Proverbes et contes populaires : le sexe de l’hyperénonciateur

Abstract

The « hyperenunciator » (Maingueneau 2004) is an abstract being, the source of a viewpoint that guarantees the validity of a Thesaurus of utterances shared by the members of a community. This article aims to enrich this concept from an ethnolinguistic perspective. It compares the hyperenunciators of two distinct kinds of Thesaurus, proverbs and folk tales, via a reflection on their gender identity. Drawing on old Spanish proverbs about women, the « Tales of Mother Goose » by Charles Perrault and the Grimm brothers’ Fairy Tales, I will underline that domestic space plays a key role in this subject, that an « eco-nomy of speech » places gossip, on one hand, and proverbs and folk tales, on the other, in opposition and that there is the desire to distinguish in women’s speech between what is considered to be positive and what is considered dangerous for the house.

Keywords

• ethnolinguistics
• enunciation
• hyperenunciator
• proverb
• folk tale
• gossiping