FRENCH REVIEW最新文献

{"title":"Odyssée: méthode de français B2 by O Quévreux et al (review)","authors":"Juliette D. Duthoit","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911383","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911383","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Odyssée: méthode de français B2 by O Quévreux et al Juliette D. Duthoit Quévreux, O., F. Delcambre, F. Olivry, S. Anthony, A. Soucé, T. Heranic, et L. Redmond. Odyssée: méthode de français B2. CLE International, 2022. ISBN: 978-2-09-035583-3. This French textbook follows the European language framework (CERF) and targets advanced learners of French (B2 level) who already have a good mastery of the French language. The general aesthetic of the book is appealing with pictures on every page and a clear layout. The book is divided into nine thematic units, themselves divided into an introduction, four lessons with vocabulary and grammar objectives, a final task, and an informal assessment to confirm the completion of the unit objectives. Each unit would take approximately 15 to 20 hours of class. The textbook also comes with three DELF B2 practices and media material (audio recordings and videos with optional French subtitles) that can be accessed and downloaded for free online (odyssee.cle-international.com). The units are communication-oriented and rely on varied realia such as novel extracts, interviews, songs, magazine articles or television reports. The activities are neither varied nor original (reading/listening comprehensions or imitation productions) but lead to discussions, debates, or scenarios on current and engaging topics. Each unit has a different final task from creating a cartoon on a life ritual to organizing a day of awareness for a stirring cause. The book’s true originality lies in its structure: the communicative units are followed by 45 pages of extra activities focusing on explicit grammar, on vocabulary, and on methodology (how to write a film review, how to write an argumentative essay, etc.). Those activities allow a certain flexibility for the instructor who can then tailor the course to the learners’ specific needs without having to find or create supplemental activities themselves. To facilitate the instructor’s work, those extra activities are organized according to the unit in which they would be relevant. The book also shines in its efforts on diversity. The chosen themes address the cultural plurality of both the French speaking world and the learners. The concept of diversity is introduced right off the bat with the first video which shows weddings and funerals from all over the world and with the first text that presents various steps in life from—in order—Bali, France, and then Mali. It is refreshing to no longer start with the “Occidental norm” and then introduce other cultures’ variations as an afterthought, as we often see in textbooks. Furthermore, I applaud the dedication to representation: in addition to having media with accents from all continents and texts from different Francophone cultures, the book is full of pictures representing varied ethnicity and cultural habits. It also has a unit dedicated to societal changes that includes disability, French inclusive writing, and activism. I deplor","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136168912","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sony Labou Tansi: folies romanesques par Bessem Aloui (review)","authors":"Adama Togola","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911364","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911364","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Sony Labou Tansi: folies romanesques par Bessem Aloui Adama Togola Aloui, Bessem. Sony Labou Tansi: folies romanesques. L’Harmattan, 2021. ISBN 978-2-343-16750-3. Pp. 284. La folie dont Shoshana Felman dit que tout roman contient à la fois la tentation et la négation (La folie et la chose littéraire, Seuil, 1987, 126) occupe une place importante dans la littérature d’Afrique francophone. De L’Europe, L’Afrique et la folie (1993) de Bernard Mouralis à Sylvain Bemba: récits entre folie et pouvoir (1996) d’André Djiffack en passant par Esthétique et folie dans l’œuvre romanesque de Pius Ngandu Nkashama (1998) d’Alexie Tcheuyap, l’on remarque que l’écriture de la folie constitue une donnée majeure dans le roman africain. Si ces différentes études portent aussi bien sur la représentation historique de la folie que sur son sens dans la production romanesque, elles ont le mérite de faire un constat unanime: l’écriture de la folie révèle certaines réalités sociales. C’est dans cette dynamique critique que s’inscrit l’ouvrage Sony Labou Tansi: folies romanesques de Bessem Aloui dont l’objectif central est d’approfondir la problématique entre la folie et les textes de cet écrivain congolais. Plutôt que de centrer son étude sur les significations culturelles et religieuses de la folie, Bessem Aloui choisit d’analyser le “choix politique de la folie” (21) dans l’œuvre de Sony Labou Tansi, à partir d’une perspective épistémologique précise. Pour ce faire, elle s’appuie sur un corpus de six romans de l’auteur (La vie et demie (1978), L’état honteux (1981), L’anté-peuple (1983), Les sept solitudes de Lorsa Lopez (1985), Les yeux du volcan (1988) et Le commencement des douleurs (1995)), sélectionnés en fonction de l’immense place qu’ils accordent à la folie. Si ces textes mettent en scène des personnages hantés par “la bizarrerie du vécu” (75) et qui trouvent dans la folie le pouvoir subtil de dire d’autres réalités, il faut observer, selon Bessem Aloui, que l’écriture de la folie chez Sony Labou Tansi part d’abord d’un “contexte fou” (14) pour dévoiler les contradictions sociales, politiques et culturelles. L’étude de Bessem Aloui ne se contente pas, bien sûr, de décrire ces figures de la folie dans les romans, elle met fondamentalement l’accent sur la dialectique permanente entre le tragique et le rire qui donne un rythme singulier au texte. Elle s’appuie sur de solides postulats théoriques (Michel Foucault, Shoshana Felman, Gwenhaël Ponnau et Carl Gustav Jung) pour montrer que la folie dans l’œuvre romanesque de Sony Labou se manifeste aussi par l’hésitation et le silence, deux valeurs cardinales qui apparaissent comme une échappatoireà la bestialité du pouvoir tortionnaire (55). C’est à partir de ce double mouvement que Bessem Aloui ambitionne de se tailler une place au sein de la critique sonyenne. Son ouvrage ne manque pas d’intérêt, même si l’on y déplore quelques rares [End Page 193] coquilles. C’est un ouvrage stimulant qui apporte un éclai","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136169180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Poétiques et savoirs du polar d’Afrique francophone by Adama Togola (review)","authors":"Jennifer Howell","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911368","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Poétiques et savoirs du polar d’Afrique francophone by Adama Togola Jennifer Howell Togola, Adama. Poétiques et savoirs du polar d’Afrique francophone. L’Harmattan, 2020. ISBN 978-2-343-20854-1. Pp. 264. Modern crime fiction emerged in Western Europe and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Rooted in societal change, the early policier mirrored Western modernity. Not only did the Industrial Revolution transform national economies, it also catalyzed a mass labor migration from rural areas to large urban centers. As cities became more densely populated, crime increased, leading to the establishment of the first organized police departments charged with managing the ever-changing fabric of society. While also in constant flux, the policier is first and foremost a formulaic genre in which an investigator leads an inquiry to solve a mystery. This code, which had previously marginalized the genre with respect to the literary canon, has since inspired authors to creatively subvert the rules of the game, thereby elevating the status of the policier worldwide. French-language African crime fiction, the subject of Togola’s monograph, followed a similar trajectory in the wake of decolonization. Consequently, the crime novel represents a relatively recent literary development in Central and West Africa. Although the African policier did not grow in popularity or prestige until the late nineties, Togola rightly focuses on novels published just before. On one hand, the eighties were a defining moment in African literary history with the emergence of new epistemologies, ideologies, and esthetics. On the other, the nineties ushered in a period of vast political change initiated by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union that led to the creation of multiparty states in Africa. Some, like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, would ultimately prove volatile. This violence, political instability, and economic uncertainty also drove African youth to attempt the difficult migration north. Those who succeeded inevitably changed the cultural landscape of the European cities they inhabited. At the nexus of these sociohistorical and cultural contexts lies the African polar, a subgenre of the policier characterized by violence, sex, and obscene language. Togola proposes a contextualized reading of seventeen novels that explore the relationship between poetics and knowledge, both of which are crucial to our understanding of the polar and late-twentieth-century sub-Saharan Africa. He argues that while the African polar resembles its Western counterpart, it differs in significant ways. If the latter uses scientific reasoning to solve crime, the former navigates the porous frontier between reality and the supernatural, between modern and traditional ways of knowing. Throughout his study, the author identifies generic tropes that writers have adapted to the African context: the figure of the justicier, the role of immigratio","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136169193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"et la mer pour demeure by Chantal T. Spitz (review)","authors":"Eilene Hoft-March","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911339","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: et la mer pour demeure by Chantal T. Spitz Eilene Hoft-March Spitz, Chantal T. et la mer pour demeure. Au vent des îles, 2022. ISBN 978-2-36734-469. Pp. 96. Seven tightly written short stories composed of breathlessly pulsating prose inhabit this volume. Spitz foregoes all punctuation, changes out narrators from one paragraph to the next, and sprinkles in unglossed Tahitian. Readers must engage with attention rather than float through a distractingly exotic landscape—which Spitz, with clear purpose, barely describes. The collection opens with “Edwin,” named for the child survivor of a conflagration that wipes out his family and leaves him disfigured. The image of Edwin’s personal, multigenerational loss serves as the frontispiece representing the cultural destruction wrought by colonization and cultural loss. “Il pleure sur le rêve” moves from three centuries of unequal struggles against colonizers to a heady independence that sags back into colonized habits: “Incapable de se défaire de la colonisation de l’esprit et du formatage de la pensée instillés ingérés intégrés par des intelligences formées aux institutions de l’envahisseur” (22). The title “et la mer pour demeure,” evocative of Tahiti’s postcard island beauty, acquires darker tones in the third story: the sea is the dwelling place of the drowned. A young man grieves the loss of his star-navigating, wave-savvy relatives, blaming himself for the surfing accident that has taken his brother. He expresses his guilt in traumatized loops articulated in stuttering phrases as he decides to drown in turn. “J’eus un pays” signals with its crisp passé simple the dispossession of the narrator’s native land by wealthy foreign investors. The description of the prototypical No Frontiers project verges on dystopia: a collection of floating islands situated in a picturesque lagoon and liberated from any laws but those of the owners’ devising. The housing proposal fails but the No Frontiers corporation gets its own island provided with electric fences, surveillance drones, private jets, and access to organ transplants. Paradise commodified and insulated from Tahitians. “Ils ne diront rien” recounts an instance of domestic violence ending in tragedy. Unusually, the perpetrator has his say in the text, making of an unimaginably harrowing murder the culmination of myriad social ills. “Louisette,” based on the author’s interview with an SDF in Papeete, documents the many short straws Louisette has drawn from family dysfunction to failed social services to street prostitution. The story’s conclusion sounds a note of cautious hope as Louisette emerges economically and temperamentally independent. In the final story, Spitz targets those Westerners—notably but not exclusively academics—who fall in love with their own superficial rendering of Tahiti, at its worst: “Le détournement de l’histoire vécue par nous écrite par eux qui s’arrogent le beau rôle” (88). Spitz nevertheless softens the critique by h","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136167080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sacral Kingship in Bourbon France: The Cult of Saint Louis, 1589–1830 by Sean Heath (review)","authors":"Alyce A. Jordan","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911392","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Sacral Kingship in Bourbon France: The Cult of Saint Louis, 1589–1830 by Sean Heath Alyce A. Jordan Heath, Sean. Sacral Kingship in Bourbon France: The Cult of Saint Louis, 1589–1830. Bloomsbury, 2021. ISBN 978-1-3501-7319-4. Pp. 277. Ill. 13. This book provides a valuable analysis of the cult of St Louis from its revival by Henry IV until the dissolution of Bourbon rule. It explores the cult’s early history, elevation of Louis IX’s 25 August feast day to duplex rank in 1618, and the role of sermons, liturgies, biographies, and relics in the cult’s promotion. Having been harnessed by Henri de Navarre to consolidate the family’s “dynastic and religious legitimacy” (1), propagation of the cult was effected via biographies, Jesuit patronage, and encomiastic sermons. Published annually by the Académie Française, these sermons, called panegyrics, became a primary vehicle of the cult’s dissemination and codified Louis IX’s persona as the foremost exemplar of model kingship. Henri IV’s astute decision to name his heir Louis—a choice emulated by every subsequent Bourbon monarch—simultaneously made the saint’s feast day the official fête du roi (27). Concomitant celebration of the two fêtes made the panegyrics the preferred venue for flattering comparisons of the contemporary monarch with his saintly ancestor (41–47). St Louis’ cult flourished in the propitious confluence of the Catholic Reform movement and the political agenda of Louis XIV. Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and colonization of Muslim territories cemented Louis XIV’s identification with Louis IX, who was praised for his opposition to heresy and devotion to crusading. Despite, or perhaps because of, its association with the monarchy, St Louis’ cult never enjoyed widespread geographic or popular support. It remained concentrated in Paris and closely associated with royal initiatives, the only notable exception being among the elite classes where St Louis’ religiosity and charity were promoted as models for pursuing a pious life in secular society. Louis IX’s cult diminished with the spread of the Enlightenment, although no less a philosophe than Voltaire credited the saint with transforming the Huguenot excommunicate Henri de Navarre into a just and generous monarch (134). Heath’s excavation of the many sources that simultaneously praised the saint-king and linked him with the reigning monarch encourages more nuanced appreciation of the revolutionary wrath directed on the material culture of French kingship. It was surely no accident that sale of furniture from Versailles commenced on Louis IX’s feast day (155). Suppressed in 1793, the cult became a counter-revolutionary symbol for Catholics and royalists. Louis XVIII anticipated that the cult’s revival in 1814 would serve, as it had for Henry IV, to unify France after a period of upheaval and instability. Instead, it became a flashpoint highlighting the stark divisions between Catholics, royalists, and secularized liberals. He","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136167082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Singing of Sex and Freedom: Courtesans and Erotic Arts in “Zabet”","authors":"Brooke Tybush","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911325","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article examines depictions of mixed-race courtesans in the eighteenthcentury Creole courtesan song “Zabet” which was originally transcribed in an unpublished document by the travel writer Moreau de Saint-Méry (1750–1819). My analysis of “Zabet” interrogates the intersecting oppressions of racism, sexism, and imperialism. Specifically, this article demonstrates how the lyrics of this song present a woman-to-woman sexual mentorship that provides a space of resistance for women of color to these intersecting oppressions. Through this mentorship, the song’s narrator/singer provides important lessons for mixed-race women in how to manipulate racialized and gendered stereotypes of the sexual marketplace in colonial Saint-Domingue.","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136167329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"La norme du français et sa diffusion dans l’histoire ed. by Dorothée Aquino-Weber, Sara Cotelli Kureth and Carine Skupien Dekens (review)","authors":"Bryan Donaldson","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911357","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: La norme du français et sa diffusion dans l’histoire ed. by Dorothée Aquino-Weber, Sara Cotelli Kureth and Carine Skupien Dekens Bryan Donaldson Aquino-Weber, Dorothée, Sara Cotelli Kureth, and Carine Skupien Dekens, eds. La norme du français et sa diffusion dans l’histoire. Honoré Champion, 2021. ISBN 978-2-7453-5626-0. Pp. 250. Linguistic norms, a perennial topic in French, receive a historical perspective in this edited volume. Aquino-Weber and Cotelli Kureth’s introduction reminds readers of Haugen’s seminal model and the distinction between linguistic norms (actual usage) and prescriptive norms (desired usage). Skupien Dekens traces the diffusion of prescriptive norms in the teaching of French as a foreign language. Kristol discusses François Bonivard, a 16th-century Swiss polyglot whose remarques prioritize objective norms over prescriptive norms, more reminiscent of a linguist than a grammarian. Amatuzzi examines how three 17th-century grammarians (Du Val, Chiflet, De Courtin) view variation and changing norms. All three have a globally negative view of variation, but Chiflet appears tolerant of stylistic variation that characterizes familiar speech. Grosse discusses the 18th-century educator (translator, historian, literary critic...) Eléazar de Mauvillon; this émigré from Provence gave French lessons in Dresden, where his pupils’ interlanguage (“vitement”, “il est vingt ans”) still resonates today. Cotelli Kureth and Nissille examine the teaching of (standard) French in Switzerland in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the home language was often a patois or regional French. Interestingly, some prescriptive manuals defended regional variants (gringe “grumpy”), either on account of their meritorious etymology or the génie of the local variety. Surcouf addresses the challenges of describing spoken language through writing and asks if (educated, professional) linguists can accurately and objectively describe the speech of less educated speakers. Surcouf notes the implicit comparison to the (conservative) written norm when we describe, for example, ne “deletion” in spoken French. He proposes, instead, that we speak of adding ne for negation in writing. Glikman and Bouard research the conjunctive phrase pour que, which, despite widespread normative reprobation (e.g., by Vaugelas), replaced afin que as the dominant expression of purpose. Capin examines historical metalinguistic commentary on subject pronoun expression. Caron focuses on the choice between passé simple ~ passé composé and social factors like the “crushing” of the linguistically conservative Parlement de Paris that may have favored the rise of the latter. Laferrière examines tensions between prescriptive norms and usage of incises de citation; after early condemnation of examples like reconnus-je, decried by grammarians as “horreurs” or “infamies,” Laferrière documents evolutions to the norm that encourage variety beyond the [End Page 257] “lassant” and formulaic dit-","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136167590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Classer nos manières de parler, classer les gens par Malo Morvan (review)","authors":"Laurence Arrighi","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911361","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911361","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Classer nos manières de parler, classer les gens par Malo Morvan Laurence Arrighi Morvan, Malo. Classer nos manières de parler, classer les gens. Commun, 2022. ISBN 979-10-95630-52-4. Pp. 280. Classer, c’est catégoriser, assigner une place. Appliqués notamment aux pratiques linguistiques, ces actes procèdent de logiques de hiérarchisation, d’inclusion, d’exclusion. Des personnes parleraient une langue, d’autres un dialecte, un patois, un baragouin. D’aucuns parleraient mal, d’autres bien et ces jugements sociaux sont intériorisés, naturalisés, y compris par ceux et celles qui en sont victimes. Malo Morvan entend contribuer à déconstruire cela. Son propos est argumenté, exemplifié, appuyé par les apports d’une sociolinguistique qui “consiste à manifester une vigilance envers les termes que nous utilisons communément pour désigner les groupes de locuteur·rice·s, en soulignant tant leur imprécision théorique que les effets politiques associés à leur usage” (14). Tout l’objectif de son ouvrage est là. En partie 1, Morvan montre que la notion de langue n’a aucune pertinence. Puisque les critères habituels utilisés pour la définir (intercompréhension, communauté linguistique) ne fonctionnent pas, il est plus fructueux d’identifier les présupposés que cette notion véhicule plutôt que de chercher d’autres critères définitoires (chapitre 1). Il montre ensuite que bien que la sociolinguistique se soit ingéniée à définir des facteurs qui font varier nos pratiques linguistiques (chapitre 2) et les formes que peuvent prendre les mélanges et influences langagières (chapitre 3), plusieurs notions (voir ci-dessous) élaborées dans cette perspective “ne résolvent pas vraiment les problèmes de la notion de “langue”, puisqu’elles en reproduisent la logique” (20). C’est l’opération de classification elle-même qui est à questionner: peu pertinentes scientifiquement, ce qui vient d’être montré, les classifications sur base langagière ont des répercussions sociales. Ainsi en partie 2, l’auteur revient sur ce travail des sociolinguistes qui ont cherché les facteurs de variation et des dénominations plus fluides (chapitre 4), ainsi que sur leur volonté de rendre compte du contact linguistique (chapitre 5). Finalement ces “nouvelles” notions (qu’elles soient usuelles comme dialecte, argot ou plus techniques comme langue Ausbau, langue Abstand) ne règlent rien puisqu’elles ne font finalement que déplacer ou rétrécir l’échelle d’application, en plus d’être souvent très mal comprises (ainsi celle de créole). C’est, on l’a compris, la démarche même de vouloir classer des pratiques langagières par nature complexes, évolutives, évanescentes, dans des catégories figées et bien délimitées qui est à interroger. La troisième et dernière partie de l’ouvrage envisage les apories de la classification (chapitre 6) et les conséquences politiques de l’usage des catégories linguistiques qui entrainent une catégorisation sociale sur base langagière (chapitre 7). Si l’ouvrage ne","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136168559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"La métropole contre la nation? La politique montréalaise d’intégration des personnes immigrantes by David Carpentier (review)","authors":"Gavin Furrey","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911388","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: La métropole contre la nation? La politique montréalaise d’intégration des personnes immigrantes by David Carpentier Gavin Furrey Carpentier, David. La métropole contre la nation? La politique montréalaise d’intégration des personnes immigrantes. PUQ, 2022. ISBN 978-2-7605-5778-9. Pp. 232. The question broached by this work is intriguing not only for those studying minority nations, municipal public policy, and multilingual and multicultural contexts, but will also speak to the average citizen familiar with the mixed messages about belonging and civic and economic participation as they are experienced in Montreal. As Carpentier writes, “Espace emblématique de la reconquête de la majorité francophone sur sa destinée collective, Montréal constitue un véritable baromètre identitaire donnant souvent la mesure à l’ensemble de la province” (183). Hence, the disconnect between the province’s discourse and normative orientations regarding the integration of new immigrants, versus those of Montreal, merit inspection. Although this study focuses primarily on the period from 2006 to 2019, Carpentier traces the origins of a distinct approach by the city towards the integration of new immigrants back to the 1980s, when the ethnocultural composition of the metropole took on substantial transformations (84-85). With a growing immigrant population, and a diversification of this population, the city faced needs around the themes of economic integration and fighting racism and discrimination; simultaneously, the nationalist movement of Quebec, which favored a discourse of a growing francophone, white, middle class, contributed to a national framing of immigration as problematic to the affirmation of Quebec as a society distinct within anglophone North America. Carpentier delineates the tensions between theories of multiculturalism and interculturalism, and asserts that, “[l]a Ville de Montréal adhère officiellement, à tout le moins sur le plan discursif dans ses documents publics, à une acception interactionniste plutôt qu’intégrative de l’interculturalisme” (84). This inter actionist dimension to a theory of interculturalism highlights the value that the city places upon ethnocultural diversity, but it can also be interpreted as edulco rating the theory’s assimilationist posture inherent in the emphasis placed on a common language in need of institutional protections. Carpentier examines this tension from a postcolonial theorization that, while addressing on-going discrimi nation, ignores decolonial possibilities. Although this work offers insight into the dynamics of the subsystem of municipal politics by means of interviews with municipal government employees, a critique might be made of the lip service Carpentier pays to theories of decolonization and the absence of literature on decolonizing and indigenizing spaces in Montreal that could inform propositions for building partnerships of governance to create new integrative policies and practices f","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136168561","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Alain Rey: bibliographie complète et lexique thématique by Giovanni Dotoli (review)","authors":"H. Jay Siskin","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911358","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Alain Rey: bibliographie complète et lexique thématique by Giovanni Dotoli H. Jay Siskin Dotoli, Giovanni. Alain Rey: bibliographie complète et lexique thématique. L’Harmattan, 2021. ISBN 978 234325301. Pp. 282. In 2012, Galisson noted in his introduction to the digital reissuing of Charles Puren’s Histoire des méthodologies de l’enseignement des langues that when a discipline loses its past, it also loses its future (8). It is in this spirit that I approached Dotoli’s tribute to Alain Rey, who died in 2020. The two were close colleagues and friends. I had only read Rey’s work segmentally, that is by periodically consulting the Robert, the ne plus ultra of French lexicography. These random visits did little to reveal the stunning architecture of these opera. It is a happy coincidence that the plural of opus can likewise refer to a musical product. Throughout this work, Dotoli compares Rey to a musician and artist. I will return to this characterization below. But first, I will describe the composition of the volume. To begin my overview of the thematic rubrics, I have chosen La lexicographie (78–81). Rey rejects prescriptivism and admits oral usage: “Ainsi le Petit Robert est-il le premier dictionnaire à admettre l’oral!” (79). And in an innovative modern move, regionalisms and tokens of la Francophonie are embraced. The second rubric that engaged me was Vision (145–149), exposing Rey’s remarks on what should be admissible in usage and supported by dictionaries. A final theme that I appreciated as a “classically trained” philologist was Méthode (94–97). The notions of origins and history link the past to the present: “Ils rétablissent l’unité du socle français” (96). Rey foregrounds a philological approach that relies upon rigorous etymological analysis. This analysis may become a bit messy through analogy and borrowings, for example. Nonetheless, these complications allow the reader to appreciate the mechanisms of language change: “La langue bouge, s’ouvre sur le monde, dialogue avec les autres langues [...] Un dictionnaire n’est pas un manuel de catéchisme” (145, 147). That Alain Rey was an extraordinary scholar and colleague is amply documented through the thematic lexicon as well as the bibliography of his works, which form the second part of the book. The entries consist of a variety of genres: books, articles, reviews, radio and television interviews, and links to the Francophone press. Initially, I was put off by the fawning praise of his students and colleagues who declared: “Alain Rey est l’auteur directeur d’orchestre de la symphonie du dictionnaire” (28); “Alain Rey est sublime” (116); “Alain Rey est simultanément le poète-sculpteur/peintre du mot. Et aussi le metteur en scène [d’un film sonore] dont la musique est de Wolfgang Mozart, Gioacchino Rossini […] ou Igor Stravinsky” (97). I have since reframed these remarks as a lengthy eulogy, rather than a conventional book that seeks to validate the author and mute his/her cr","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136168893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}