigration française au Canada et au Québec. In Serge Joyal & Paul-André Linteau (eds.), France-Canada-Québec: 400 ans de relations d’exception, 165–181. Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Montréal.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lodge, R. Anthony. 2004. A sociolinguistic history of Parisian French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maguire, Thomas. 1841. Manuel des difficultés les plus communes de la langue française, adapté au jeune âge, suivi d’un Recueil de locutions vicieuses. Québec: Fréchette & Cie.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martineau, France. 1988. Variable deletion of que in the spoken French of Ottawa-Hull. In Jean-Pierre Montreuil & David Birdsong (eds.), Advances in Romance Linguistics, 275–287. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Perspective sur le changement linguistique: Aux sources du français canadien. Revue canadienne de linguistique 50.173–213. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. Variation in Canadian French usage from the eighteenth to the nineteenth Century. Multilingua 26.203–227. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009a. À distance de Paris: Usages linguistiques en France et en Nouvelle-France à l’époque classique. In Dorothée Aquino-Weber, Sara Cotelli, & Andres Kristol (eds.) Sociolinguistique historique du domaine gallo-roman: Enjeux et méthodologie, 221–242. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009b. Vers l’Ouest: Les variétés laurentiennes. In Luc Baronian & France Martineau (eds.), Le français, d’un continent à l’autre, 291–325.Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Normes et usages dans l’espace francophone atlantique. In Serge Lusignan, France Martineau, Yves Charles Morin & Paul Cohen (eds.), L’Introuvable unité du français: Contacts et variations linguistiques en Europe et en Amérique XIIe-XVIIe s., 227–281. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2013a. La presse écrite au Canada français: Tensions entre idéologies et pratiques linguistiques. Les idéologies linguistiques dans la presse écrite: L’exemple des langues romanes , Talk given at Augsburg University, October 30–31, 2013.
. 2013b. Written documents: What they tell us about linguistic usage. In Marijke van der Wal & Gijsbert Rutten (eds.), Touching the past: Studies in the historical sociolinguistics of ego-documents, 129–147. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. Québec et Acadie, convergences et divergences. Minorités linguistiques et société 4. 16–41. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martineau, France & Marcel Bénéteau. 2010. Incursion dans le Détroit: Édition critique du jour Naille Commansé le 29 octobre 1765 pour le voiage que je fais au mis a mis. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martineau, France & Viviane Déprez. 2004. Pas Aucun/Pas Rien en français classique: Variation dialectale et historique. Langue française 143.33–47.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martineau, France & Raymond Mougeon. 2003. Sociolinguistic research on the origins of ne deletion in European and Quebec French. Language 79.118–152. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martineau, France & Sandrine Tailleur. 2011. Written vernacular: Variation and change in nineteenth century Acadian French. In Tim Pooley & Dominique Lagorgette (eds.), On linguistic change in French: Socio-historical approaches: Studies in honour of Professor R. Anthony Lodge, 153–173. Chambéry: Presses Universitaires de Savoie.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Martineau, France, Yves Charles Morin & André Thibault. 2012. Francophone Contact in nineteenth-century Urban North America: Charles Morin’s diaries. Talk given at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 19 , Berlin, August 2012.
Mercier, Louis. 2002. La société du parler français au Canada et la mise en valeur du patrimoine linguistique québécois (1902–1930): Histoire de son enquête et genèse de son glossaire. Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Olson, Sherry & Patricia Thronton. 2011. Peopling the North American city Montreal 1840–1900. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Piron, Sophie. 2009. La grammaire du français au XIXe siècle – 1re partie. Correspondance, 14.16–20.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Remysen, Wim. 2010. L’évaluation des emplois canadiens à l’aune de leurs origines françaises: Le point de vue des chroniqueurs de langage. In Carmen LeBlanc, France Martineau & Yves Frenette (eds.), Vues sur les français du Canada, 241–266.Québec: Les Presses de l’Université Laval.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberge, Yves & Michelle Troberg. 2007. Thematic indirect objects in French. Journal of French Language Studies 17.297–321. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rutten, Gijsbert & Marijke van der Wal. 2011. Local dialects, supralocal writing systems. Written Language & Literacy 14.251–274. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schlieben-Lange, Brigitte 1996. Idéologie, révolution et uniformité de la langue. Liège: Mardaga.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1998. Les hypercorrectismes de la scripturalité. Cahiers de linguistique française 20.255–273.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 2000. Social network analysis and the history of English. European Journal of English studies 4.211–216. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tailleur, Sandrine. 2007. Avoir et être: Une ancienne rivalité? Étude de la sélection de l’auxiliaire de parfait en français classsique. Unpublished M.A. Thesis: University of Ottawa.
Thibault, André. 2012. Le concept de ‘francisme’ en lexicographie/lexicologie québécoise, ou: Comment l’objectiver?. In Cl. Curell, Cr. G. de Uriarte, & J.M. Oliver (eds.), Estudios franceses en homenaje a Berta Pico, 307–318.La Laguna: Universidad de la Laguna.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vandenbussche, Wim & Stephan Elspaß. 2007. Introduction: Lower class language use in the nineteenth century. Multilingua 26.147–150. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vandenbussche, Wim, Jetje de Groof, Eline Vanhecke & Roland Willemyns. 2004. Historical sociolinguistics in Flanders: Rediscovering the nineteenth century. In Helen Christen (ed.), Varietäten und Varianten im sozialen und zeitlichen Raum, 49–80. Wien: Edition Praesens Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Verrette, Michel. 2002. L'Alphabétisation au Québec, 1660–1900: En marche vers la modernité culturelle. Montréal: Septentrion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Rutten, Gijsbert
2016. Historicizing diaglossia. Journal of Sociolinguistics 20:1 ► pp. 6 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 7 march 2026. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue