La presse française historique: histoire d’un genre et histoire de la langue by Mairi McLaughlin (review)

Reviewed by: La presse française historique: histoire d’un genre et histoire de la langue by Mairi McLaughlin Peter A. Machonis McLaughlin, Mairi. La presse française historique: histoire d’un genre et histoire de la langue. Garnier, 2021. ISBN 978-2-406-10356-1. Pp. 407. This first systematic study of the language of the early French press shows how historical periodicals can shed light on our understanding of language changes during the 17th and 18th centuries. This 500,000-word manually digitized corpus was created using samples of a variety of successful periodicals from 1631 to 1789: the official and impersonal Gazette de France, the scientific Journal des sçavants, the lighter and more intimate Mercure galant, the first French-language daily newspaper Journal de Paris, and the international Gazette d’Amsterdam. The first part examines usage of first and second person pronouns, reported discourse (direct, indirect, free indirect), and passive voice in historical periodicals. The author furthers her quantitative and qualitative comparison by examining today’s French press. Although certain features, such as the masthead, have long been characteristic of periodicals, others, such as using headlines and putting the most important information first, are completely absent in all of the 17th and 18th century journals examined. While dispatches were chronologically ordered in the historic press, today they are sorted according to interest. McLaughlin claims, “Aucun des périodiques […] de 1631 jusqu’à la Révolution […] ne se sert de la première page pour capter le lecteur éventuel en y présentant les informations les plus importantes et accrocheuses comme le font les journaux contemporains” (160). The second part examines linguistic changes using quantitative data from seven year-long periods spaced every 20–30 years from 1632 to 1782. Certain obsolete forms still used in 17th century literary examples taken from FRANTEXT (ils prindrent, il print, ils tindrent) are completely absent in the historic press showing that there was “une sorte de décalage chronologique entre le français journalistique et le français littéraire” (209). Other modifications such as pour ne pas faire, for the older pour ne faire pas or je veux le faire for the former je le veux faire show a clear progression in this evolution with only a few examples of obsolete word order in the historic press in 1782. McLaughlin confirms that the 18th century was a crucial moment for the change from passé simple to passé composé, even examining contexts that contain adverbial expressions that trigger an increase of the passé composé. Orthographic changes are particularly interesting, since the 18th century is considered to be when modern French becomes standardized. McLaughlin explores etymological and double consonants, usage of i/j and u/v, introduction of accents, restriction of the -ez ending (amitiez, bontez), and the replacement of oi by ai. This later change is particularly noticeable in the Gazette d’Amsterdam, which changed françois to français and étoit to était from 1757 to 1782, highlighting the importance of the foreign press on modern French orthography. Along with many tables and charts, there are linguistic examples from the historic press to illustrate every point. This volume is informative for [End Page 262] sociolinguists and historical linguistics, and for anyone curious to see how linguists exploit new sources of information. Although this work utilizes a mediumsized corpus, it presents compelling evidence to support funding research in digitizing historic periodicals. [End Page 263] Peter A. Machonis Florida International University Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French