ABSTRACT

In previous chapters we have charted the development of standardisation in French with reference to the four processes distinguished by Haugen – selection, elaboration of function, codification and acceptance. Having seen these processes at work in the history of French, the uniformisation of the language should now, theoretically, be more or less complete. In our final chapter we will see that this of course is not the case: linguistic usage in French, as in all living languages, is far from homogeneous. The ideal goal of standardisation may well be the halting of change and the suppression of variation through the diffusion of a single norm. However, short of the language becoming a dead language (i.e. a language with no speakers) this goal is unlikely ever to be achieved. Any language with a reasonably large number of speakers will develop dialects reflecting the barriers separating groups of people from one another. In pre-industrial societies these barriers were predominantly geographical. In advanced, technological societies with a high degree of geographical mobility, barriers of class and ethnic group have gained relatively in importance. Furthermore, although fixity and uniformity can be brought about to an extent in writing (though even here in a complete way only in spelling), speech in face-to-face interaction is highly resistant to them. Here the achievement of uniformity would actually be dysfunctional since it would destroy the elasticity of language which is essential for effective communication (see Weinreich et al. 1968: 101). We shall see in this final chapter that standardisation in French is not something which occurred during a particular historical period as a one-off event, rather it is a continuous process involving permanent

tension between factors promoting and factors inhibiting linguistic uniformity.