inguistic Means of Expressing Stereotypes About France and the French (Based on Pierre Daninos’ Collection “Le Jacassin”)

   This article focuses on autostereotypes about France and the French, as well as their linguistic expression in French. Autostereotypes are presented as a type of mental stereotype and understood as representations of France and the French that are widespread within the linguistic community. The concept of stereotype in modern linguistics has many interpretations. The article offers an overview of different approaches to the investigation of stereotypes in sections of linguistics such as semantics, ethnolinguistics, sociolinguistics, culture studies, and psycholinguistics, and clarifies the distinction between language and mental stereotyping. While the former is understood as a linguistic unit that is stable and idiomatic, the latter is a set of associations that are consistently attributed to lexical units. The collection Le Jacassin, a humorous work by a writer and journalist Pierre Daninos, was chosen as the material, as it reflects the main prejudices and clichés prevalent in France in the 1950^s and early 1960^s. The sections of the collection are diverse in form: fictitious dialogue, maximally saturated with stereotypes; dictionaries of general and political vocabulary; practical advice to the reader, presented in the form of detailed lists. In the proposed material, 45 passages containing elements of autostereotype were selected, on the basis of which three substantive sides are highlighted: self-portrait of the country and its inhabitants, «we−they» opposition, as well as domestic elements and lifestyle. All these elements are united by the motive of comparing the past and the present, as a rule not in favor of the latter. The article provides a detailed analysis of linguistic means at various linguistic levels (morphological, lexical, syntactic, pragmatic). These tools include the author’s active use of attributional constructs, including adjective definitions, metaphors, precedent names and quotations, as well as antonyms, synonyms and logical connectors. An important feature of stereotypical statements turned out to be extreme hyperbolization and generalization, achieved through the use of indefinite pronouns, adverbs, negative constructs and restrictive phrases.

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