A holistic sociolinguistic perspective on the grammarians and ouisme in the phonetic history of French

Abstract

This study investigates early-modern grammarians of French and their accounts of an intriguing and famous phenomenon called ‘ouisme’. The research targets a gap in the field, as ‘ouisme’ has remained, paradoxically, little investigated. Drawing on sociolinguistic principles, the evidence base for the phenomenon is expanded, by treating the grammarians as legitimate subjects of study; scrutiny of their sociolinguistic attitude and behaviour is made an integral part of the explanation and analysis of ‘ouisme’, a vibrant variant of a linguistic variable, whose usage is examined in a complex social context. The results are rewarding, in two main respects: on the one hand, a completely new understanding of the phenomenon, its usage and the terminology employed to characterize it; on the other hand, the methodology of focusing on the grammarians’ testimonies and sociolinguistic attitude and behaviour provides a potential template for future work on historical features of French and other languages.