In his time, the great Italian semiologist Umberto Eco recommended that everyone lead the semiological guerrilla war: to resist the permanent flood carried by the media by exercising our critical mind. Fifty years later, this program is more true than ever since the emitting sources have multiplied and for some time now they have become at times very authoritarian.
We have become real mediators, forced to constantly react to all kinds of things, when sometimes we would like to remain pure observers. Even people who are very indifferent to certain controversies.
Let us take the pronoun “iel” recently chosen by Le Robert (in its online version) as one of the innovations of the year, and therefore a candidate for the dictionary. We are called upon to be for or against. Let’s start by setting the limit of our right of reply. Personally, I would see it this way: yes, to recognize to anyone who claims it the right to use it. No, to be forced to do it myself. I want its use to remain optional and I ask for a moratorium: the time to observe whether the term enters into use or if, on the contrary, it passes quickly enough to the oblivion of history.
In my eyes, it is a matter of the very nature of language, which stems from an organic, natural, sometimes wild growth. Regarding him, any form of coercion comes under what George Orwell denounced with his concept of new speak. Let us beware of anyone who comes to tell us: henceforth you must say this and not that. “He” can in certain cases relate to this symbolic violence and it should not be that an employer or a professor can be accused one day of disrespecting a fluid person. Note that we are not there yet: until further information is provided, no newspeak ministry has yet been created in our country, even if militant logics are at work there.
Let’s take the opportunity to venture down the path of zany by noting that the pronoun “iel”, association of “he” and “she”, is a portmanteau because this last term deserves the detour. Supposed to make the expression « portmanteau word »invented by Lewis Caroll, the father ofAlice in Wonderland, it was not kept in its original language, ours. I often think of the person who decided to say “mot-valise”, in other words to translate from French (coat rack) by French (suitcase)… An academic? an administrative? a leatherworker? In any case, not at all a visual or poetic spirit …
It is probable that, from this blunder, the word has drifted. Today, when we speak of a “portmanteau”, we must understand that a term has become a catch-all in which many notions are mixed. Very far from the first idea of a beautiful coalescence between two very precise metaphors.
Rataconniculate, laughed Rabelais. Pratouillotism got angry at Rimbaud… In our time, where central concepts are indeed big catch-all – transition, secularism, gender, civilization -, it proves to us that we have not lost any of our sense of the coat rack, but that the suitcase is otherwise well loaded. In it is a big bazar semantics that we have to clarify urgently, without wasting too much time in picrocholines disputes.
To do this, it must be borne in mind that the dictionary is often a fictionary. Even though some call it « bible », it is far from containing the revealed truth. Every dictionary is narrative. He tells human stories in his own way and shows very ideological decisions. I recently realized, for example, that the word “manly” should be written, including in the masculine, with an e because it is epicene – like magnificent, fragile, narcissistic.
Virility is not etymologically gendered and therefore applies to both women and men. Having reserved it only for these gentlemen requires reparation, but from my point of view, symbolic and playful reparation. Far from any inscription in the law of the language. Do not ask the Academy to add an e with a surgical transplant! Let us keep in mind, however, that this philological fact took place in the 17th century.e century, when a Sun King, martial and virilist reigned, and let us make sure that these characteristics do not appear too much in our democratic debate.
Our luck is not to be on the academic side of the language. We can look at the situation from a distance. And make assumptions. Mine is this: I think that the neutral pronoun “iel” is not going to stay, and that, very quickly, we are going to make a noun. Suddenly, very likely that the grammatical gender will come back through the window after being kicked out the door, because French is very structured by the male-female duo. I can clearly see in a year or two coming “an iel” or “an ielle” depending on whether we are talking about the person or the individual. To be continued then… Let us become attentive to the occurrences of iel. Let’s go semiological fishing.
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