Judging French. Lay and expert language commentary in nineteenth- and twenty-first-century France

This thesis presents a comparative study of French language commentary from two time periods, the late nineteenth and the early twenty-first centuries, and from two perspectives, expert and lay. It analyses four sources of language commentary to undertake two main comparisons. The first is a diachronic comparison of two language advice services: Le Courrier de Vaugelas (1868-1881) and the Courrier des internautes (2011-present, part of the Dire, Ne pas dire section of the Académie française’s website). Both sources publish readers’ questions about language and a response from an expert, allowing for the analysis of commentary from an expert and lay perspective. Expert language commentary has been well studied, in the form of usage guides, remarques, chroniques de langage and dictionary prefaces, for instance, but these sources are primarily monologic. Analysis of the two dialogic Q+A sources provides insight into both lay and expert commentary and the interaction between them. The second comparison, a synchronic comparison, analyses the blog posts and user comments from two websites on the topic of language and correctness: Langue sauce piquante (2004-present) and Bescherelle ta mère (2014-present). Langue sauce piquante contains both expert and lay commentary. Bescherelle ta mère, on the other hand, is an exclusively lay space and its audience comprises not language enthusiasts (as is the case with the other three sources) but ‘ordinary’ people, due to both the type of content featured and its accessibility via Facebook. Language commentary from the nineteenth and the twenty-first century has received less scholarly attention than, for instance, the seventeenth century which marked the beginning of the remarqueur tradition, and the twentieth century, the period in which language columns were at their most popular. However, both the time periods analysed here are times of significant change for the language. In the late nineteenth century, the introduction of free c