INTERVIEW:- In his new essay. the language of love a normal linguist dissects the lexicon of love, from meeting to breaking up. Educated and funny.
Miss Figaro. – Even in a digitized society, how do words still matter when we love?
Julie Neveu. – We cannot do without words. They build love stories, they literally make them exist. Love is the feeling that most begs to be shared, and that’s okay, words are available to everyone. They are the first and last means of entering or exiting a love story, the cement at the beginning when a relationship is being built, and the disturbing element when the two partners of a couple no longer speak the same language. But if words are necessary to clarify what we feel, sometimes they deceive us.
In what sense can they fall in love with us?
Language is a cultural code that we inherit. We believe it suits us because we have mastered it to a functional degree, but we are suspicious of it and can fall into pitfalls. Words shape our imaginations as well as our frustrations. We say “We’re made for each other” and forever rule out that it won’t work out. Romance always makes us tickle, we all want to live in romantic stories, but cliché formulas can also make us suffer; Promises of eternity at the beginning, like “we need to talk” at the end, are often stereotypes that we have. don’t really realize they don’t fit our needs. But they tell the future of the couple.
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Your essay evokes four stages of romantic relationships: love-fantasy, love-fusion, love-possession, and frozen love. What, then, is the role of speech in the beginning of love?
There is almost a “mandatory” course in love stories. All people who experience intense love yearn for eternity in a loving relationship. Language translates this desire. “I will always love you”, “I will always be yours”. In the same way, people who tattoo the name of a loved one on their body respond to the need to make this loving and intimate act visible. The diminutives addressed to the beloved confirm the uniqueness of this relationship, as well as the creation of a language specific to the couple. Some metaphors, such as the sun metaphor, “You are the sunshine of my life,” translate the cosmic upheaval when a person loves.
However, in most cases, the power of words fades as the relationship develops…
At the beginning of a relationship, temporal adverbs such as “again” or “always” indicate a desire for eternity. After a few years, they may express fatigue from returning to the same routine. “You’re still complaining” “You’re still negative” Language is one of the energies we can mobilize to nurture our feelings, but sometimes we no longer have the strength or desire to produce truly loving words. By the end of the story, the pattern may seem to be repeating itself, and “you’re suffocating” or “you need air” to use a common organic metaphor. But it is also the language that can save the couple, if the partners manage to find a real conversation without resorting to ready formulas. So they rekindle their love affair.
Generally, it is women who will put words on marital problems.
Julie Neveux, linguist
As you mention, moreover, the “expressive charge” is carried more by women. What is it about?
In general, they are the ones who will put words on the problems of the couple and put them on the carpet: where are we? Are we happy together? What are the expectations of each other? Studies show that the “expressive burden” of heterosexual couples is still largely borne by women. In other words, it is women, putting aside for a moment all the peripheral aspects of the couple, for which they are often responsible anyway, who refocus on its metaphysics and try to (re)interpret it.
Source: Le Figaro
