Thus, in the case of the lower classes, articulatory style is quite clearly part of a relation to the body that is dominated by the refusal of ‘airs and graces’ (i.e., the refusal of stylization and the imposition of form) and by the valorization of virility - one aspect of a more general disposition to appreciate what is ‘natural’. Labov is no doubt right when he ascribes the resistance of male speakers in New York to the imposition of the legitimate language to the fact that they associate the idea of virility with their way of speaking or, more precisely, their way of using the mouth and throat when speaking. In France, it is surely no accident that popular usage condenses the opposition between the bourgeois relation and the popular relation to language in the sexually over-determined opposition between two words for the mouth: la bouche, which is more closed, pinched, i.e. tense and censored, and therefore feminine, and la gueule, unashamedly wide open, as in ‘split’ (fendue, sefendre la gueule, ‘split oneself laughing’), i.e. relaxed and free, and therefore masculine.26 Bourgeois dispositions, as they are envisaged in the popular mind, and in their most caricatured, petit-bourgeois form, convey in their physical postures of tension and exertion (bouche fine, pincee, livres
pincees, serrees, du bout des livres, bouche en cul-de-poule - to be fastidious, supercilious, ‘tight-lipped’) the bodily indices of quite general dispositions towards the world and other people (and particularly, in the case of the mouth, towards food), such as haughtiness and disdain (faire la fine bouche, la petite bouche - to be fussy about food, difficult to please), and the conspicuous distance from the things of the body and those who are unable to mark that distance. La gueule, by contrast, is associated with the manly dispositions which, according to the popular ideal, are rooted in the calm certainty of strength which rules out censorships - prudence and deviousness as well as ‘airs and graces’ - and which make it possible to be ‘natural’ (la gueule is on the side of nature), to be ‘open’ and ‘outspoken’ (jouer franc-jeu, avoir son franc-parler) or simply to sulk (faire la gueule). It designates a capacity for verbal violence, identified with the sheer strength of the voice (fort en gueule, coup de gueule, grande gueule, engueuler, s'engueuler, gueul-er, aller gueuler - ‘loud-mouthed’, a ‘dressing-down’, ‘bawl’, ‘have a slanging match’, ‘mouth-off’). It also designates a capacity for the physical violence to which it alludes, especially in insults (casser la gueule, mon poing sur la gueule, ferme ta gueule - ‘smash your face in’, ‘a punch in the mouth’, ‘shut your face’), which, through the gueule, regarded both as the ‘seat’ of personal identity (bonne gueule, sale gueule - ‘nice guy’, ‘ugly mug’) and as its main means of expression (consider the meaning of ouvrir sa gueule, or I’ouvrir, as opposed to la fermer, la boucler, taire sa gueule, s’ecraser-* say one’s piece’, as opposed to ‘shut it’, ‘belt up’, ‘shut your mouth’, ‘pipe down’), aims at the very essence of the interlocutor’s social identity and self-image. Applying the same ‘intention’ to the site of food intake and the site of speech output, the popular vision, which has a clear grasp of the unity of habitus and bodily hexis, also associates la gueule with the frank acceptance (s’en foutre plein la gueule, se rincer la gueule - stuffing oneself with food and drink) and frank manifestation (sefendre la gueule) of elementary pleasure.27
On the one hand, domesticated language, censorship made natural, which proscribes ‘gross’ remarks, ‘coarse’ jokes and ‘thick’ accents, goes hand in hand with the domestication of the body which excludes all excessive manifestations of appetites or feelings (exclamations as much as tears or sweeping gestures), and which subjects the body to all kinds of discipline and censorship aimed at denaturalizing it. On the other hand, the ‘relaxation of articulatory tension’, which leads, as Bernard Laks has pointed out, to the dropping of the final ‘r’ and ‘1’ (and which is probably not so much an
