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Linguistic prescription, ideological structure, and the actuation of linguistic changes: Grammatical gender in French parliamentary debates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2018

Heather Burnett Open the ORCID record for Heather Burnett [Opens in a new window]  and
Olivier Bonami
Heather Burnett*
Affiliation:
Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle
Olivier Bonami
Affiliation:
CNRS – Université Paris-Diderot
*
Address for correspondence: Heather Burnett Laboratoire de Linguistique FormelleUniversité Paris-DiderotCase 7031-5, rue Thomas Mann 75205 Paris Cedex 13, Franceheather.susan.burnett@gmail.com
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Abstract

We present a quantitative study of the linguistic and social factors conditioning the use of grammatical gender with reference to women, focusing on variation in the debates of the French parliament. Two prime ministers of similar political leanings regulated the use of feminine g-gender through identical policies in 1986 and 1998, with no effect on parliamentary speech in the first instance, and dramatic success in the second. We claim that the latter outcome resulted from changes in gender ideologies between these two dates. The 1990s saw the emergence of a new social type for female politicians, which only feminine g-gender can construct. We hypothesize that the 1998 policy was effective because it strengthened existing associations between feminine g-gender and a persona, while the original policy tried to build on ideological structure that was not widespread. We conclude that linguistic prescriptions are only successful if they build on existing ideologies. (Linguistic prescription, gender ideology, grammatical gender, ideological structure)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 65 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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Footnotes

*

This research was conducted at the Laboratoire de linguistique formelle (UMR7110 – Université Paris Diderot & CNRS). We wish to thank Quentin David, Yiming Liang, and Antoine Hédier for their work on data extraction, verification, and annotation, as well as Catherine Joly, Director of the Service des comptes rendus at the Assemblée nationale, for taking the time out of her busy schedule to personally explain to us in detail how the transcripts were constructed. Preliminary versions of this work were presented at NWAV 46 and at various events at ENS Paris, Ohio State University, Stanford University, Université Paris Diderot, and ZAS Berlin. We thank the audience at these events for useful comments, suggestions, and debate. For comments on previous versions of this text or other crucial advice we wish to thank Penny Eckert, Michael Friesner, Anne F. Garréta, Erez Levon, Denis Paperno, Célia Richy, and Sali A. Tagliamonte. We are grateful to Jenny Cheshire and our two reviewers for helping us find the appropriate focus for this work and providing crucial references and insights. This work was partially supported by a public grant overseen by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the ‘Investissements d'Avenir’ program (reference: ANR-10-LABX-0083).

References

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