why vouvoiement is declining in French society

How do I do your hair? heard Charlotte asked in a hair salon in Croix-Rousse, in Lyon (Rhône), where she was entering for the first time. The forty-year-old still regrets not having dared to respond: “By greeting me, thank you!” Between colleagues, parents of students, adults in the same circle, familiarity is often invited from the first meeting, something which previous generations allowed much less. From there to deduce that the “you” would be pushing the “you” into the dusty drawer of obsolescence, the shortcut would be a little too quick.

A “redeployment of uses”

Linguists in fact refuse to objectify this observation. “We only have certainty about very clear developments: parents and children speak informally to each other, and teachers speak more rarely to their students than in the past,” underlines Violaine Bigot, researcher at Lidilem (Laboratory of linguistics and didactics of foreign and native languages), at the University of Grenoble-Alpes. She insists: “There are no reliable and sufficiently broad statistics to conclude that there has been a drop in travel.” And prefers to speak of a “redeployment of uses”.

A redeployment which takes place in great vagueness and fuels anecdotes and the quest for new benchmarks. Fabrice, a road technician at the Métropole de Lyon, says: “In 2000, on the day I was hired, even my boss’s superior corrected me when I spoke to him, telling me: ‘Here, everyone speaks informally.’ When you meet a new colleague, you greet them. ” And the fifty-year-old adds with humor: “Is it because I’m older than twenty-five years ago that I’m being called so?” The answer is not obvious. As proof, the freedom taken by his daughter’s new boyfriend: “He spoke to me from the start, without asking my permission. I who looked after my father-in-law until his death!”

Revealer of social norms

Teachers speak informally from the outset, just like trade unionists or artistic professions. Lawyers always start by speaking out. On the social network TikTok, the “you” is essential. Considering “you” as the “default” pronoun is less systematic than it was a few decades ago. We all navigate different circles and adopt their ways. “Using “tu” or “vous” is not entirely an individual choice, recalls sociolinguist Jean-Marc Dewaele. Everyone absorbs the norms of the group to which they belong or the one with which they identify. And sometimes, to emphasize that we are not part of a particular group, we deviate from the current custom.”

Discomfort emerges when intentions are not reciprocated. Thus, addressing someone who expects to be addressed as informal means making a mistake. As Hélène, an athletic fifty-year-old, testifies: “During Pilates, the teacher speaks to everyone, except me. As if she was throwing my age back in my face.” Conversely, by choosing to use informal terms with her client, Charlotte’s hairdresser undoubtedly wanted to mark a rapprochement, to “reach out through words”, according to the expression of Jean-Marc Dewaele. But this expectation was not shared. A classic in the professional world: “The new director speaks to everyone on familiar terms and would like us to do the same with him. Out of the question!” refuses Sophie, an executive in a large pharmaceutical group. “I don’t see myself being familiar with a guy who can fire me. We are not friends”

Unconscious trade-offs

Why do we feel so irritated when we are spoken to against our will? The psychologist and novelist Françoise Guérin immediately makes a link with “proxemics”, the bearable physical distance that we establish with others. “We can let ourselves be touched by loved ones, by a lover or a child, but we will not admit the same proximity with friends, neighbors, simple acquaintances, work relations or strangers. » For her, an untimely informal address can trigger this same movement of withdrawal: “But what does he want from me? » “An interaction is defined by two intersecting axes: one constructs a vertical, hierarchical relationship; the other a horizontal, intimate relationship. A priori, adds linguist Violaine Bigot, we place the use of “you” in the axis of rapprochement. But when its use is asymmetrical (a police officer who uses familiar terms during an identity check, a boss who uses informal terms with his employee), we place ourselves well on the vertical axis. »

Age, gender, proximity, social environment, hierarchy, context, power relations: to choose between “you” and “you”, we therefore arbitrate – often unconsciously – between countless subtle and implicit socio-cultural variables. And we have all experienced balancing conversations like the one recounted by Adèle, 21, an engineering and agronomist student: “My internship supervisor never clearly suggested that I use informal terms, even if he said to everyone: “Look, she speaks to me!” And I didn’t dare to put my foot in it. In my sentences, I ended up bypassing all the personal pronouns. »

Balancing acts

Is this “linguistic insecurity” a French evil? The term comes from Étienne Kern, who devoted a lovely essay* to this question teeming with literary and political anecdotes… English, which is an exception, has used, since the 17th century, a single pronoun, “you”, which, originally, corresponds to our vouvoiement. Spanish, Italian, German, Turkish, Hindi, Swedish, Greek… the majority of Indo-European languages ​​distinguish, like French, two personal pronouns of address, used on the basis of cultural and non-grammatical criteria. And among our direct European neighbors, young people’s interactions also tend towards less formality than in the past.

Generally speaking, the more the usage is codified, the less the speakers navigate in vagueness. Thus, in certain Asian languages ​​(Japanese, Korean, etc.), which nevertheless have more levels of deference, the rules are so strict that there is no hesitation. The use of one or the other pronoun permeates the relationship we have with the other. Becoming aware of it offers the possibility of playing with it. Joris, a final year student in a rural high school, made a surprising choice at the age of 17: “I decided to send you some friends. It gives a different tone to our relationships. We don’t say the same things to each other.” Isn’t this teenager’s experimentation – with a romantic scent – inspiring? And you, dear readers, what use do you make of familiarity?

* The you and the you, Ed. Flammarion, 208 p. ; €19.