The French complain about the noise. Roosters, cicadas, frogs, bells and even their colleagues. A few years ago, a survey revealed that
“three out of five workers experience noise all day long in their workplace”
. This surely couldn't have worked out. And yet, as soon as there is silence, the French are always the first to fill it by stirring up wind.
Let's listen instead:
"So, are you coming this afternoon?" "
,
"Basically, I actually agreed... but there is still a strike..."
,
"I admit, it's always the same. Don't worry, there's no problem! »
This dialogue is somewhat caricatured, let's admit it, but it shows those we no longer hear: the tics of language.
“In short”
,
“there you go”
,
“in mode”
… Oddly enough, if everyone finds them unbearable, everyone uses them despite everything.
A sign that they would be useful? These words are not wrong in themselves. We also find them in the greatest writers, from Flaubert's correspondence to
Zola's
Le Ventre de Paris .
“So he went back to bed,”
we read, for example. There may be a certain melody, a music that emerges from these consonants. The tic then provides a rhythm to his sentence; it is a sort of refrain without a song. We are stubborn about it. The proof, we repeat. The tic is a knock.
Other times, other tics
This is the parrot effect or what we call
“psittacism”
in linguistics, that is to say the fact of repeating something like a parrot while reasoning without understanding the meaning of the words that we use. . Those who suffer from it reproduce what they hear without thinking about it. So, the tic is a way of proving to your interlocutor that you are listening, even to the point that you end up imitating them. We take his words.
" You see ? »
, said one.
“I see
,” replies the other.
The tic becomes a form of code or means of recognition. A few decades ago, we kept saying
“it’s bad”
,
“it’s fed up!” »
,
“it’s dar! "
, we begin our sentences with a
"bah"
or a
"ben"
, we suck up our
"yes"
and we conclude our remarks with
"you know"
and
"there you go"
. Other times, other tics. Enough to think that with all these manias, we ultimately become less parrot than sheep...
Finally, perhaps the tic reassures the person who is infatuated with it. And we know how stressed and anxious the French are! The tic fills a void, the silence of someone who no longer knows what to say or how to say it. It's a way to save time... But not words. And here's where the problem lies. It is not so much the expression that offends as its repetition. We have all noticed one day that there was one
“so”
or one
“actually”
too many to the point of being unable to remember anything other than the tic. Holy parasite!
The Guide to 100 language tics, by Sarah Belmont, is therefore a perfect little book to avoid contaminating the French language. To share without moderation !