16.670, Review: Historical Ling/Socioling: Lodge (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-670. Mon Mar 07 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.670, Review: Historical Ling/Socioling: Lodge (2004)

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1)
Date: 07-Mar-2005
From: Emmanuelle Labeau < e.labeau at aston.ac.uk >
Subject: A Sociolinguistic History of Parisian French 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2005 22:25:32
From: Emmanuelle Labeau < e.labeau at aston.ac.uk >
Subject: A Sociolinguistic History of Parisian French 
 

AUTHOR: Lodge, R. Anthony
TITLE: A Sociolinguistic History of Parisian French
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/14/14-2150.html


Emmanuelle Labeau, Aston University, Birmingham (UK)

[This review was originally submitted in July 2004, but not received. We 
apologize to the reviewer, author and publisher for the delay in posting 
it. -- Eds.]

Anthony Lodge undertakes here a project that is both innovative (a 
diachronic description of French sociolinguistic diversity) and ambitious 
(the period spans from medieval times to the twentieth century). 

Before embarking on the study itself, the author devotes his first part to 
some "preliminaries". The first chapter deals with the difficulty of 
identifying "the French of Paris" because of  its confusion with standard 
French in traditional approaches. To obtain a more accurate and subtle 
description, Lodge suggests to apply the concepts and techniques of modern 
sociolinguistics to past states of the language as past states of French 
must have known variability as it does now; he pays special attention to 
the phenomena of dialect contact and dialect mixing and explores 
Trudgill's concepts of dialect-levelling, koinéisation and "reallocation". 
However the researcher encounters a shortage of data for early periods. On 
the assumption that speakers change the language, Lodge builds his book on 
the three-stage process of European urbanisation identified by Hohenberg 
and Lees (1985): the pre-industrial, the proto-industrial and the 
industrial phases.

In the second part devoted to the pre-industrial city, the author first 
describes the "demographic take-off" of Paris in the twelfth century that 
went far above contemporary urbanisation due to dramatic immigration from 
the densely populated hinterland. This led to an unprecedented development 
of Paris' functional complexity and the social and demographic changes 
allow to assume significant influences on the language. Lodge then 
proceeds to attempt a description of "the beginnings of Parisian French".  
On the basis of modern dialectology, he argues that French standard 
language originates in a spoken koiné developed in the 12th and 13th 
centuries as a result of demographic growth. He rejects the idea that 
colloquial Parisian speech be a corruption of the standard that was 
elaborated later. To test this hypothesis, Lodge studies "the medieval 
written evidence", a corpus of administrative texts. Some variability in 
the Parisian writing system may correlate to some variation in speech. 
However, if anecdotal evidence shows an awareness of local speech-norms 
from the late twelfth century, there is no evidence of social 
differentiation in the speech of Parisians. At the time, the most 
significant divide separated Latin, the language of the university, and 
the vernaculars.

The third part deals with the proto-industrial city, over a period 
spanning from the 15th to the 18th century. The first chapter starts with 
an overview of demographic and social evolution before focusing on the 
sociolinguistic process of "reallocation", the recycling of variants left 
over from the konéisation as social-class dialect, stylistic... variants 
as it is shown by limited direct evidence and also by contemporary 
literary representation. "Variation in the Renaissance city" shows that in 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there was a growing awareness of 
social differentiation between the honnête homme and the paysan de ville 
and some salient variants were stigmatised. However, fragments from 
personal correspondence reveal that the separation was not clear-
cut. "variation under the Ancien Régime" shows that during the 17th and 
18th a growing gap developed between high and low varieties. In "Salience 
and reallocation", Lodge studies extracts of texts imitating low-class 
Parisian speech as representative of the most salient variants.

The last part focuses on the industrial city and starts with a description 
of the industrial growth between 1750 and 1950 (the date at which the 
study stops) and its influence on language development. Then are discussed 
the concepts of standardisation induced by the new political situation in 
the 19th century, and of dialect-levelling due to the contact of 
increasingly different varieties as in-migration expands from Paris 
hinterland to further afield. The part closes on a reflection on lexical 
variation throughout the periods covered in the book and focuses on non 
standard varieties such as 'jargon' or 'argot'. 

Lodge's study is remarkable in many ways. First it offers a very 
unconventional history of Parisian French far from the traditional 
standard-oriented work: it uses the tools of modern sociolinguistics to 
shed light on the principles of language variation in diachrony. Then the 
study is firmly rooted in the demographic and socio-economic background 
that has directed the book's structure. It also shows an impressive 
mastery not only of the traditional reference works on the history of 
French and modern sociolinguistics, but also of indirect sources such as 
popular literature, correspondence,  songs... 

One may question some structural points. Although the book claims to cover 
the period up to the 1950s, little is said on the 20th century. Also there 
are some discrepancies between chapters: while some are "easy-reading", 
presenting sociolinguistic developments, others are more "hardcore" 
philological discussion and will only appeal to a more specialised 
readership. It must be said however that each part provides a very 
readable introductory chapter and chapters end on a clear summary of the 
matters covered.

Lodge's book proves fascinating in many ways and will appeal not only to 
language specialists but also historians and indeed Paris lovers willing 
to understand better the Ville-Lumière's making!

REFERENCES

Hohenberg, P.M. and Lees, L.H. (1985) 'The Making of Urban Europe 1000-
1950'. Cambridge, Ass. :Harvard University Press. 

Trudgill, P. (1986) 'Dialects in Contact'. Oxford: Blackwell. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Emmanuelle Labeau is a lecturer in French at Aston University, where she 
teaches electives on the history of the French language and Contemporary 
French. Her main research interests are the development of tense and 
aspect in French; she works both on language description and language 
acquisition.





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