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Article published In:
Belgian Journal of Linguistics, Volume 37 (2023): Tangible Traces of Language Ideologies
Edited by Esther Baiwir, Janine Berns and Marie Steffens
[Belgian Journal of Linguistics 37] 2023
► pp. 12–36

Marking the sources of knowledge, asserting the epistemic stance

Evidential strategies in Deharveng’s Franco‑Belgian language column Récréation philologique et grammaticale (1922–1928)

| University of Augsburg

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Jesuit priest Joseph Deharveng (1867–1929) was one of the main representatives of a language correction movement based essentially on the standard Parisian model of French. Deharveng’s goal was to clear the practices of French-speaking Belgians of everything which seemed to deviate from this supposed ‘good usage’ of French. Under the evocative title Corrigeons-nous!, Deharveng published six anthologies from 1922 to 1928 reproducing the articles published in his language column “Récréation philologique et grammaticale” in the Brussels newspaper La Jeunesse. The present study addresses how Deharveng makes use of evidential markers, that is, linguistic features to express the sources of knowledge in his language column. The distribution of evidential markers in Deharveng’s column is compared to those in two other Franco-Belgian language columns published by Albert Doppagne (1912–2003) from 1960 to 1987 in the Brussels newspaper Le Soir and by Michel Francard (1952–) from 2018 to 2022, also in Le Soir. The aim of this comparison is to discern author-specific and language ideology-driven similarities and differences in the patterning of evidential strategies in language columns.

Keywords: evidentiality, language columns, language ideologies, French-speaking Belgium
Article outline
  • 1.Joseph Deharveng and his work as a language columnist
  • 2.Evidentiality and epistemic stance in discourse
  • 3.Lexical evidential markers in Deharveng’s language column
    • 3.1Method and data
    • 3.2Results and discussion
      • 3.2.1Types and distribution of evidential forms
      • 3.2.2Deharveng’s evidential strategies in contrast
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 6 June 2024
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.00079.mei
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