Langue française et éducation des élites
ISSN: 1961-9359
Year of publication: 2009
Issue Title: Langues, enseignement, éducation : relier l'ancienneté et la modernité
Issue: 2
Pages: 81-97
Type: Article
More publications in: Synergies Espagne
Abstract
The ownership of French language constitutes one of the distinguishing marks of the education of the elites from XVIIth to XXth century. It is not the result of a natural acquisition, but a re-learning of the mother tongue, by eliminating the barbarisms or the defects of diction acquired at the childhood or by the contact with the dialects or regional manners of speaking, so that every quality person has to speak (and write) the French language with elegance and perfection. This �culture� of language generates a "cultivated" French language, and becomes "the object" which the grammarians and the rhetoricians will describe through grammar books and language treaties. This process, which is common to other tongues, and which is shared by the linguistic education of elites in all societies, acquires in the case of French its full characteristics which make it a paradigmatique case.