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Would it occur to you to end one of your letters thus: “You love justice too much not to accept these effects of my recognition”? No, I imagine. And yet, the formula was strongly recommended by The New Treatise on Civility, published in 1671 by Antoine Courtin. A book whose success will be such that it will experience several reissues throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Similarly, 100 years ago, it was strongly recommended to close your letters with “I am all yours”, a suggestion that we would be careful not to renew at the time of #MeToo. How better to say that the notion of politeness evolves over time, as the linguist Jean Pruvost demonstrates with finesse in an excellent work precisely titled Politeness. Through words and history (1)?
Do you also know that our very common “hello” has long had a purely religious meaning? “Getting on the right day” – in two words – literally meant “receiving Holy Communion”. A second meaning appears in the 13th century, coexisting with the first: “Give a good day”, or “pay a compliment to a person to wish him a happy day”. But be careful, wretch, not to use the said expression with anyone! In its dictionary of 1740, the French Academy warns: “These ways of speaking are familiar and are hardly used except by the superior with regard to the inferior.”
This entirely Christian connotation is found transparently in “farewell” – literally “To God” – but also, we are less aware of it, in “hi”. Until around the year 1000, in fact, only the faithful of Jesus Christ used this last term with a specific hope: that their interlocutor would be saved from the state of sin. It is only from the 12th century that it will begin to be used for ordinary greetings.
The vocabulary of politeness therefore reminds us to what extent France was a deeply religious country. A truth that even shines through in the banal “Bless you” frequently launched after a sneeze. In Antiquity, it was already thought that “this sudden reflex expulsion of air through the nose and mouth” (Le Petit Larousse) signaled the passage of a divine spirit which one had to take advantage of to make a wish. The Romans thus used to say: “May Jupiter preserve you!”, an expression that the Christians transformed into “May God bless you”. This is still in use among the English (“God bless you”) while the Spaniards gave it a very Hispanic spin: “Jesus!“. With us, explains Jean Pruvost, it was during the plague epidemic of the 14th century that it would have given way to the formula “Bless you”. At that time, we saw in the sneezing a first symptom of the disease and we therefore sent wishes for good health to the unfortunate, in the manner of a conjuratory utterance.
If the forms of politeness change over time, they also vary of course in space. Evidenced by the spectacular trip that the King of Siam – the former Thailand – made to the Château de Fontainebleau in 1861 to meet Napoleon III. Seeing their monarch enter, his ambassadors immediately began to crawl before him. An attitude considered ridiculous on the side of the emperor, where we were not aware that our own codes could seem just as artificial to our guests.
Because such is one of the universal rules of politeness: everywhere, ethnocentrism takes precedence. In 1680, in the very first French dictionary ever published, Richelet thus contrasted “the civilized and the barbarians, peoples without police […] who live in a coarse way”. In the 19th century, the lexicographer Pierre Larousse still considered the reserve of our English neighbors as “selfishness”.
If these pejorative judgments apply primarily against foreigners, they are also observed within the same country. And always, it is the social class in power that sets the rules. Under the Ancien Régime, the good manners of the court were thus contrasted with the supposed clumsiness of the people (“politeness” and “courtesy” are not synonymous by chance). Since the Revolution, it is the bourgeoisie of Ile-de-France which has assumed this prerogative.
Language, behavior, clothing… The codes have changed, not the principle, which arbitrarily legitimizes certain conventions and disqualifies others.
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(1) Politeness. Through words and history, by Jean Pruvost. Editions Tallandier.
READ ELSEWHERE
Classify our ways of speaking, classify people
“It is not said”, “Picard is not a language, it is a dialect”, “he speaks bad French”. These judgments, we have all heard them, and we may make them sometimes. But why, among the different ways of speaking our language, should only one be considered “the right one”? Who decides on this hierarchy? And does this justify certain people being mocked or even excluded from certain jobs? It is to these questions that the philosopher and sociolinguist Malo Morvan answers in his latest book.
Classify our ways of speaking, classify people, by Malo Morvan. Common editions
Pangloss, a Noah’s ark for endangered languages
Because many languages are threatened with extinction, a team of CNRS researchers is trying to create a sort of Noah’s ark of languages. This project called Pangloss (“all languages”, in Greek) is led by the Lacito laboratory which collects and records these languages in order to be able to pass them on to future generations.
Latin against the hegemony of English?
What if we used modern Latin to free ourselves from the grip of English? Such is the ambition, both original and ambitious, that Alexandre Rousset develops in his book Manual de anglese pro refuseantes. The idea: rely on the billion speakers of Latin languages in the world to defend cultural diversity.
Manual de anglese pro refuseantes, by Alexandre Rousset. Editions Generation Interland.
The plan for Breton languages disputed
The president of the Brittany region Loïg Chesnais-Girard announced three new measures for training in Breton languages. Progress planned for the start of the 2023 school year which however, do not satisfy the defenders of Breton and Gallo.
Radio-televisions: where are the songs in regional languages?
More music in Basque, Occitan, Corsican or Breton on radio and TV. This is the objective of the Basque singer Anne Etchegoyen, who campaigns for quotas and multiplies the appointments to obtain them, including at the Ministry of Culture. In particular, it would like the so-called regional languages to benefit from specific treatment whereas they are now drowned in the quotas for music in the French language, which allows the audiovisual media not to broadcast it.
Poetry week in Clermont-Ferrand from March 18 to 25
As part of the Printemps des Poètes, Poetry Week will take place in Clermont-Ferrand and throughout the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region from March 18 to 25. Through multiple meetings, it will allow you to discover contemporary poetry, and in particular the 14 guest poets including – it should be noted – artists in foreign languages (the Bulgarian Aksinia Mihaylova) and regional (the Occitane Aurélia Lassaque).
Attend the festival on March 3 and 4 The Taste of Languages of Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie
The formidable storyteller Yannick Jaulin, recently nominated for the Molières, invites you to the second edition of the Festival on mother tongues The Taste of Languages. This will take place on March 3 and 4., in Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie (Vendée), within the room The tag. On the program: shows, round table, “battle of patois” and to end a concert and a ball in rare languages. I will have the pleasure of participating.
TO LISTEN
How supposedly “accentless” French became the norm
Since the Revolution, several phases of unification have led to the marginalization of regional accents. But the imposition of the model of the Parisian bourgeoisie as a standard of reference leads to discrimination, underlines in this program of France Culture the inventor of the term glottophobia, the sociolinguist Philippe Blanchet.
TO WATCH
La femna slowby La Mal coiffée
La femna slow (the slow woman) is the title of the last clip of La Mal Coiffée. The Occitan polyphonic group, currently on tourwill perform in particular on April 6 at the Jean-Vilar theater in Montpellier.
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