Olivia Alter MT10 Dr Temple

Brown and Gilman appeal to notions of power and solidarity to account for the
use of tu and vous as pronouns of address in French. How successful is an
explanation in these terms?

From a traditionalist perspective in the early twentieth century, pronouns were

seen simply as a substitution for nouns and nominals. However, it was only later in the
century with the development of pragmatics and linguistic anthropology, linking the
analysis of linguistic forms and processes to the interpretation of sociological processes,
that people started to view pronouns as linguistic signs through which multiple meanings
can be expressed. In French, for instance, pronouns are now generally seen as a key
linguistic device in the expression of social distinction, where tu is the marked singular
for a particular sort of intimacy or informality, and vous is not only the unmarked plural,
but also the unmarked singular for relatively formal conversation. The choice entailed in
the usage of second-person pronouns as a form of address suggests, from a sociological
point of view, that there is an underlying meaning the speaker is aware of, or may even
create, and which is thus acknowledged through the preference of one form over another.
Brown and Gilmans study of major European languages in 19601 was one the
first works recognizing that speakers can demonstrate or even negotiate their attitudes
towards others through employing different pronouns. They account for the varying
emergence of either tu or vous in French pronominal address by discerning the
determining factors of power and solidarity, whereby speakers with a superior social
status use tu towards others and receive vous (and vice versa for speakers of a lower
status), but in situations where the power value is roughly equal, reciprocal usage
appears. They also felt that a description of the system in these terms could explain an
apparent shift towards a more generalized usage of tu. Nevertheless, Brown and
Gilman have come up against criticism more recently, since some linguists consider the
notions of power and solidarity to be somewhat lacking in the depth of socio-
psychological analysis. Non-reciprocal social relationships may appear to be conducive
to non-reciprocal forms of address, but the pronominal system in French is much more
complex than this, and a semantic approach such as theirs may not necessarily take into

1
Brown, R. & A. Gilman (1976)
Olivia Alter MT10 Dr Temple

account the fact that social relations are not just reflected in language usage, but may
actually be defined by that very usage itself.
In Pronouns of Power and Solidarity, Brown and Gilman map out a history of
French, German and Italian in terms of how these languages developed their pronominal
address system from the Latin terms tu and vos. They base their account of the
employment of different pronouns on a two-dimensional system of power and solidarity,
so that the greater the distance between two people on either dimension, the greater the
probability of V usage (where V refers to vos or, in French, vous).
Power, they explain, establishes a non-reciprocal relationship, distinguishing
between different social statuses. The distinction began as one of number, where the
Latin vos was employed as a reverential form for emperors. Heads study, comparing
pronominal reference in over a hundred languages, confirms that the pluralized form is a
basic marker of deference in many languages, not simply those which Brown and Gilman
consider to be linked2. Thus vos may have been used because there were joint rulers in
Latin antiquity, but could also be explained by the idea that an emperor represents the
people, highlighting how speakers use language as a means to indicate their social
environment. Whichever explanation holds, Brown and Gilman continue on to describe
how, by medieval times, this V form in French had extended to power structures within
the social hierarchy, and having been introduced at the top, tu then became
characterized as a lower class form, so that in the interaction of different classes, a non-
reciprocal address system was established. This asymmetric pattern, whereby upper class
speakers referred to those lower in the hierarchy as tu, and the lower classes used vous
for anyone higher than them, is therefore assumed to symbolize a power relationship, but
has also spread in modern French to any social relationship determined by factors that
could place interlocutors on a scale to signal distance, such as age (parent-child) or social
function (priest-penitent).
At the same time as this power semantic spread through the hierarchy of medieval
society, Brown and Gilman note a solidarity semantic in the symmetrical pattern of
pronominal usage. Upper classes used a reciprocal V form amongst themselves, since not
all social differences implied a difference in power, but rather, similarities regarding more

2
Head, B. E. (1978)
Olivia Alter MT10 Dr Temple

socially determined behavior such as religious or political membership, meant vous

could be a marker of mutual respect. Brown and Gilman believe that, nowadays, the
notion of solidarity has become the more important concept determining a French
speakers choice, since a solidary does not necessarily refer to an intimate group of
blood-relations, but can reflect social groupings on the wider level of the community as a
whole. Tu remained as a variable feature in medieval times, but was always associated
with a very particular, intimate social relationship, whilst vous suggested formality.
Hence tu is now used by people of equivalent status who may be interacting over an
extended period of time, such as neighbors or co-workers, and Brown and Gilman even
go so far as to suggest that a mutual tu will inevitably replace mutual vous as the
expression of solidarity.
Asymmetrical usage determined by a social hierarchy will always indicate power
relations of some sort, yet non-reciprocity is disappearing from Western European
languages, as has happened in English where thou is recognized only as an antiquated
pronominal form. In a modern, democratic, post-war world where the use of tu is less
restricted in both public and private contexts, and there is an increase in the number of
relationships which could result from a common fate, relative intimacy has a greater
influence on the pronominal address system. Brown and Gilman support this with
evidence of the behavior of upper class youths attempting to establish a generalised tu,
which then identifies them with more liberal political ideologies. Eckerts research of
Pyrenean communities3, where the local Gascon is ceding to French, also found that
youths were starting to tutoyer their parents even when they spoke Gascon, illustrating
rules of solidarity rather than respecting an established hierarchy. Bates and Begninis
confirms this idea on a larger scale as well, since their study was of Italian pronominal
usage, but they find an interesting paradox whereby lower class youths are more formal,
employing the V form more frequently than their upper class peers, perhaps in an attempt
to present themselves as upwardly mobile4. However, this behavior reflects
hypercorrection, since these speakers believe they are imitating the upper classes, whilst
the usage of people their age but higher up the social hierarchy is actually changing. This

3
Eckert, P. (1981), Notes on pronominal strategies in a bilingual community, quoted in Gardner-Chloros,
P. (1991)
4
Bates, E. & L. Begnini (1975)