Итог полностью

Sayings containing the magical epithet 'popular' are shielded from scrutiny by the fact that any critical analysis of a notion which bears closely or remotely on 'the people’ is apt to be identified immediately as a symbolic aggression against the reality designated - and thus immediately castigated by all those who feel duty bound to defend 'the people', thereby enjoying the profits that the defence of ‘good causes' can bring.¹ Equally, the notion of ‘popular speech’, like all the sayings from the same family (‘popular culture', ‘popular art', ‘popular religion', etc.), is defined only in relational terms, as the set of things which are excluded from the legitimate language by, among other things, the durable effect of inculcation and imposition together with the sanctions implemented by the educational system.

As the dictionaries of slang and ‘unconventional language' clearly show, what is called ‘popular’ or 'colloquial' vocabulary is nothing other than the set of words which are excluded from dictionaries of the legitimate language or which only appear in them with negative ‘labels of use': fam., familiar, ‘i.e. common in ordinary spoken language and in rather free written language’, pop., popular, 'i.e. common in urban working-class areas, but disapproved of or avoided by the cultivated bourgeoisie as a whole'.² To define thoroughly this ‘unconventional’ or ‘popular’ language - which would be more fruitfully described as pop., to remind us of its social conditions of production - one would have to specify what comes under the heading 'working-class areas’ (milieux populaires) and what one understands by ‘common’ usage.

Like elastic concepts such as ‘the working classes’, ‘the people’ or ‘the workers', which owe their political virtues to the fact that one can extend the referent at will to include (during election lime, for

instance) peasants, managers and small businessmen, or, conversely, limit it to industrial workers only, or even just steelworkers (and their appointed representatives), the indeterminately extensive notion of ‘working-class areas’ owes its mystifying virtues, in the sphere of scholarly production, to the fact that, as in a psychological projection, everyone can unconsciously manipulate its extension in order to adjust it to their interests, prejudices or social fantasies. Thus, when it comes to designating the speakers of ‘popular speech’, there is a general tendency to think of the ‘underworld’, in keeping with the idea that ‘tough guys’ play a determinant role in the production and circulation of slang. Also certain to be included are the workers who live in the old urban centres, and who are brought almost automatically to mind by the word ‘popular’, while peasants are likely to be rejected without further consideration (no doubt because they are doomed to what the dictionaries classify as region., i.e. regional speech). But there is no question - and that is one of the most precious functions of these catch-all notions - of whether small shopkeepers should be excluded, and notably the bistrot owners, who are undoubtedly excluded by the populist imagination even though, in culture and in speech, they are unquestionably closer to manual workers than to salaried employees. And it is in any case certain that the fantasy, nourished more by the films of Carne than by careful observation, which generally turns the folk memories of nostalgic class fugitives towards the ‘purest’ and most ‘authentic’ representatives of the ‘people’, excludes without a second thought all immigrants, whether Spanish or Portuguese, Algerian or Moroccan, Malian or Senegalese, who we know occupy a larger place in the population of industrial workers than they do in the proletarian imagination.³

A parallel examination of the populations which are supposed to produce or consume what is called ‘popular culture’ would serve to highlight once again the confusion in the partial coherence which almost always underlies implicit definitions. In this case, the ‘underworld’, which was supposed to play a central role in shaping ‘popular speech’, would be excluded, as would the Lumpenproletariat, whereas the exclusion of peasants would not be automatic, although difficulties do arise when attempting to put peasants and workers in the same category. In the case of ‘popular art’ - as an examination of that other objectification of the ‘popular’, the ‘Museums of Art and Popular Culture’, would show - it seems that, until recently, ‘the people’ meant only peasants and rural craftsmen. And what is one to make of ‘popular medicine’ and ‘popular religion’? In such cases,

peasants are as indispensable as ‘tough guys’ are in the case of popular speech.