On the Paradigm Dynamics of Studies of the French Langue Populaire

The article deals with the evolution of scientific approaches to the studies of langue populaire in French linguistics. The author reviews the literature on this topic starting with the first work by H.Bauche and finishing with contemporary studies. The emphasis is laid on the causes of changes in the understanding of the nature of this social variant of colloquial language typical for city dwellers. The author begins with demonstrating terminological difficulties of translating the term “langue populaire” into other languages. The Russian term “prostorech'e” and the lower variants in other languages are not analogous to the French one. It was Bauche's theory that made a contribution to shaping the class-specific theory of language, i.e. its division into languages of a lower class and an upper class. It is shown that, in the theory of the French langue populaire, the class-specific approach was dominant throughout most of the 20th century. The author of the article believes that the reason why the class-specific theory of langue populaire was so long-living in French linguistics is connected with its philosophical and epistemological nature as well as with methodological peculiarities of French linguistics. Thus, the author draws a conclusion that French linguistics solved the problem of the division and variation within the national language mainly by simplifying the real dynamics of the interplay of language idioms. The author also discusses the question whether langue populaire is a language that has its speaker or it is only a reduced stylistic register. The two opposing positions in this argument belong to P. Guiraud and F. Caradec. It becomes evident that langue populaire is not only a social but also a stylistic type of French. Extralinguistic factors greatly influenced the literary language making it more democratic, on the one hand, and causing its sublimation, i.e. transfer to the upper speech register of nonliterary vocabulary, on the other. Attempts to define the social group of langue populaire speakers lead to a surprising conclusion: the term “langue populaire” includes the complex of non-standard language forms, but it has no correspondents on the level of a social stratum which was traditionally associated with it. In general, the paradigm dynamics in the studies of this phenomenon is interpreted as a movement from rigorous isomorphism of social and linguistic differentiation to an understanding of langue populaire as a non-discrete usage that needs probabilistic methods of study. Despite the fact that the term “langue populaire” does not satisfy the modern ideas of city dwellers' language functioning, it is still popular in its use. This fact is explained by the special ambivalent character of “langue populaire”: on the one hand, the term is a part of linguistic terminology; on the other, for ordinary language speakers it identifies the speech register which has certain deviations from the linguistic standard.

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