LETTER FROM PARIS: To Tu Or Not To Tu
Harriss, Joseph A.
HE FRENCH REVEL IN THEIR COMPLICATIONS despite the frequent inconvenience of getting tangled in them. For one thing, it confirms their cherished impression that they are unique on earth, a...
...True, they made somewhat excessive use of the guillotine, but at leasttheydecreedthatallcitizens,beingequal,would henceforth use tu in addressing each other...
...To avoid this, many French firms, especially those in fields contaminated by American mores such as advertising and hi-tech, are tryingtoloosenupthestiffoldhierarchicalstructures bymakingthetutoiementpermissible,orevenobligatory, along with open-neck shirts and casual Friday...
...We have known each other for a quarter-century but we still use vous, although they use the familiar with other friends (but vous with their son...
...BUT THOSE SLY MANIPULATORS ofthespokenword, politicians,arethegreatestvirtuososofthetuvous conundrum...
...At one point he said tu to his minister of the interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, but vous to Dominique de Villepin, his prime minister, who in turn said vous to Sarkozy...
...It's more direct, affirmative and cordial," he explains...
...For one thing, it confirms their cherished impression that they are unique on earth, a blest condition known locally as the French Exception...
...That, of course, can only be a stopgap measure...
...For the lifeofme,Icouldn'trememberwhetherwehadpreviously used tu or vous...
...Make a mistake and you can become an instant boor, make an enemy, or create a more intimate relationship than you intended...
...As Duneton points out, "During intimate moments, the sudden change from vous to tu can deliciously increase eroticism...
...In some companies underlings use the respectful vous with their superiors, who themselves use the familiar--and condescending--tu with them...
...He draws us into a closer relationship than we want when trying to cover the Elysee Palace...
...Well, that obviously is the beginning of the weekend in a nation with a 35hourworkweek,soyourbestbetonFridayisjusttotry anewsidewalkcafe...
...Hemakesithardformeto keep him at the necessary distance to maintain journalistic objectivity," says one newsman at Le Monde...
...That's one of the charms of our language...
...National museums shut tight on Tuesday, though an indeterminate number of private ones might just be open.SchoolsareoutonWednesdaybutinsessionon Saturday, neatly blocking any plans parents may have for weekend trips...
...Thus contradictions and hypocrisy abound...
...Somepeopleareevencallingeachotherbytheirfirst names," he notes with a certain refined repugnance...
...Mais non...
...And Friday...
...Which recalls the old cartoon of two American tourists chatting in a Paris cafe...
...anywhere...
...All the while, the children have been using tu with her...
...This can take bizarre forms...
...As one French linguist, Claude Duneton, explains,"Allyouhavetogobyaremoreorlesschanging usages...
...As one sociologist explains the typicalsubservientFrenchattitudetowardthepowers thatbe,"Weusevouswiththepresidentbecausewe're actually still living in a monarchy and you have to respect the king...
...IT HAPPENED TO ME RECENTLY whenmyFrenchsisterin-law came for a visit after a long absence...
...One group that staunchly holds out against creepinglinguisticAmericanizationisthe20,000orsofamilies that belong to the former feudal aristocracy and today's haute bourgeoisie...
...Then there is the problem of what to call an unmarried woman...
...Paradoxically, the French say tu to God but vous to the boss...
...Take the normally simple question of automobile headlights...
...Thecomplexitiesrangefarbeyondmerevarieties of dairy products...
...Then, as a treat, she uses tu with them...
...JacquesSeguela,vicepresidentofabigParisadvertising firm, never uses any form but tu...
...For decades, French ones were not white, like everywhere else, but yellow...
...I know one family where Madame, proud bearer of "one of the best names in France," as she says, uses the distant vous with her children until they obtain their high school diploma...
...L E T T E RF R O MP A R I S 5 6 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 The American Spectator makes good reading...just about...
...Their main object in life is keeping up appearances and transmitting inheritances;theaffectedvousmeanseveryoneknows his place, stays within his own class, respects the hierarchy--andkeepseverybodyelseatarm'slength...
...Anyone with a rudimentary familiarity with French knows that the proper term, from time immemorial, is mademoiselle...
...Now if Frenchmen begin treating Sarkozyasacitizen-presidentinsteadofamonarch,we will know that France is indeed venturing into the terrain--itself complicated enough--of 21st-century democracy...
...It leads some to mutter darkly about pernicious foreign contagion...
...Visiting foreigners are also flummoxed by thelabyrinth of French closing days before learning that Thursdayisthebestdaytogetthingsdone.Anunpredictable number of shops are closed on Monday, depending,maybe,onwhethertheywereopenSaturday...
...Order your one-year subscription to The American Spectator today...
...Then France fell in line with worldwide standards and quietly switched to white...
...Here the second person pluJ O S E P HA .H A R R I S S ButofallthecomplicationsofFrenchlife, noneismoreperplexing--toforeigners andFrenchalike--thanwhentousethe familiartuorpolitevousformofaddress...
...It creates an atmosphere of complicity...
...This,despitelongbeingonfamilytermswiththelady...
...Just $39/year and the knowledge that you are among the many, the proud-an American Spectator...
...Complaining of today's "galloping tutoiement," Le Figaro attributes this sorry state of affairs to "the influence of Anglo-Saxon mannersandanegalitarianvisionofsociety...
...Jacques Chirac, while president, used the familiar with his longtimepolitical pals but they replied respectfully with vous...
...There is also the case of my good friends Jean-Pierre and Marie-Louise...
...It's enough to make one nostalgic for the proto-Taliban of the French Revolution...
...The yellow ones, it turned out, had been after all simply a gratuitous complication-althoughitdidhaveacertainuseasaxenophobictool that made foreigners, always suspect, easily identifiableatnight...
...Dignified chaps like members of the august French Academy say vous to each other while at the domed Institut de France, home of the Academie Francaise, even if they have known each other since childhood...
...There is no rationale to it, and the possible combinations of what form to use in which situation are infinite, depending on the moment at hand and your individual inclination...
...The law is no help, being tactfully unclear on that point, while traditionalist notary publics insist that official documents use mademoiselle for unmarried women, executives or not...
...Since becoming president, Sarkozy has become adept at manipulating journalists by using tu with them whether they like it or not, the equivalent of GeorgeBush'snicknames...
...I had to rely on increasingly gauchecircumlocutionuntilIcoulddiscreetlyquerymy wife about it...
...And then the most wonderful thing happened," one girl says dreamily to the other...
...Call 800-524-3469 or log onto www.spectator.orgjust about...
...Even Charles de Gaulle, who occasionally admitted to despising his compatriots as unworthy of his idea of France, asked in a moment of exasperation, "How can you govern a country with over 300 kinds of cheese...
...Buttheideaofusingthefamiliarformwithsomeoneolderorhigherplacedinthesocioeconomicpecking order disturbs France's old feudal reflexes...
...Much less blinding for oncoming cars," was the officialexplanationwhyforeignvisitorshadtoputyellow covers over their headlights at the border...
...He switched from the polite to the familiar...
...And in the office, linguistic confusion generally reigns as everyone tries to sort out how to address each other...
...Then they switch to tu once they doff their bicorne hats and step outside into the real world...
...I gave up long ago trying to arrive at a rational basis for our verbal relationship...
...There are no fixed rules for guidance...
...Onelinguist, JacquesDurand,observessadlythatthedisappearing vous is another bad sign of leveling in French society...
...ral among themselves is de rigueur...
...ButofallthecomplicationsofFrenchlife, none is more perplexing--to foreigners and Frenchalike--thanwhentousethefamiliartu or polite vous form of address...
...anywhere...
...Many single Frenchwomen, especially those in business or of a mature age, now consider that condescending or sexist.PerhapsborrowingapagefromtheirAmerican feminist sisters, they are adamant about being called madame...
...So that is what thebluestocking bourgeoisie has been up to...
...Especially charming, it seems, in certain situations...
...Alas, that good and useful rule fell by the wayside as the 19th-century bourgeoisie replaced the aristocracy and sought genteel status by using vous in clannish ways that only they could understand...
...The delicate, often embarrassing question of when to tutoyer a Frenchman is a problem fraught with social peril where one gingerly tiptoes on linguistic eggshells...
...Such pettifoggery is all very confusing, not to say annoying,forthoseofuswhoconsidersimplicity a virtue that lets us get on with more importantmatters...
...Still, it might be a good sign if ordinary citizens start using tu with him...
...But even in France there are sometimes other things to do, like working...
...That left most speakers of French insecure, with nothing to go onbutfallibleinstinctandfeel.Whentheycan'tfigure out which form to use, they have to fall back on turns of phrase, often awkward, that avoid addressing their interlocutor directly...
...Then there is the theater, where actresses are uniformly called madeL E T T E RF R O MP A R I S ToTuOrNotToTu 5 4 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 by Joseph A. Harriss T N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 5 5 moiselle,eveniftheyareiconslikeJeanneMoreauor Catherine Deneuve...
...Oh, I've never used tu with her husband andshewon'twithyou,sogowithvous,"camethereply...
...Joseph A. Harriss is a Paris-based American writer whose latest book isAboutFrance...
...Foranother,itmakeseverybodyelsejumpthrough Gallic hoops to do things their way...
...Among the members of the Communist and Socialist parties, the familiar form is obligatory,reflectingtrueMarxistcomradeship.With conservatives it's more complicated...
Vol. 40 • November 2007 • No. 9
