from purist-oriented to "scientific" columns about language In the

Sara Cotelli Kureth
The authority of usage: from purist-oriented to "scientific" columns about language
In the 20th century, newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland usually feature language
columns (for a definition, see Remysen 2005). This paper will explore the writing of two
columnists, in the 1950s and 1960s, exemplifying the two major types of language columns
found in Swiss papers: purist-oriented for Eric Lugin’s column « la chronique des gâtesfrançais » and « scientific » for Georges Redard’s « Chronique de la langue vivante » (see also
Cotelli 2014). Both writers could be considered authorities on language. They are university
teachers, professionals in language matters. Besides their status, both also use in their writing
the authority of « usage » as a mean to convince their readership.
In this presentation, I consider « usage » as a language ideology. It has a long history within the
ideologies surrounding the French language, going back to the 17th century. Even though they
both draw from this history, the two writers use « usage » very differently. Establishing this
language ideology within the Francophone context, this paper will examine the way “usage” is
put forward by these two authors with opposing results: to condemn linguistic items considered
as bad French and to legitimate language traditionally labelled as deviant. The versatility of
language ideologies will thus be underlined as well as how authority can be hidden behind a
nameless persona (Berrendonner 1982).
Corpus :
Eric Lugin, « La chronique des gâtes-français », in : L’Impartial, 1963-1969.
Georges Redard, « Chronique de la langue vivante », in : Le Journal de Genève, 1955-1963.
Scientific literature :
Berrendonner, Alain (1982), L’éternel grammairien : étude du discours normatif, Bern &
Frankfurt : Peter Lang.
Cotelli Sara (2014), « Sur les traces de William Pierrehumbert ou de Philippe Godet ? Les
chroniques de langage neuchâteloises des années 1950 à 1970 », in : Diémoz Federica, AquinoWeber Dorothée (éd.), « Toujours langue varie… » Mélanges Andres Kristol, Genève : Droz, 329348
Remysen, W. (2005), « La chronique de langage à la lumière de l’expérience canadiennefrançaise : un essai de définition », in : J. Bérubé/K. Gauvin/W. Remysen (ed.), Les Journées de
linguistique. Actes du 18e colloque 11-12 mars 2004, Québec : Centre interdisciplinaire de
recherches sur les activités langagières, 267-281.