Cover not available

In:The Social Dynamics of Pronominal Systems: A comparative approach
Edited by Paul Bouissac
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 304] 2019
► pp. 133–150

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

Chapter 6
Forms and functions of French personal pronouns in social interactions and literary texts

 | University of Toronto
Published online: 23 July 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.304.06bou
Abstract
The morphology and grammatical functions of French personal pronouns are first introduced with reference to their Latin origin in the context of the Indo-European language family. Considering that the forms of personal pronouns are necessarily grounded in the preliterate emergence of language and that the metalinguistic characterization of their grammatical functions glosses over their signalling values as spatial or territorial markers, this chapter endeavours to probe the ways in which these pronouns not only reflect but also, more importantly create or enforce social structures in learning and acculturation processes. From this point of view, personal pronouns in their contexts of use can be considered as speech acts in as much as they create equality of status, intimacy, bonding, or dominance, and can transform any of these kinds of relations into one another. Evidence is drawn from personal experience in the form of revealing anecdotes and from the use of the social and interpersonal power of pronouns in literary texts that purport to portray face-to-face and epistolary interactions.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Pronouns as tools of sociality
  • 3.The third person
  • 4.Personal pronouns as speech acts
  • 5.The creative use of pronouns in literary texts
  • References
References (33)
References
Arnauld, Antoine and Claude Lancelot. [1660] 1975. Grammaire générale et raisonnée. Paris: Republications Paulet.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Audring, Jenny. 2009 Reinventing Pronoun Gender. Utrecht: LO.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Austin, John L. 1962. How to do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Benveniste, Emile. 1966. “La nature des pronoms”. Problèmes de linguistique générale I. 251–257. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1971. “The Nature of Pronouns”. Problems in General Linguistics, trans. by Mary E. Meek, 217–222. Miami: University of Miami Press (217–222).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blanche-Benveniste, Claire (ed.) 1990. Le français parlé. Etudes grammaticales. Paris: CNRS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bouissac, Paul. 2013. “Le système pronominal français entre logique et affectivité”. Francontraste: L’affectivité et la subjectivité dans le langage. 11–16, ed. by Bogdanka Pavelin-Lesic. Mons: CIPA.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brown, Roger and Albert Gilman. 1960. “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity”. In Style in Language, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 253–276. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Caët, Stéphanie. and Aliyah Morgenstern. 2015. “First and second person pronouns in two mother-child dyads”. In The Pragmatics of Personal Pronouns, ed. by Laure Gardelle and Sandrine Sorlin, 173–193. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chateaubriand, François R. [1802] 1962. Atala. René. Le dernier des Abencérages. Paris: Garnier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Riggins, Stephen (ed.). 1997. The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse. Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Damourette, Jacques and Edouard Pichon. 1911–1940. Des mots à la pensée: Essai de grammaire de la langue française. Paris: Paul d’Artrey.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Waal, Frans. 1990. Peacemaking among Primates. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dunbar, Robin. 1988. Primate Social Systems. New York: Chapman Hall. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ernout, Alfred and Antoine Meillet. 1967. Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue latine. Paris: Klincksieck.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fontaine, Lise. 2005. “Napoléon dans ses lettres à Joséphine: quand il la traite de vous”. In Les marqueurs linguistiques de la présence de l’auteur, ed. by David Banks, 157–183. Paris: Harmattan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fortson IV, Benjamin. W. 2010. Indo-European Language and Culture.: An Introduction, Second Edition. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gardelle, Laure and Sandrine Sorlin (eds.). 2015. The Pragmatics of Personal Pronouns. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Garfinkel, Harold 196. Studies in Ethnomethodologies. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1981. Forms of Talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gougenheim, Georges 1962. Le système grammatical de la langue française. Paris: Paul D’Artrey.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hjelmslev, Louis 1937. ” La nature du pronom”. Mélanges de linguistique et de philologie offerts à Jacq van Ginneken à l’occasion du 60e anniversaire de sa naissance. (51–58).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
[1937] 1971. “La nature du pronom”. Essais linguistiques. Paris: Minuit.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J. and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization, Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kirtchuk, Pablo. 1995. “Deixis, anaphore, “pronoms”: morphogénèse et fonctionnement”. In Les classes de mots, ed. by Louis Basset and Marcel Perennec, 169–205. Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon..Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Molière (aka Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) 2013 [1682]. Dom Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morel, Mary-Annick. 1994. “Les pronoms dans l’énoncé oral française”. Faits de langues 2 (3): 169–173. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morel, Mary-Annick. and Laurent Danon-Boileau (eds.). 1992. La Deixis. Actes du colloque de linguistique en Sorbonne, 8–9 juin, 1990. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pick, Herbert and Linda Acredolo (Eds.). 1983. Spatial Orientation: Theory, Research, and Application. New York: Plenum. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Racine, Jean [1672] 1997 Bajazet. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sapolsky, Robert 2002. A Primate’s Memoir. New York: Scribner.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wagner, Susanne. 2003. Gender in English Pronouns: Myth and Reality. PhD thesis University of Freiburg (Breisgau).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Flinz, Carolina, Eva Gredel & Laura Herzberg
2025. 421The negotiation of pronominal address on talk pages of the German, French, and Italian Wikipedia. In Exploring digitally-mediated communication with corpora, ► pp. 421 ff. DOI logo
Kádár, Dániel Z., Juliane House & Hao Liu
2025. Beyond the deferential view of the Chinese V pronoun nin 您. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 35:2 ► pp. 155 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 november 2025. 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