Thou and ye: a collocational-phraseological approach to pronoun change in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.(LINGUISTICS)

Publication: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies

Publication Date: 01-JAN-06

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Adam Mickiewicz University

ABSTRACT

Chaucer's use of the singular or plural form of the second person pronoun to address a single person in his Canterbury Tales usually follows the established standards of his time. However, some ninety instances of pronoun switching do occur, and explanations drawing on pragmatic parameters, rhyme and textual corruption have not been able to explain all of these deviations. Complementary to these approaches, this paper offers a novel explanatory hypothesis. The "collocational-phraseological hypothesis" suggested here takes into account the force of the syntagmatic relationship of words. On the basis of an original electronic compilation of all instances of pronoun switches in the Canterbury Tales and a classification according to three main types, we argue that frequently and/or habitually used lexical combinations (collocations, formulae, quotations) can account for a significant number of the cases in question.

1. Introduction

Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the use of the second person plural pronoun to address a single person was generally determined by sociopragmatic conditions such as status and social distance (cf. Finkenstaedt 1963: 73-74; Burnley 2003). Chaucer's literary use of the personal pronouns thou and ye (henceforth: T and Y; including inflected forms) usually accords well with the practices of the time. Skeat's (1894: 175) assessment of that general practice has basically remained unchallenged: Y was reserved for the address of a servant to the lord, for compliment, to express honour, submission or entreaty. However, it has also been noted for a long time that sudden changes of the pronouns in the conversation of the same pair of speaker and listener do indeed occur in Chaucer's works. The Canterbury Tales, on which this paper concentrates, show a considerable number of such cases. (1) The following example from a speech by the yeoman to the summoner in Friar's Tale (1397-1402) is an illustration of the change in question. It shows a single deviation from the singular (thyn etc.) to the plural (vow) in verse (1399): (2)

1) I am unknowen as in this contree; Of thyn aqueyntance I wolde praye thee, And eek of bretherhede, if that yow leste. I have gold and silver in my cheste; If that thee happe to comen in oure shire, Al shal be thyn, right as thou wolt desire. [I am not known in this country; I wish to ask you of your acquaintance and also of sworn brotherhood, if you wish. I have gold and silver in my chest; If you happen to come to our shire, all shall be yours, just as you wish.]

Striking deviations from the norm such as this one seem at first sight to be rather irregular and arbitrary. What complicates the picture is that next to single deviations such as in (1), complete changes of the paradigm or utterly irregular switchings in both directions can be found. Scholarship has so far mainly concentrated on affective-situational or other pragmatic explanations to account for all these changes. In particular, developments in the attitude of the speaker towards the addressee in the course of the text have repeatedly been claimed as the motivating factor for the changes. Demands of rhyme or textual corruption can be held responsible in a few cases; and from time to time reference to "formulaic phrases" has been made. Section 2 of our paper is a brief review of earlier approaches which shows that these explanations fall short of accounting for all of the instances of pronoun change.

We suggest that the syntagmatic relationship of words had an impact on the choice of the pronouns of address. In particular, we argue that frequently and/or habitually used lexical combinations could influence the choice regardless of micro- or macropragmatic considerations. It will be shown that this line of investigation, which we call the "collocational-phraseological hypothesis" and which will be more fully introduced in section 3, can usefully complement pragmatic explanations. Our investigation rests on a consideration of all changes of pronoun of address in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which are systematicized and catalogued in section 4. (3) Cases where the collocational-phraseological force was paramount in the choice of the pronoun of address are discussed in section 5. In the concluding part we give a general account of the explanatory power of our hypothesis for the cases studied and discuss some implications of our results.

2. Earlier approaches to pronoun change in Chaucer

The striking switching between formal and informal pronouns of address for a single person has become something of a brain-teaser for linguistic Chaucer research. Of course, scholars working on this topic assume that there is indeed a proper solution to the problem and that Chaucer did not alternate between the forms at random. Agreeing with Blake who states that "we cannot be certain that all these switches are significant" (1992: 539) at all would mean to admit to the inadequacy of the explanatory power of linguistics. More than a dozen studies on the pronoun changes in the Canterbury Tales show that the question is not deemed to be settled. In the recent past some extensive studies have been presented which put forward new and interesting suggestions. (4) The following explanation patterns have been brought forward.

First, a rather technical matter which is pointed out in Nathan (1956: 41-42) must not be ignored (cf. also Koziol 1943: 174; Kerkhof 1982: 228). Our text, that is the electronic Robinson (1957) and the printed Benson (1988) version, may contain scribal errors. Nathan has suggested this explanation for example (1), where Benson's reading draws on Ms. Hengwrt, while other manuscripts--as well as the second edition of the Caxton print, which is believed to be based on a good manuscript--stick to T. Some of the supposed changes may in fact be due to scribal variation; these are questions for textual critics. But Nathan's plea seems to be inspired by the attempt to vindicate Chaucer and to discuss away supposed "errors" (1956: 42: "a slip of Chaucer's pen"; but see Jucker--Taavitsainen 2003: 12; Jucker 2006: 58).

In other cases, a less controversial explanation presents itself. Where a pronoun stands at the end of a line the demands of rhyme can account for a pronoun change (cf. Shimonomoto 2001: 44-45; Karpf 1930: 43, 45). In cases such as Nun's Priest's Tale (3351) metrical demands seem to be a fairly plausible explanation for the change (3350-3352):

2) Why ne hadde I now thy sentence and thy loore, The Friday for to chide, as diden ye? For on a Friday, soothly, slayn was he. [Why did I then not have your judgement and your learning to scold the Friday, as you did? For on a Friday, it is true, he was murdered.]

Pragmatic explanations have been the focus of attention (cf. Burnley 1983: 1922; Honegger 2003; Mazzon 2000; Shimonomoto 2001). Adopting from Hope (1993) the distinction between macro- and micropragmatics, we can describe as macropragmatically based those changes where the social relationship between speaker and addressee changes in the course of the text (comparable to the power semantics in Brown--Gilman's seminal article). (5) This may account for the conversion to Y in Wife of Bath's Tale (1088), where the olde wyf addresses her husband after their marriage (cf. Shimonomoto 2001: 36; Kerkhof 1982: 229). The micropragmatic explanation, though, is more relevant. Here the immediate linguistic and non-linguistic factors of a conversation are concerned. Friar's Tale (1584-1623), where a summoner pesters an old widow to give him money, is a good example. She uses the formal Y-pronoun towards him. As the summoner becomes more and more obtrusive and confronts her with outrageous and completely made-up accusations (1616), the widow loses her patience in (1618) (cf. Nathan 1956: 40; Shimonomoto 2001:11-12; Jucker 2006: 68):

3) "Thou lixt!" quod she, "by my savacioun ... ["You are lying!" she said, "by my salvation ...]

These changes have alternatively been viewed as affective, emotional, emotive, expressive or situational (cf. Becker 2003: 163), and also interactional (cf. Jucker 2006). Virtually all scholars refer to the (micro-)pragmatic level in trying to make changes of the emotional attitude between speaker and addressee plausible.

Given the social dimension of address there is no doubt as to the applicability of pragmatics in dealing with pronoun changes. The explanations given so far are nonetheless not always satisfactory. Pragmatists have not been able to explain all changes convincingly, as Mazzon concedes: "of course, it is difficult to justify all switches pragmatically in any precise way, especially given the distance in time and Weltanschauung that separates us from this work" (2000: 139-140). Shimonomoto concludes her chapter on pronoun changes with the observation that "[w]e should admit there are still a few uncertainties concerning Chaucer's use of ye and thou" (2001: 45). Where no pragmatic explanation is evident, sometimes complex inferences about the socio-cultural background and the speakers' intentions are made. Honegger (2003), for instance, shows that sometimes many factors have to be taken into consideration in order to suggest an explanation. This is particularly evident in his reconstruction of the reasons for Palamon's "confuse" switching in his address to Venus (cf. Honegger 2003: 68-69, 75-78). However, for the reasons mentioned before we have to be aware at all times of Finkenstaedt's warning of a "Beugung des Textes oder uberspitzt raffinierte[n] Deutungen" [distortion of the text or...

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