Phonographie: la représentation écrite de l'oral en français by Rudolf Mahrer (review)

Mahrer's monograph, part of the collection Études de linguistique française, represents one of the few, if not the only, comprehensive works interrogating the connection between representations of spoken and written French. In this book, decidedly written for an academic audience familiar with linguistic and, especially, semantic theory, the author attends to a series of historical and present-day conceptualizations concerning the ways in which spoken French (i.e., the language as it is lived out through aural and oral communicative acts) is represented on the page, with particular focus on literary works. Mahrer distinguishes between three typologies of such representations: "la phonographie,"roughly akin to the representation of phonological patterns—normative or otherwise—using orthographic conventions; "la sémantique métalangagière," referring to means by which additional graphic and orthographic commentary or metalinguistic practices are co-opted to provide information about spoken patterns; and "la sollicitation prosodique," which relies upon the conceptualization of melody, rhythm, prosody, and related phenomena. After introductory sections, three comprehensive chapters are dedicated to each of these, comprising sections integrating theory and reviewing historical underpinnings, as well as their interpretations and applications. The overarching goal of the work thus far surpasses the straightforward description of how spoken French is represented on the page, but instead articulates a multifaceted interpretation and conceptualization of semiotic practices as they are manifested in literature. In this regard, Mahrer's work is as ambitious as it is singular: not only does he call upon a century of properly linguistic thought on the matter, citing widely-known (e.g., Saussure, Benveniste) and relatively unfamiliar thinkers, he incorporates discussion of the subject dating back much further, with a clear predilection for established literature and the European Francophone canon. The book is certainly well-organized and achieves a high level of academic style, but is ultimately undermined by its (at times seemingly superfluous) complex structure and rhetoric, not to mention the weightiness of the subject matter and the author's polyvalent approach to it. Indeed, even seasoned linguists will find it difficult to follow much of Mahrer's argumentation and proposals, taken as they are from a wide swath of theory and practice, often with little convincing connection. Beyond this, many of the author's descriptions and analyses are as confused as they are confusingly articulated: it is a dense, often opaque volume that, while asking interesting questions and certainly grounded in a tremendous depth of knowledge, does not make a clear case for its own rhetoric or conclusions. And although the primary topic is attended to, frequent diversions into seemingly unrelated areas and abstractions—which could be related or clarified, perhaps necessitating a selection between different modalities or their separating into stand-alone monographs—deter from the overall impact of the work. Summarily, this ambitious undertaking is frequently lost in itself: it may prove to be useful to a narrow cadre, but the majority of French linguists and language scholars are likely to find little of interest, not to mention a great deal of frustration, when engaging with the volume.