That phrase sounds sweetly in the ears of a great many American
women; and indeed, it has the ring
of dignity for the rest of us as well, after these past years of extreme
incivility towards our current President.
Now, in English, purely for linguistic reasons, there is no
controversy at all about that phrase.
But French has grammatical and (sometimes
-- but only sometimes) morphological gender, and has for many decades
had to ponder, how to revise their language, to keep up with the times. Fortunately, France has long had an
august intellectual body, the Académie
française, to whom linguistic matters have long been entrusted -- although
their advice is often not followed. Sometimes a new word is coined, sometimes
not (you do not, last I checked, say écrivaine
or docteuse); you have to pick your way along, case
by case.
But now things get dicey; for France, under a Socialist government, has been suffering
a frenzy of political-correctness in recent years. Thus one elected political representative, dutifully
following the Academic guidance, fell prey to the harpies, and incurred legal
sanctions; damned if you
do and damned if you don’t:
Le député UMP Julien Aubert a été
sanctionné financièrement après avoir appelé la présidente de séance à
l'Assemblée nationale «Madame le
président». Pour Lydia Guirous, cette affaire discrédite une nouvelle fois
le féminisme de gauche.
La socialiste Sandrine Mazetier,
Présidente de séance lui demandait de respecter la présidence et le règlement
de l'Assemblée en l'appelant «Madame LA présidente», Aubert répondait qu'il ne
faisait que suivre «l'Académie française» en disant «Madame le président».
 |
| Les députées censeuses sévissent |
For a glimpse of the linguistic deliberations, try these:
.
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