Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-wq2xx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T11:47:08.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Genre, heteroglossic performances, and new identity: Stand-up comedy in modern French society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2015

Cécile B. Vigouroux
Cécile B. Vigouroux*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, Department of FrenchWMC 2644 8888University Drive Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6Canadacvigouro@sfu.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article analyses the ways in which stand-up comedy has been taken up by French comics of North and sub-Saharan African origins as a space of visibility and hearability. Following Bakhtin (1986), who argues that a genre reflects the social changes taking place in a society, I argue that such an appropriation should be considered as an important sociolinguistic fact that gives us privileged access to Hexagonal France's contemporary sociopolitical dynamics. I show that through their display of heteroglossic repertoires (viz. Maghrebi Arabic, several varieties of vernacular French, Hexagonal standard French, mesolectal African French, stylized chunks of English) comics challenge, at least symbolically, France's monoglot and highly centralized linguistic ideology. They also contribute to unsettling France's Republican model, which is marked by the institutional denial of the social and cultural diversity of the French population. The comics use heteroglossic resources to align with and disalign from multiple chronotopes associated with different social personae. From this emerges a new identity, urban, which both encompasses and transcends racial and ethnic categories. By contrast, I show that this identity is constructed through and received by the nonratified audience with ambivalence. (France, stand-up comedy, genre, urban, identity, chronotope, intertextuality.)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 44 , Issue 2: Special Issue: Heteroglossia and performance , April 2015 , pp. 243 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adam, Lucien (1883). Les idiomes négro-aryens et malayo aryens: Essai d'hybridologie linguistique. Paris: Maisonneuve.Google Scholar
Agha, Asif (2005). Voice, footing and enregisterment. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1):38–59.Google Scholar
Alim, Samy (2009). Translocal style communities: Hip hop youth as cultural theorists of style, language and globalization. Pragmatics 19(1):103–27.Google Scholar
Bachollet, Raymond (1992). Negripub: L'image des Noirs dans la publicité. Paris: Éditions de l'Amateur.Google Scholar
Bailey, Benjamin (2007). Heteroglossia and boundaries. In Heller, Monica (ed.), Bilingualism: A social approach, 257–74. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, Mikhail (1986). The problem of speech genres. In Emerson, Caryl & Holquist, Michael (eds.), Speech genres and other late essays, 60–102. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland (1981). Le grain de la voix. Paris: Seuil.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard (1975). Verbal art as performance. American Anthropologist 77:290–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Richard (2000). Genre. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 9(1–2):84–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Allan, & Gibson, Andy (2011). Staging language: An introduction to the sociolinguistics of performance. Journal of Sociolinguistics 15(5):555–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boskin, Joseph, & Dorinson, Joseph (1985). Ethnic humor: Subversion and survival. American Quarterly 37(1):81–97.Google Scholar
Boucher, Manuel (2001). Rap, ‘peur de la jeunesse’ et ingénuosité créatrice. In Vulbeau, Alain (ed.), La jeunesse comme ressource créatrice, 151–68. Paris: ERES.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1979). La distinction: Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1993). The field of cultural production: Essays on art and literature. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Boyer, Henri (1997). ‘Nouveau français’, ‘parler jeune’ ou ‘langue des cités’? Remarques sur un objet linguistique médiatiquement identifié. Langue française 114(1):6–15.Google Scholar
Braudel, Fernand (1969). Histoire et sciences sociales: La longue durée. Écrits sur l'histoire, 41–83. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Brayton, Sean (2009). Race comedy and the ‘misembodied’ voice. Topia 22:97–116.Google Scholar
Briggs, Charles, & Bauman, Richard (1992). Genre, intertextuality and social power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2(2):131–72.Google Scholar
Brodie, Ian (2008). Stand-up comedy as a genre of intimacy. Ethnologies 30(2):153–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Michael F. (1996). On resisting resistance. American Anthropologist 98(4):729–49.Google Scholar
Caubet, Dominique (2002). Métissages linguistiques ici (en France) et là-bas (au Maghreb). Ville-École-Intégration Enjeux 130:117–32.Google Scholar
Caubet, Dominique (2004). La ‘darja’ langue de culture en France. Hommes et Migrations 1252:34–44.Google Scholar
Chalaye, Sylvie (1998). Du Noir au nègre: L'image du Noir au théâtre. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Chalaye, Sylvie (2002). Nègres en images. Paris: L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Chun, Elaine (2004). Ideologies of legitimate mockery: Margaret Cho's revoicing of mock Asian. Pragmatics 14(2/3):263–89.Google Scholar
Chun, Elaine (2009). Speaking like Asian immigrants: Intersections of accommodation and mocking. Pragmatics 19:17–38.Google Scholar
Condry, Ian (2001). Japanese hip-hop and the globalization of popular culture. In Gmelch, George & Zenner, Walter (eds.), Urban life: Readings in the anthropology of the city, 357–87. Prospects Heights, IL: Waveland Press.Google Scholar
Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (2000). Présence et représentation des minorités visibles dans la télévision française. La Lettre du CSA 129:12–14. Unpublished report, Paris.Google Scholar
Costantini, Alessandro (2011). Bande dessinée franco-belge, petit nègre et imaginaire colonial. La BD francophone 14. Online: http://publifarum.farum.it/ezine_printarticle.php?id=207.Google Scholar
Coupland, Nikolas (2001). Stylization, authenticity and TV news review. Discourse Studies 3(4):413–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coveney, Aidan (2010). Vouvoiement and tutoiement: Sociolinguistic reflections. Journal of French Language Studies 20(2):127–50.Google Scholar
Delafosse, Maurice (1904). Vocabulaires comparatifs de plus de 60 langues ou dialectes parlés à la Côte d'Ivoire et dans les régions limitrophes: Avec des notes linguistiques et ethnologiques, une bibliographie et une carte. Paris: E. Leroux.Google Scholar
Dhume, Fabrice (2010). L’émergence d'une figure obsessionnelle: Comment le «communautarisme» a envahi les discours médiatico-politiques français. Asylon(s) 8. Online: http://www.reseauterra.eu/article945.html.Google Scholar
Doran, Benedict (2004). Negotiating between Bourge and Racaille: Verlan as youth identity practice in suburban Paris. In Pavlenko, Aneta & Blackledge, Adrian (eds.), Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts, 93–124. Clevendon: Multlingual Matters.Google Scholar
Doran, Benedict (2007). Alternative French alternative identities: Situating language in la banlieue. Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 11(4):497–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Errington, Joseph (2001). Colonial linguistics. Annual Review of Anthropology 30:19–39.Google Scholar
Fabiani, Jean-Louis (2003). Peut-on encore parler de légitimité culturelle? In Donnat, Olivier & Tolila, Paul (eds.), Le(s) public(s) de la culture, 305–17. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan, & Irvine, Judith (1995). The boundaries of languages and disciplines: How ideologies construct difference. Social Research 62(4):967–99.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Gondola, Didier (2009). Transient citizens: The othering and indigenization of Blacks and Beurs within the French Republic. In Tshimanga, Charles, Gondola, Didier, & Bloom, Peter J. (eds.), Frenchness and the African diaspora, 146–66. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Gueldry, Michel (2009). The Americanization of France. Yale French Studies 116/ 117:37–51.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart (1991). Old and new identities, old and new ethnicities. In King, Anthony (ed.), Culture, globalization and the world-system, 41–68. New York: Macmillan Education.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart (1996). Who needs identity? In Hall, Stuart & du Gay, Paul (eds.), Questions of cultural identity, 1–17. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael (1976). Anti-languages. American Anthropologist 78(3):570–84.Google Scholar
Hanks, William F. (1987). Discourse genres in a theory of practice. American Ethnologist 14(4):668–92.Google Scholar
Hanks, William F. (2005). Pierre Bourdieu and the practices of language. Annual Review of Anthropology 34:67–68.Google Scholar
Hargreaves, Alec G. (2009). Beyond postcolonialism: Globalization and postcolonial minorities in France. In Mudimbe-Boyi, Elisabeth (ed.), Empire lost: France and its other worlds, 37–46. Lanham: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Hirji, Faiza (2009). ‘Somebody going to get hurt real bad’: The race-based comedy of Russel Peters. Canadian Journal of Communication 34(4):567–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hymes, Dell (1975). Breakthrough into performance. In Ben-Amos, Dan & Goldstein, Kenneth S. (ed.), Folklore performance and communication, 11–74. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Jaspers, Jurgen (2011). Talking like a ‘zerolingual’: Ambiguous linguistic caricatures at an urban secondary school. Journal of Pragmatics 43:1264–78.Google Scholar
Jennings, Jeremy (2000). Citizenship, republicanism and multiculturalism in modern France. British Journal of Political Science 30:577–98.Google Scholar
Keslassy, Eric (2012). Une Assemblée nationale plus représentative? Institut Diderot Online: http://www.institutdiderot.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/UneAssembl%C3%A9eNationaleplusrepresentative.pdf.Google Scholar
Kuisel, Richard (1997). Seducing the French: The dilemma of Americanization. Berkley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lemke, Jay (2000). Across the scales of time: Artifacts, activities, and meanings in ecosocial systems. Mind, Culture, and Activity 7(4):273–90.Google Scholar
L'Hamon, William T. Jr. (1998). Raising Cain: Blackface performance from Jim Crow to hip-hop. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lopez, Yoann (2010). Les questions noires en France. Bordeaux: Université Bordeaux dissertation.Google Scholar
Macé, Éric (2008). Étude de la perception de la diversité dans les programmes de télévision: Rapport de l'Observatoire de la diversité dans les médias audiovisuels du Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel. Online: http://www.csa.fr/content/download/33747/.../synthese_rapport_eric_mace.pdf; accessed September 2014.Google Scholar
Mbembe, Achille (2005). La République et l'impensé de la race. In Bancel, Nicolas, Blanchard, Pascal, & Lemaire, Sandrine (eds.), La fracture coloniale: La société française au prisme de l'héritage colonial, 139–54. Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Mbembe, Achille (2009). The republic and its beasts: On the riots in the French Banlieues: Can France reinvent its identity? In Tshimanga, Charles, Gondola, Didier, & Bloom, Peter J. (eds.), Frenchness and the African diaspora, 47–54. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Carolyn (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech 70:151–67.Google Scholar
Mongin, Olivier (2006). De quoi rions-nous? Notre société et ses comiques. Paris: Plon.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2008). Language evolution: Contact, competition and change. London: Continuum Press.Google Scholar
Murray, Graham (2006). France: The riots and the republic. Race & Class 47(4):26–45.Google Scholar
Ndiaye, Pap (2008). La condition noire. Paris: Folio.Google Scholar
Noudelmann, François (2008). La voix et la couleur de peau. Online: http://philosophie.blogs.liberation.fr/noudelmann/2008/05/la-voix-et-la-c.html.Google Scholar
Prévos, André J. M. (2001). Postcolonial popular music in France. In Mitchell, Tony (ed.), Global noise, 39–56. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Quemener, Nelly (2013). Stand-up! L'humour des minorités dans les médias en France. Terrains 61:68–83.Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben (1995). Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Sedel, Julie (2009). Les médias et la banlieue. Paris: Ina éditions.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (1993). Metapragmatic discourse and metapragmatic function. In Lucy, John (ed.), Reflexive language: Reported speech and metapragmatics, 33–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (1996). Monoglot ‘standard’ in America: Standardization and metaphors of linguistic hegemony. In Brenneis, Donald & Macaulay, Ronald K. S. (eds.), The matrix of language: Contemporary linguistic anthropology, 284–306. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (2003). Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life. Language and Communication 23:193–229.Google Scholar
Smith, Jacob (2008). Vocal tracks: Performance and sound media. Berkley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Tetreault, Chantal (2013). Cultural citizenship in France and le bled among teens of pan-southern immigrant heritage. Language and Communication 33(4):532–43.Google Scholar
van den Avenne, Cécile (2007). Petit-nègre et Bambara: La langue de l'indigène dans l'oeuvre de quelques écrivains coloniaux en Afrique occidentale française. In Perrot-Corpet, Danielle (ed.), Citer la langue de l'autre: Mots étrangers dans le roman: de Proust à W. G. Sebald, 77–95. Lyon: Presse Universitaire de Lyon.Google Scholar
Vanderschelden, Isabelle (2005). Jamel Debbouze: A new popular French star? Studies in French Cinema 5(1):61–72.Google Scholar
Vigouroux, Cécile B. (2013). Francophonie. Annual Review of Anthropology 42:379–97.Google Scholar
Vigouroux, Cécile B. (2015). How one reads whom and why? Ideological filtering in reading vernacular literacy in France. In Stroud, Chris & Prinsloo, Mastin (eds.), Language, literacy, diversity: Moving words. London: Routledge, to appear.Google Scholar
Wacquant, Loïc (2008). Urban outcasts: A comparative sociology of advanced marginality. Malden, MA: Polity.Google Scholar
Weaver, Simon (2010). The ‘other’ laughs back: Humour and resistance in anti-racist comedy. Sociology 44(1):31–48.Google Scholar
White, Hayden (1980). The value of narrativity in the representation of reality. Critical Inquiry 7(1):1–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar