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 Coming of Age
in U.S. High Schools
Economic, Kinship, Religious,
and Political Crosscurrents
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 Coining of Age
in U.S. High Schools
Economic, Kinship, Religious,
and Political Crosscurrents

Annette B. Hemmings
University of Cincinnati

LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS

2004 Mahwah, New Jersey London
Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or
any other means, without prior written permission of the
publisher.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers

10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersev 07430

Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hemmings, Annette B.
Coming of age in U.S. high schools : economic, kinship,
religious, and political crosscurrents / Annette B.
Hemmings.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-4666-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8058-4667-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
High school seniors—United States—Social conditions—Case
studies. 2. High schools—United States—Sociological
aspects—Case studies. #. Educational anthropology—
United States—Case studies. I. Title.

LC205.H462004
373.18'0973—dc22 2003049328
Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed
on acid-free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength
and durability.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my first teacher, fellow traveler,
dear friend, and mother,
Gloria Alban Biederwolf
This page intentionally left blank
 Contents

Preface xi

1 New Age for Coming of Age 1

(Post)Anthropology 3
Framework for Study 5
Identity Formation 6
Community Integration 8
Fieldwork 12
Site Selection 12
Data Collection 13
Reflexivity and Literary Tropes 16

2 Surface Depths 18
Jefferson High 19
JHS Corridors 20
JHS Classrooms 23
Ridgewood High 24
RHS Corridors 26
RHS Classrooms 30
Central City High 31
CCH Corridors 33
CCH Classrooms 37

3 Economic Domain: Il/licit Pursuit of Mobility 39

Discourses of Money and Occupational
Gratification 39
The Economic Self 40
vii
 CONTENTS

Dominant Currencies 42
Hard Work Through Least Resistance 42
Dominant Divisions of Labor 47
Occupational Tracking 51
Upper Tracks 51
Vocational Tracks 53
Liminal Prospects 58
Technological Screen Age 59
Equalizing Equal Opportunity 62
Women's Work 65
Fast Money, Instant Gratification 70
The Underground Economy 70
Hustlers' Guise 72

4 Kinship Domain: Family (Dis)connections 76

Family Traditions 77
The Familial/Sexual Self 79
Family Life in the Public (Re)making 81
Local Family Worldviews 84
Prescriptive Intent 84
"Good" Family Connections 85
In Defense of'the "True" Self 89
Education for Families' Sake 91
Curriculum of Sociallvj
Efficient Familvj
Management 92
Dysfunctional Family Treatments 95
Therapy for Better Family Functioning 97
Popularity of Popular Sex 100
Gender Antagonisms 102
Teenage Parent Power 102
Sexual Politics 104
Family Among Friends 106

5 Religious Domain: Freedom of/From Religion 111

Theological Discourse 112
The Religious Self 113
Holding the Mainlines 115
Protestant (S)elect 115
Catholic Compliance 119
Jewish Adaptations 121
Liminal Religious Movements 123
CONTENTS

Secular Tide 123

Attractions of the New/Ancient Age 124
Keeping Faith With(in) Ethnic and Racial
Communities 126
Ethnic Havens of Hope 126
Harbors of Racial Upliftment 129
Localized Family/Religious Faith 132
Sacrilege of the Sacred 134
Faith in Schools 135
Classroom Religious Voids 135
Corridor Netherworlds and Sanctuaries 137

6 Political Domain: Democracy and Domination 142

The Political Self 142
Dominant Ideo(logical) Leanings 144
Cause for Interest in Political Movements 150
Common Cause to Special Interests 150
Rebels Without Good Cause 152
Local Family Interests 155
Democratic Education 157
Pedagogical Legacies 157
Politically Explicit/Implicit Lessons 159
Domination and Everyday School Politics 162
Ecology of Games 163
Classroom Politics: Winning Losing Wars 164
Corridor Politics: (Re)gaining Recognition 167
Respectability and Reputation 168
Manipulating the Mark 173

7 Reaching Shore 176

Particular Answers to a Perennial Question 176
Working Through Crosscurrents 176
School Transmission and Construction Sites 179
Reflexive Look Back 182

Endnotes 187
References 193
Appendix 203
Author Index 205
Subject Index 209
This page intentionally left blank
 Preface

There has been a succession of reports and research on U.S. public high
schools that are largely concerned with issues and problems related to aca-
demic achievement. In my own prior research, I was especially interested
in how high-achieving Black students formed academic identities and
were poised to "do" or "not do" the academic work assigned to them
(Hemmings, 1996, 1998). But whenever I entered the field, I was struck
by the observation that high schools and the teenagers who attended
them were involved in much more extensive cultural work. Academic
achievement was important, but it was not necessarily a primary concern
of adolescent students who were struggling hard to come of age in high
schools that have been historically established to ease their passages to
adulthood in the broadest, most comprehensive cultural sense.
I also noticed how adolescent passages were complicated by the fact
that there is not and never will be a common, shared American culture.
Culture in the United States is a dynamic seascape with a myriad of cross-
currents comprised of conflicting discourses and practices that can cause
terrible confusion for, or open up creative possibilities to, teenagers. These
crosscurrents converge in high schools, where students' cultural
navigations may be fairly smooth or extremely treacherous. Such observa-
tions were not lost on anthropologists during the first half of the 20th cen-
tury, but they have been overlooked in recent decades, especially among
school ethnographers who are rendering culture into bounded systems or
binary oppositions in studies that focus rather narrowly on differentiated
patterns of academic achievement.

XI
xii PREFACE

At the outset of the 21 st century, it struck me as critically important to

refocus high school research in ways that capture the actual nature and
complexities of adolescent coming-of-age processes. Research of this kind
is crucial for educational researchers, graduate students, policymakers,
teacher candidates, and in-service practitioners, who seem more per-
plexed then ever about how to address the perennial educational question
of what high schools in the United States ought to be doing to enrich indi-
vidual human potential and allow young people, regardless of their back-
grounds, to achieve a good life. This question imbues the larger purpose of
the ethnographic research presented in this book. The more specific aim
of the study was to describe and analyze how 10 graduating seniors, their
friends, and many of their classmates came of age in three urban and sub-
urban U.S. public high schools. The seniors who volunteered to serve as
research participants included Black inner-city teenagers, White work-
ing-class youths, affluent middle-class suburbanites, a Mexican American
girl, an Asian American boy, Christians, Jews, Muslims, mothers, moth-
ers-to-be, gays, and lesbians. They attended Jefferson High, a racially de-
segregated school; Ridgewood High, a predominantly White,
middle-class school; and Central City High, a school in an impoverished
Black urban neighborhood.
Coming of age is conceived as a two-pronged process of identity forma-
tion and community integration. Identity formation is psychocultural
work where adolescents attempt to form and situate a multifaceted en-
during or "true" self. Community integration involves the particular stra-
tegic adaptations adolescents make as they navigate conflicting
discourses and practices in multilayered cultural crosscurrents flowing
through economic, kinship, religious, and political domains of American
life. Among these currents are dominant culture, liminal trends, popular
culture, undertows, ethnic tributaries, local family worlds, and youth cul-
tures and sub-cultures.
This framework reacknowledges anthropological precedents while rec-
ognizing more contemporary (post)anthropological trends. It also
forefronts the voices and observed experiences of the graduating seniors
who participated in the research. I found that the stories these students told
about how they formed a true self and pursued a good life in the particular
contexts of their high schools provided extremely insightful, sometimes dis-
turbing commentaries on the American cultural seascape. Although, all of
them managed to reach the shores of adulthood, many of their passages
through the crosscurrents flowing through their schools were marked by
tragic setbacks, heroic comebacks, and triumphant endings.
Chapter 1 sets the stage for the study. It includes an overview of anthro-
pological precedents and (post)anthropological perspectives on adoles-
cent coming-of-age processes. This section is followed by a more detailed
PREFACE xiii

discussion of the study's conceptual framework. The chapter also in-

cludes sections on fieldwork methodology, reflexivity, and literary tropes.
General impressions of school life are presented in chapter 2 as con-
textual surfaces for more in-depth explorations of how graduating se-
niors came of age in the three high schools. The 10 seniors who served
as key participants are introduced as they guided me through corridors
and classrooms.
The next four chapters delve into how seniors viewed and navigated
crosscurrents as they came of age in economic, kinship, religious, and po-
litical community domains. Each of these chapters includes a description
of the facets of the enduring self that constituted the core of seniors' iden-
tity work. They are otherwise organized into analytical descriptions of
crosscurrents in the four community domains and how teachers and
school staff facilitated, and students experienced, coming of age within
the contexts of their schools.
Cultural crosscurrents are summarized in chapter 7 as part of a general
overview of how coming of age unfolded in the high schools, as well as
how each school sought particular answers to the perennial educational
question. The last section provides a reflexive look back at how graduating
seniors accomplished what in the final analysis was truly remarkable iden-
tity and integration work in U.S. public high schools.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I acknowledge with deep appreciation the help and support of high school
contacts, reviewers, mentors, and family members. I thank Lynn Kitchen,
Nikela Owens, and Lea Brinker for helping me to gain entree into, and re-
cruiting such wonderful student participants within, the three high school
sites. Your genuine concern for students and their welfare was truly inspir-
ing and an impetus for the study.
I am grateful for the incisive feedback that Reba Page and Pamela Bettis
provided on the early drafts of the book manuscript. Having such intelli-
gent, busy scholars devote that kind of time and effort to my work is more
than I could ever expect, much less reciprocate. I also appreciate the assis-
tance I received from Naomi Silverman, her assistant, Erica Kica, and
other members of the editorial staff at Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Your
masterful diplomacy in the negotiation of substantive revisions was
grand. Patricia Ferenbach deserves the highest praise for the fabulous
copy-editing, and Debbie Ruel, LEA Production Editor, for typesetting
and final production of the book. And I thank Dawn Bellinger, who as my
graduate student assistant handled my correspondence, proofread and
critiqued manuscripts, and made sure that I was up to speed on the latest
trends in the literature.
xiv PREFACE

I also would like to acknowledge the guidance of my graduate school men-

tors especially Mary Metz, my major advisor, and George and Louise
Spindler. Mary taught me about the value and methods of "doing" qualita-
tive research in secondary schools. I would not be the scholar that I am with-
out her wise counsel and supreme example. The Spindlers as visiting
professors at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, introduced a handful of
us to the fascinating world of educational anthropology. Much of my own
thinking about how identity and integration work unfolds in schools was,
and continues to be, inspired by their pioneering ethnographic research.
I want to thank my husband, Bill Hemmings, for his patient support,
excellent copyediting, and honest opinions about the ideas presented in
this book. And, thanks, Ma, for your abiding presence as I was coming of
age through the obstacle courses of my own academic (and adolescent)
passages. It is to you that I dedicate this book in loving appreciation of all
that you are and have done for me.
—Annette B. Hemmings
 1
New Age for Coming of Age

here are longstanding cultural assumptions in the United States that

adolescent coming of age is fraught with difficulties and that public high
schools often do not go far enough to ensure smooth passages to adult-
hood. It was Margaret Mead (1928) who popularized the belief that
American teenagers go through an especially turbulent period of "storm
and stress" made worse by a culture "woven of so many diverse strands
[and] numerous contradictions [that young people confront] a confusing
world of dazzling choices" (p. 204). She was quite pointed in her criticism
of high schools for failing to transmit cultural certainties to young people
who are uncertain about how to adjust to adult life.
The assumptions remained, prompting another anthropologist,
Robert Redfield, many years later, to pose the question "What should
education in the United States do in order to enrich the human poten-
tial of every single individual and to allow each person to achieve the
good life?" (1963, p. 71). The query challenged educational anthro-
pologists to explore the cultural development of children and youths
more thoroughly and to think about how schools might do a better job
of facilitating cultural processes that nurture individual potentials
and create genuine opportunities for young people to live good, mean-
ingful lives.
Now, at the beginning of a new millennium, adolescent passages to
adulthood are just as perplexing and, some are convinced, much more
troubling. There is growing concern that public high schools, especially
those in impoverished urban areas, are less than effective in their original
mission to provide some kind of a common cultural grounding for young
people with widely diverse backgrounds. The question Redfield asked has
 CHAPTER 1

become much harder to answer in what appears to be an even more con-

fusing world of dazzling choices.
But that does not mean that such questions should not be revisited or
that more contemporary answers should not be sought. Public high
schools have been and will continue to be primary staging areas for adoles-
cent coming of age. Teachers, administrators, policymakers, and educa-
tional researchers need to wrestle with the question if they are truly
committed to preparing teenagers for adulthood. Before the question can
be addressed, however, there needs to be more comprehensive knowledge
about how coming-of-age processes actually unfold in high school set-
tings. Such knowledge needs to extend well beyond student achievement
in standard academic subjects and include rich ethnographic descriptions
and analyses of whether or how adolescents are forming identities and in-
tegrating themselves into economic, kinship, religious, and political com-
munity domains. And it needs to acknowledge the complexly fluid nature
of American culture.
The research presented in this book provides a broad yet highly
particularistic descriptive foundation on which this cultural knowledge
base may be built. It includes extensive ethnographic case studies of how
diverse adolescents came of age in three U.S. public high schools. Coming
of age is conceptualized as a two-pronged process of identity formation
and community integration with attention to anthropological precedents
and emergent post-anthropological thinking. Identity formation is con-
strued as a process of working through and situating a multifaceted endur-
ing self that reflects adolescents' most deep-felt psychocultural
commitments. Community integration involves the particular strategic
adaptations adolescents make as they navigate conflicting discourses in
multilayered cultural crosscurrents flowing through community domains
of American life.
These processes are described as they unfolded in research sites se-
lected as representative of public high schools in urban and suburban
America. Although the schools shared similar educational missions, they
varied enormously as contexts for adolescent coming of age. Jefferson
High,1 the first site, was a racially desegregated urban school serving mid-
dle- and working-class youths. Most of the Black students were bussed to
the school in compliance with a court-mandated desegregation plan.
Ridgewood High was located in a predominantly White, up-
per-middle-class suburb, whereas the last site, Central City High, enrolled
mostly Black students living in poverty in the most economically de-
pressed neighborhoods in the district.
Graduating seniors were invited to serve as key research partici-
pants because they were at a juncture in their lives where they could
look backward at their passages through adolescence, look closely at
NEW AGE FORCOMING OF AGE 3

their current circumstances, and look ahead toward their future as

adults. They also had profoundly different backgrounds as boys and
girls; Whites and youths of color; low-, working-, and middle-class
teenagers; European Americans, African Americans, Mexican Ameri-
cans, Asian Americans; and sexually straight and homosexual. Adam
Willis was a White working-class boy at Jefferson High. His class-
mates were David North, a middle-class Black honors student, and
Lona Young, an underachieving working-class Black girl. Lona was a
central figure in a large, unusually mixed peer group that included gay
lesbian, and bisexual students, single mothers, and a disabled boy
with a traumatic brain injury.
The seniors who participated at Ridgewood High were Cassandra
Sommers, Christina Sanchez, Peter Hsieh, and Stuart Lyon. Cassandra
was a Black single mother. Christina, a Mexican American, and Peter a
Taiwanese-American, were second-generation immigrants. Among Chris-
tina's friends were other immigrants, including her best friend, from Ja-
pan, a Russian girl, and a Muslim from Pakistan. Stuart was a White
Jewish boy from an affluent family.
Monica Reese was among the Black seniors who participated in the re-
search at Central City High. She was an ambitious high achiever who
lived with her single mother in a low-rent housing project. Michael Meyer,
the senior class valedictorian, was a working-class boy who was among the
small minority of White students who went to the school. Nay Wilson
was a low-income Black girl who resided in the same apartment complex
as Monica.
These 10 students, their friends, and other peers had qualitatively dif-
ferent adolescent experiences as they came of age. I found that in their
identity and integration work they were absorbers of traditions, barome-
ters of contemporary trends, and harbingers of change. Despite painful
setbacks and daunting obstacles, most managed to make passages
through the torrential crosscurrents of U.S. culture and did so with great
hope for ages to come.

(POST)ANTHROPOLOGY
Coming of age in the United States has evolved and so, too, have the ways
in which cultural processes have been conceived by anthropologists. Van
Gennep (1960) was the originator of the classic notions that coming of
age is a linear, three-phase series of developmental transitions or rites of
adolescent passage. Teenagers during the first phase undergo rites of sepa-
ration where they experience symbolic breaches with their families and
communities. Breaches are followed by a turbulent phase of margin or
liminality marked by mounting crises between youths and adults. Even-
 CHAPTER 1

tually adolescents reenter the community fold as culturally integrated

adults through rites of reaggregation.
The second liminal phase was regarded by Turner (1969) as being of
most crucial importance. Adolescents going through this phase are "be-
twixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom,
convention, and ceremonial" (p. 95) and are at heightened risk of being a
loss or danger to their communities. They are much more attuned to, and
critical of, cultural systems than are adults who have long accommodated
to them. Turner (1977, 1982) in his later works went a step further with
the thesis that societies as a whole pass through liminal periods often in-
stigated by young people attempting to liberate themselves from oppres-
sive cultural values and norms. As people break out of the normative
structures of prevailing social statuses (what Turner termed antistmcture),
they sow the seeds of social and cultural change.
Public high schools in the United States are established to monitor or
at least curb the excesses of adolescent passages. They are supposed to
transmit common cultural knowledge and accommodate the cultural
changes that come about as people with new knowledge come into con-
tact (Singleton, 1974). Much of the common culture constituting the cur-
riculum is a reaffirmation of Anglo-American, Western-European,
middle-class traditions. Teachers convey this curriculum in incremental
stages as they guide and judge individual students' progress from one level
of instruction to the next. Their efforts are almost always augmented by
extracurricular activities, ceremonial rituals, and other symbolic rites that
ultimately culminate in students' "graduation" to adulthood.
Such conceptions of rites of passage and the roles schools were ex-
pected to play in facilitating them were shaken in the 1980s by a "crisis
in representation" that called into question classic anthropological
frameworks and methods of ethnographic research (Marcus &. Fischer,
1986). The crisis eroded norms of objectivity, notions of social life struc-
tured by fixed rituals and customs, and the authority of the ethnogra-
pher to represent and interpret the lived experience of "other" people
(Denzin £L Lincoln, 2000; Lincoln & Denzin, 2000). Anthropologists
no longer could assume the stance of detached observer and
value-neutral researcher. They now had to acknowledge their subjective
biases and privileged positions as individuals who construct social rather
than definitive texts.
The crisis is being spurred on by post-modern/structural movements in
the social sciences. Instead of conveying certainty, clarity, and wholeness,
these new intellectual "posts" are fostering a sense of ambiguity, relativity,
fragmentation, particularity, and discontinuity. The movements for many
scholars are ruptures with the past. But for others they remain in broad
continuity with intellectual traditions. They represent a logical succession
NEW AGE FOR COMING OF AGE 5

in thought rather than the latest thought in succession through time

(Grotty, 1998, p. 185).
The (post) anthropology that I am using to frame the research in this
book aclcnowledges past precedents while pushing the bounds of how
identity and integration work is conceived in coming-of-age processes. It
places the examination of cultural discourses at the forefront of inquiry
because of how they shape adolescents' social, cultural, and psychologi-
cal realities. Much contemporary research analyzes discourses as lan-
guage systems imbued with disciplinary practices and discursive modes
of surveillance that inscribe what it means to be normal or abnormal.2 In
my analysis, I focus on the substance of the commonsense beliefs, val-
ues, norms, and other meanings comprising discourses, as well as atten-
dant cultural practices. I examine the meaning systems of discourses as
multilayered and affecting identity and integration work through the
discursive pressures they exert. Such examinations were crucial for fram-
ing the more particular ways in which the teenagers in this research un-
leashed their individual potentials and pursued versions of the good life
in community domains.

FRAMEWORK FOR STUDY

The more particular analytical framework I constructed for this study
renders U.S. culture into a seascape with multilayered cultural mean-
ing systems or crosscurrents. Crosscurrents are construed as discursive
streams brimming with commonsense discourses and ordinary disci-
plinary and other practices. To represent U.S. culture this way is to rec-
ognize the fluid, intermingled, often conflicting nature of meanings,
how meaning systems envelop people and carry them off in disparate
directions, and the fact that individuals must respond and adapt to
meanings as they work to define their identities and integrate them-
selves into the community.
Coming of age is furthered refined in my metaphoric view as identity
formation and community integration accomplished through symbolic
navigational work. Youths, in their identity work, struggle to produce and
situate identities revolving around a multifaceted, psychocultural self. As
they work to integrate their selves into the community, they navigate the
discourses and practices comprising crosscurrents flowing through eco-
nomic, kinship, religious, and political domains of American life. They
swim with the currents or against them and do so through a multitude of
adaptations constructed in light of their historical social locations, indi-
vidual subjectivities, and the nature and intensity of contextualized pres-
sures. Identity and integration work are interrelated yet distinctive
enough to treat them as two prongs of a complicated process.
6 CHAPTER 1

Identity Formation
Anthropologists traditionally have studied the process of identity forma-
tion as enculturation accomplished through cultural transmission with at-
tention to understandings of what it means to become a person in
particular cultural contexts (Hoffman, 1998). Some consider psychologi-
cal factors along with cultural ones in their conceptual approaches
(Shweder, 1991; Spindler & Spindler, 1978, 1989, 1993). Most recog-
nize identity formation as potential cause for conflict especially in cultur-
ally pluralistic societies like the United States where there is no shared
culture to bind individual selves into a communal whole.1
Conventional anthropological studies of identity, especially those con-
ducted in educational settings, have become more problematic in the
wake of the representational crisis. Hoffman (1998) made an attempt to
salvage explorations of identity by encouraging anthropologists to make a
crucial distinction between the innermost self and external cultural pres-
sures. She cited Jen (1997), who was concerned that scholarship focusing
on "defining 'truth' from the outside" often neglects influences on the in-
ner self that may, in fact, "define 'truth' from the inside" (p. 19). The
Spindlers (1992, 1993) have long recognized the distinction and pro-
vided useful analytical tools for understanding the self as enduring, situ-
ated, and endangered. The enduring self is comprised of individuals'
innermost psychocultural commitments. It is a person's most deeply in-
grained psychological orientation and culturally patterned ways of "relat-
ing to others; to the material, natural, and spiritual worlds; and to time
and space, including notions of agency, mind, person, being and spirit"
(Hoffman, 1998, p. 326). The enduring self is not fixed but continues to
develop as individuals and their circumstances change. It is not a unified
whole but a multifaceted entity. Despite its evolving complexity, the en-
during self gives people a sense of continuity with the past while simulta-
neously providing them with an inner compass of meanings for
negotiating the present and charting the future.
The situated self is the outward expression of a person's understanding
of what activities are linked to what goals and how one must behave in or-
der to reach desired ends. It is instrumental in that it involves practical,
outward demonstrations of cultural competence in particular contexts.
The expressions of the situated self shift from situation to situation as in-
dividuals adapt to different rules, norms, values, and other cultural pres-
sures. Expressions boldly displayed in one context may be carefully
suppressed in another.
Attempts to situate the self may go smoothly or lead to intense internal
or social conflict. If the enduring self is violated too often by the cultural
demands of a situation, it may become an endangered self. These are real
NEW AGE FOR COMING OF AGE 7

risks for individuals in contexts with cultural pressures that "are antago-
nistic to the premises and behavioral patterns of their own cultures" or
that threaten their psychological orientations (Spindler & Spindler,
1993, p. 37).
The Spindlers' notions of the enduring, situated, and endangered self
acknowledge both the inner and outer truths of identity work. They are
somewhat but not entirely compatible with post-modern/structural con-
ceptions that generally reject the humanistic idea of an essential self. Frag-
mentation, contradiction, and discontinuity rather than continuity are
the focus in these conceptions as individuals are constituted through and
by particular discourses (Davies, 2000). The agency or choices individu-
als make about who they are may be based on rational analysis, but desires
deeply embedded in various discourses may subvert rationality. Identity
work so conceived is:

an individual's or a group of individuals' interpretation and reconstruction

of her/his/their personal history and particular social location, as mediated
through the cultural and discursive context to which she/he/they has/have
access. (Raissiguier, 1994, p. 26)

When mediations go well, individuals experience a sense of self that en-

genders positive personal growth. When identity work goes badly, people
end up with a fragmented, unstable, or endangered self with extremely
painful psychological and social consequences.
There is no doubt that identity work is paramount in the lives of ado-
lescent students. Youths have a "passion for identities" that are:

made around nation, community, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual-

ity, and age; identities premised on popular culture and its shifting sets of
representational practices; identities attached to fashion and new imag-
ined lifestyles, to leisure and work, and to the mundane and the exotic;
identities made in relation to place and displacement, to community and
to a sense of dispersal, to "roots" as well as "routes." (Yon, 2000, p. 1)

Such work certainly was important to the graduating seniors in this re-
search. I found that they had some sense of an enduring self and that most
of them had experienced fragmentation or painful conflict as they situ-
ated their selves in various discourses. They exercised agency as they came
to terms with their own desires while adapting to the desires of parents,
schools, society, and other discursive forces.
I also found that seniors in their school-based identity work went well
beyond the formation of an academic self. Many educational anthropolo-
gists who studied adolescents in high schools have noted the profound im-
pact that identity has on academic achievement patterns especially
8 CHAPTER 1

identity work around the central social categories of ethnicity, race, social
class and gender. Although this body of research has provided invaluable
insight into the relationship between identity and academic performance,
it does not reveal how students view and express themselves as workers,
family members, religious believers, or political citizens. Also, by empha-
sizing social categories in identity work, many researchers lose sight of
how adolescents actuallvj work on or out their identities. Identity s
forma-
tion is undertaken by most teenagers as work around the economic, famil-
ial/sexual, religious, and political facets of their selves, with ethnicity, race,
class, gender, and sexual orientation operating as critical influences. Per-
sonal desires are central because it is in their patterns that possibilities for
life lie (Davies, 2000). These facets of the self and the desires they contain
were integral to what the seniors in this study regarded as the most salient,
significant features of who they were and hoped to become. They also
were integral to processes of community integration.

Community Integration
Parents in the United States generally hope that their adolescent offspring
will find good jobs in the economy and become contributing members of
families held together by strong, intergenerational bonds. Many also hope
their children, as adults, will adhere to a religious faith and participate in
American democracy as law-abiding citizens who get involved in local,
state, and national politics. But such ideal expectations for integration into
community domains are not easily realized in a society where teenagers en-
counter conflicting cultural crosscurrents streaming out of the wellsprings
of the dominant culture, liminal trends, vulgar popular culture, seamy un-
dertows, ethnic tributaries, local family worlds, and youth cultures and peer
subcultures. Crosscurrents are depicted in Fig. 1.1 as concentric layers flow-
ing through community domains, with dotted lines indicating the open-
ness of boundaries where discourses flow back and forth.
The outermost layer represents the dominant culture grounded in mid-
dle-class Anglo- and Western-European values and lifestyles. This cultural
stream is characterized by a tempered individualism where freedom of
choice is widely touted but heavily circumscribed by disciplining eco-
nomic norms, conventional nuclear family values and arrangements,
mainline Judeo-Christian religious theologies, and nationalized political
ideologies. The dominant culture is widely regarded as the most "main-
stream," that is, as the most accepted common way of life for Americans,
regardless of their backgrounds.
Dominant currents are destabilized by liminal trends that shift societal
views on what is or is not accepted as part of the larger common culture.
Liminal trends generated by rapid developments in electronic technol-
NEW AGE FOR COMING OF AGE

FIG. 1.1. Crosscurrents in community domains.

ogy, a burgeoning service sector, and global exchanges of information

have led to monumental changes in the economic domain. Young people
in the liminal economy are "floating in a nebulous atmosphere" as they
look over postindustrial employment opportunities and wonder
whether or how to take advantage of them (Bettis, 1996, p. 115).
Liminal trends also are altering the kinship domain, where the tradi-
tional nuclear family is becoming a personal choice rather than a cultural
given as divorce, single-parenting, homosexual domestic partnerships,
and other alternative living arrangements gain more acceptance. Con-
ventions that once governed sexuality and sexual activity, child-bearing
and child-rearing, and the roles of men and women are now openly chal-
lenged in ways unknown or unheard of in the past. Momentous changes
also are occurring within the domains of religion and politics. The au-
H) CHAPTER 1

thority that mainline churches once held over their congregations has
lost its grip as more individuals insist on constructing their own personal
belief systems and pursuing their own spiritual journeys. United States
politics has been transformed into a system focused more on special in-
terests than the common interest.
Dominant cultural traditions and liminal trends occupy a com-
manding position in the U.S. cultural seascape, but their currents are
constantly crossed up by the powerful forces of popular culture. Popular
culture is the vulgar, commodified, industry-driven common culture of
everyday life (Dimitriadis, 2001). It is spread through media by fash-
ion, film, television, music, and other industries. And it is packaged
and sold to a public eager to wear, watch, listen to, and otherwise con-
sume its products.
Seething beneath the layers of dominant currents are undertows that
constitute the cultural underside of what a community values most.
When the values of economic success and competition are elevated, so,
too, is the temptation to pursue wealth through illicit means. An emphasis
on personal happiness in familial and sexual relations is accompanied by
an easing of constraints on sexual indulgences and other pleasurable yet
potentially risky intimacies. Undertows emerge in political spheres,
churches, and other institutions and meander through the darkest re-
cesses of U.S. social divisions, where they incite prejudice and ignite inter-
group tension. They are everywhere as tantalizing as they are threatening
to a community's sensibilities.
Also crisscrossing the U.S. seascape are ethnic tributaries sustained by
groups determined to preserve their most cherished traditions. Tributaries
often revolve around a religious faith, but they also reinforce
intergenerational patterns of family, economic, and political security. They
flow apart from or alongside other cultural currents and are distinguished by
varying degrees of autonomy. The most autonomous ethnic tributaries are
those sustained by groups whose members band together in small, closed
communities. Other groups, including many immigrants, practice native tra-
ditions at homes or other community centers while making accommoda-
tions to dominant cultural expectations at school or work. Some are reviving
lost traditions or generating new ones. What they all have in common is a
strong communal desire to hold onto or bring back time-honored versions of
the good life constructed within their own ethnic enclaves.
Larger cultural currents filter into more particularistic local family
worlds. Local worlds are cultural systems containing knowledge, skills, val-
ues, beliefs, norms, and emotional responses that are peculiar to members
of particular families (Phelan, Davidson, & Yu, 1993, 1998). Shweder
(1991) used the phrase "intentional worlds" when he referred to these
NEW AGE FOR COMING OF AGE U_

systems because they contain highly specific cultural prescriptions in-

tended to inform family members' thoughts and behaviors. Adolescents
in their families encounter detailed prescriptions for how they are to per-
form domestic roles and responsibilities, relate to relatives and
nonrelatives, act in gender-appropriate ways, dress, talk, work, worship,
and play. They are "intentional persons" who actively absorb, mediate, in-
vent, contest, and otherwise negotiate prescriptions. As intentional per-
sons, they make choices about whether or how they are going to respond
to pressures to conform to what can be characterized as highly localized
discourses and practices.
Youth cultures and subcultures are currents produced by teenagers them-
selves and are the most direct expressions of the attitudes youths have to-
ward cultural currents. Youth culture denotes the general, distinctive,
often antisocial patterns of adolescent behavior (Parsons, 1964). These
patterns may signal alienation or social rebellion or reflect teenagers' de-
sire to fit in by looking attractive, being popular, and having fun. Although
youth cultures often appear to reject adult sensibilities, they actually de-
rive much of their content and many of their practices from dominant
meanings, media-generated popular culture, and other adult productions.
They are forms of "symbolic creativity" where adolescents inject
commonsense cultural material into uncommon yet widely shared expres-
sions (Willis, 1990).
Youth subcultures are differentiated variations of youth culture pro-
duced by teenagers within the borders of their peer cliques. Subcultures
are products of more refined processes of bricolage where particular
groups of teenagers reorder existing meanings in a fashion that reflects
their own personal predilections, cultural backgrounds, and social loca-
tions (Brake, 1980, 1985; Epstein, 1998; Levi-Strauss, 1966;
Weinstein, 1991). Bricolage separates adolescents from the worlds of
their families, schools, and other contexts while simultaneously main-
taining symbolic connections with them. It occurs within private spaces
away from the direct surveillance of adults. Subcultures are produced
projecting a group image through styles of dress, hairdos, and adorn-
ments; a demeanor made up of facial expressions, gaits, and postures;
and an argot or special language code for communication (Brake, 1985).
They reflect the distinctiveness of the youths who manufacture them,
often in an attempt to set themselves off from groups to which they are
historically or personally opposed.4
At the center of the concentric seascape is the individual self, working
hard to construct and project a viable identity while seeking integration
into the community. For adolescents, much of this work takes place in
high schools, where crosscurrents inevitably converge.
L2 CHAPTER 1

FIELDWORK

Site Selection

I chose Jefferson High, Ridgewood High, and Central City High as re-
search sites because they followed similar approaches to education but
were notably different with regard to their student populations. All three
of the schools offered standard academic fare as well as programs in
nonacademic areas related to my research interests. They also had com-
mon class schedules, instructional materials, graduation requirements,
and other organizational features.
I chose the sites partly on the basis of statistical data on student popu-
lation demographics summarized in Table 1.1. Whereas population de-
mographics indicate general characteristics of communities, achievement
patterns show the relationship between communities and schools. They
indicate students' understanding of the place of formal education in their
lives and also provide a sense of the resources that parents can bring to the
task of assisting their children with their education (Metz, 1990). A good
way to gauge achievement patterns is by examining dropout and gradua-
tion rates (Table 1.2).

TABLE 1.1
Demographic Composition of Student Population*

Jefferson High Ridgewood High Central City High

White European 44.35 88.9 18.20
American
African American 54.37 4.5 81.23
Asian/Asian 0.52 5.1 0.10
American
Hispanic/Hispanic 0.12 1.10 0.00
American
American Indian 0.00 0.00 0.10
Multiracial 0.64 0.4 0.37
Low-income** 49.36 2.83 63.60

* Percentages during period of data collection.

** Percentages of students enrolled in free and reduced federal lunch programs.
NEW AGE FOR COMING OF AGE 1J3

TABLE 1.2
Annual Dropout and Graduation Rates*

Jefferson High Ridgewood High Central City

High
Dropout rate 17.8 1.1 30.5
Graduation rate** 78.8 97.8 59.3

* Percentages during period of data collection.

** Seniors in October who graduated by August.

Another way to gauge achievement patterns is to examine scores on

standardized tests. Students, in order to graduate, had to pass a
ninth-grade academic proficiency exam developed and administered by
the state. There also was a twelfth-grade exam taken by seniors, but the
state did not require passing scores for graduation. Students who failed all
or parts of the ninth-grade exam could retake it until they passed.
Ninety-five percent of seniors at Jefferson High eventually passed. But a
sampling of their scores on the twelfth-grade exam indicates that many of
them were not meeting the standards established for that grade level. Less
than 45% passed the mathematics and science sections and 25% failed
the reading test. Results were quite different at Ridgewood High, where
students were ranked number one in the county in the number of fresh-
man who passed the ninth-grade exam and where 90% of seniors passed
every section of the twelfth-grade exam. The lowest scores were recorded
at Central City High, where 15% of students had not passed the
ninth-grade exam by the end of their senior year and less than 14% passed
all required sections on the twelfth-grade exam.
Once the school sites were identified, I made arrangements to meet
with principals to discuss the project. I received formal permission from
them and the school districts to do the research. I also had my proposal for
the study approved by the university's Institutional Review Board (IRB),
which requires written informed consent from students and their parents.
With approvals in hand, I was ready to recruit student participants and
begin data collection.

Data Collection
I conducted my fieldwork at Jefferson High from late December, 1995 to
early March, 1996; at Ridgewood High in the fall of 1996; and at Central
City High in the spring of 1997.1 spent at least 2 months at each site in or-
14 CHAPTER 1

der to get a good sense of the cultural "shifts and changes [and] contradic-
tions and tensions" in corridors and classrooms (Yon, 2000, p. 23).
Another advantage of the extended periods of fieldwork was that it en-
abled me to build rapport with students, especially the seniors who volun-
teered to serve as key research participants.
I recruited the 10 key participants (Table 1.3) with the help of teachers,
principals, or other staff. We looked for graduating seniors who repre-
sented a cross section of the student population in terms of racial, ethnic,
and gender demographics and academic achievement.
I went to school with each of the seniors for at least 2 weeks (3 days per
week) in order to observe them and document their schools' everyday cul-
tural patterns. I accompanied them to class, traveled with them through
corridors, ate lunch with them, and hung out with them and their friends
before and after school. I wrote copious field notes on what I saw and
heard at the end of everv observation dav.

TABLE 1.3
Graduating Senior Participants

Pseudonym School Demographics Achievement

Adam Jefferson High White male Average
Willis Working class achiever
David Jefferson High Black male High
North Middle class achiever
Lona Jefferson High Black female Low achiever
Young Working class
Cassandra Ridgewood High Black female Average
Sommers Working class achiever
Christina Ridge wood High Mexican Ameri- Low achiever
Sanchez can female
Middle class
Peter Ridgewood High Taiwanese Amer- High
Hsieh ican male achiever
Middle class
Stuart Ridgewood High White male Average
Lyon Middle class achiever
Monica Central City High Black female Average
Reese Low income achiever
Michael Central City High White male High
Meyer Working class achiever
Nay Central City High Black female Low achiever
Wilson Low income
NEWAGEFORCOMINGOFAGE 15_

As I accompanied seniors, I asked them to talk about themselves, their

pasts, present circumstances, and future plans in order to collect data on
their identity work. I adopted this autobiographical method to capture
what Munoz (1995) refers to as "stories of identity where we tell ourselves
and others who we are, where we came from, and where we are going" (p.
46). I also asked them, their friends, and other seniors to explain and in-
terpret what I was observing. Much of the data on students' impressions
of corridor life and what and how teachers taught in classrooms was gath-
ered this way.
I conducted one-on-one, semistructured, tape-recorded interviews
with all of the key participants in order to capture their thoughts on
cultural crosscurrents. I used the same interview guide (see Appendix)
with open-ended questions grouped under economic, kinship, reli-
gious, and political domains. As is customary in ethnographic inter-
viewing, I asked probing questions during the course of the interviews
in order to clarify or enrich responses about the dominant, liminal, and
other layers of U.S. culture. Each interview lasted for about 2 hours
and was conducted after school or during periods of free time during
the school day.
I also arranged four focus-group interviews with key participants'
friends and some of their classmates. At Jefferson High, I interviewed
members of Lena's clique and also conducted an interview with Adam
and his friends. I tried to set up focus-group interviews with seniors'
friends in other schools but was unable to work out the logistics of getting
everybody together. I did, however, manage to set up sessions with other
seniors who were not adequately represented by key informants. I inter-
viewed seven White students at Ridgewood High who belonged to a
Christian club and eight Black and White seniors at Central City High
who were much more disillusioned with their school and life chances than
were key informants.
I also spoke informally with administrators, teachers, security
guards, and other school staff. I engaged in conversations with them
about student characteristics and the major issues young people faced
as they enter adulthood. These conversations usually took place during
idle times in hallways or before classes began. School staff had a wide
range of opinions about students in their particular schools and about
youths in general.
By the time my fieldwork was completed in May, 1997, I had com-
pleted more than 2 months of field observations in each school, tape re-
corded the voices of over 30 seniors, and documented the thoughts of
dozens of other students and staff. Because my data collection procedures
were consistent across research sites, I was able to triangulate data to dis-
cern commonalities and disparities in how diverse seniors came of age in
different schools.
16 CHAPTER 1

Reflexivity and Literary Tropes

The crisis of representation is changing the positionings of social scien-
tists in their research. Researchers are now having to represent themselves
through reflexivity or ways of demonstrating to readers their historical
and geographical situatedness, the personal investments they have in the
research, how the research has affected them, and the "literary tropes"
they have chosen to lend rhetorical force to the research report (Gergen &
Gergen, 2000, p. 1027).
My particular interest in, and approach to, how adolescents come of
age in public high schools stems from my own story of identity. I am a
White woman who was born in the late 1950s into a Roman Catholic
family. As a child growing up in a city near Detroit during the culturally
turbulent years of the 1960s, I saw firsthand how liminal tensions could
lead to race riots, war, and other divisive acts of violence, as well as to so-
cially constructive changes through peaceful civil rights movements and
other collaborative endeavors. Mvj familvj moved to Wisconsin, where I
went to college, left the Catholic church, became quite liberal in my
ideological leanings, and eventually became certified to teach secondary
social studies.
As an idealistic teacher in her mid-20s, I was hired to instruct American
Indians in an Upward Bound Program. The Ojibwa, Menominee, and
Winnebago students in my classes opened my eyes to the devastation that
White conquest had wreaked on their cultures, identities, and prospects
as Indian people. I took what I learned from them to graduate school,
where I sought to explore how and why cultural differences and social fac-
tors had such negative effects on the educational experiences of histori-
cally marginalized high school students and their teachers.
For my dissertation, I decided to conduct ethnographic case studies of
high-achieving Black students in urban high school contexts (Hemmings,
1996). Like American Indian students, I found that inner-city Black
achievers were struggling hard to make it despite overwhelming odds
against them. I also discovered that there were students from other walks
of life who were surmounting social and cultural obstacles. Now, as a pro-
fessor in an urban university working with school teachers, administra-
tors, and other adults deeply committed to the education of young
people, I have even stronger incentives to be with, and listen to, young
people as they navigate cultural crosscurrents in their journeys through
the public school system.
With the interests of youths in mind, I adopted a literary trope that
foregrounds the emic experiences of research participants. My written
texts include numerous verbatim excerpts from transcribed interviews
and field notes that convey graduating seniors' perspectives and their ac-
NEW AGE FOR COMING OF AGE 17

tions as individuals, as members of groups representing different racial,

ethnic, class, gender, and sexual locations, and as an adolescent collective.
These data are enhanced by written commentaries and material drawn
from an extensive body of literature. I also adopted a straightforward, ac-
cessible style of prose and refrained from constructing a thick overlay of
abstract interpretation that might distort seniors' own ways of making
sense out of their experiences. The seniors who participated in this re-
search were quite conscious—indeed, acutely aware—of the content and
consequences of the cultural pressures swirling around them. They were
often more incisive in their critiques than many adult researchers. And
much more insightful.
 2
Surface Depths

icrican depictions of high schools are replete with images of home-

coming dances, pep rallies, athletic games won and lost, and students
draped in medieval caps and gowns at graduation ceremonies. Classrooms
are recalled as places where teachers deliver their subject matter in dull or
inspiring ways and students amuse themselves with playful antics as they
learn more serious lessons. Underlying the imagery is what Metz (1990)
refers to as a "basic common script for 'The American High School'" (p.
77). Students, according to the script, are offered similar classes where
they are taught standard curriculum, differentiated according to their
abilities and interests. Their roles and those of teachers are similarly de-
fined, as are the outlines of classroom plots.
Common images of the American high school extend into corridor
spaces, where students spend about an hour a day in hallways, lunch-
rooms, and bathrooms. Teachers, security guards, and other school staff
are supposed to supervise these spaces, but they tend not to intervene un-
less events get noticeably out of hand. Left alone in relative freedom, stu-
dents form tight-knit cliques, intimate dyads, and divisive rivalries, and
they play out their relations in undirected scenes where actors take most
of their cues from one another.
Taken together, these images and conventions make school actors feel
like participants in a "Real School... rich with symbols of participation in
a cultured society" (Metz, 1990, p. 83). And yet, teachers take great liber-
ties with the common educational script as they deal with building ar-
rangements, resources, and other tangible material factors, as well as the
more intangible demands that society and local communities place on
schools (Hemmings & Metz, 1990; McNeil, 1983, 1986; Page, 1991).
Their classroom performances are affected by—indeed, ultimately de-
18
SURFACE DEPTHS 1_9

pendent on—the characteristics of students (Metz, 1993). Students are

major players not only in the staging of classroom plays but also in the
production of corridor scenes.
The dramas of school life were so profoundly different among the re-
search sites that they are surveyed in this chapter as contextual surfaces
for later, more in-depth explorations of coming-of-age processes. Surface
descriptions are based primarily on graduating seniors' general impres-
sions of their schools. They also are informed by conversations with
school staff and, of course, my own observations of what actually oc-
curred in classrooms and corridors.
JEFFERSON HIGH
I began my fieldwork at Jefferson High on a bitterly cold, winter day in
December, 1995. As I drove down the long, winding road to the school,
I passed rows of small houses and apartment buildings that were owned
or rented mostly by White working- and middle-class families. Most of
the teenagers living in the area, as had been the case with their parents
and grandparents, went to Jefferson High. When I entered the parking
lot, I saw several yellow buses filled with Black students who also at-
tended the school.
The exterior of Jefferson High's main building was regal, with tall, ma-
jestic windows framed by a neoclassical facade of pillars and a red-tiled
roof lined with pointed spires. Another, less ornate building had been
added to the school in the 1970s to house vocational/technical educa-
tion programs. Although the addition was not as architecturally grand as
the original structure, it did not detract from the school's impressive out-
ward appearance.
As I entered the school, I was immediately struck by how dismal the in-
terior was in contrast to the building's exterior. Corridors were dimly lit,
cement-gray passageways with gothic-like arched ceilings. There was a
tunnel connecting the main classroom building to a lunchroom where
hundreds of students gathered in overcrowded shifts during the noon
hour. Other passageways led to classrooms cluttered with piles of dis-
carded books and broken supplies. Desks were ancient, with wooden tops
covered with graffiti, profanity, gang signs, and hearts with lovers' initials
carved in the middle. Chairs wobbled. Clocks did not work. Windows
were clouded with grime. Student bathrooms were in disrepair, with stalls
that had missing doors or out-of-order toilets. Among the bright spots in
the building were a state-of-the-art computer room and well-equipped
labs for technical education. They were educational sanctuaries in a
school that otherwise was crumbling with neglect.
Students and teachers blamed the dilapidated interior state of Jefferson
High on budget cuts resulting from voters' refusal to approve increases in
20 CHAPTER 2

tax levies. Not only had funds been cut for building maintenance, but sev-
eral teachers were laid off, programs were eliminated or scaled down and
there were never enough textbooks. Conditions were less than ideal as stu-
dents traversed corridors on their way to and from classrooms.

JHS Corridors

Adam Willis was the first senior to show me around Jefferson High. He
was a thin White boy with close-cropped light brown hair, a moustache,
and half-shaved stubble on his chin. He was an average achiever who hung
out with White students enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP) and other
college-prep classes. He had a girlfriend, Mary Carter, who was an AP stu-
dent and the news editor of the school newspaper. Mary's best friend,
Katie, was the newspaper's editor-in-chief. Other members of the clique
included Katie's boyfriend and a few other White girls.
On the day that I met him, Adam was wearing a sweatshirt with a pic-
ture of "Dopey," a cartoon character, printed on the front. He explained
that he often wore cartoon shirts to let everyone know how much of a
"joke" the school was. Adam then proceeded to guide me through corri-
dors where hordes of teenagers leaned against lockers, strolled or scurried
to various destinations, shoved or hit one another, or held each other in
passionate embraces. We passed security guards at various sentry points.
Their activities and those of students were carried out in a deafening din
of loud talking, laughter, and shouting and shrouded in air filled with the
aroma of marijuana, cigarette smoke, and occasional whiffs of perfume.
Adam, as we walked along, gave me his impressions of corridor life in a
soft-spoken, pointedly serious tone of voice. He warned me to "be real
careful around here" and then described student relations as being marred
by hostilities:

Kids don't get along here. Some of them hate each other. There's order here
but no discipline. You can see the hallways are crowded and that all kinds of
bad stuff is happening. Kids fight, they steal, they get high. I'm not afraid
but I know how dangerous things can get. It's a tough school, like what I
mean is that this is a tough place to go to school. You have to be a tough per-
son to survive.

He conveyed more detailed impressions of students as we continued our

journey. I saw clean-cut boys who wore pressed khaki pants and polo shirts
and girls wearing nice slacks, modest blouses, or pull-over sweaters. Adam
told me they were "preppies" who were "middle-class types like the kids I
hang around with." We went past "jocks" involved in high-profile, extracur-
SURF ACE DEPTHS 2J_

ricular sports. Many of them wore school letter jackets, expensive athletic
shoes, sports jerseys, and other emblems of their status as athletes. Preppies
and jocks were "into school," according to Adam. This was not the case
with White, working-class youths who formed their own cliques with
names like "skinheads," "head bangers," or "grunge." Skinheads were boys
who shaved their heads, tattooed swastikas on their arms, and otherwise
emulated extremist White neo-Nazi hate groups. Head bangers mimicked
rogue motorcycle gangs with their shiny black leather jackets draped in
chains. Grunge looked like prison inmates with their over-sized jeans that
sagged and drooped low in the behind. Teenagers in all of these groups
pierced small gold rings through their ears, noses, lips, eyebrows, and, I was
told, genitals. We passed Black students congregated in groups with their
own distinctive styles. Many of them wore sports-team or name-brand
overcoats throughout the day. Others preferred designer clothes that car-
ried Tommy Hilfiger, Nautica, Versace, and other expensive manufacturing
labels. There also were real and pseudo street gangs. One was an all-White
gang known as Gangsters with Drama or "GWD." Another was a racially
mixed gang called "PHP" or Prentice Heights Posse. Each displayed special
colors, insignia, and other signs of their affiliations. There also was an artis-
tic group of lads who looked and acted like 1960s hippies. Known as the
JHUBWT (Jefferson High Underwater Basket Weaving Team), they wore
tie-dyed shirts and bell-bottomed jeans and smoked marijuana. Most other
students were categorized by Adam as "normal" kids who wore regular blue
jeans, moderately priced athletic shoes, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and other neu-
tral apparel.
The impression that Adam conveyed was that students in his school
had taken on distinct, somewhat antagonistic roles on the corridor
stage. They literally wore their differences on their sleeves and did not,
at least from his standpoint, show much respect for people who were
not like themselves.
The corridor scene was interpreted in an entirely different way by Da-
vid North. David was a Black high achiever who had a preppie, almost
scholarly look about him. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, cut his hair short,
and came to school wearing nice pullover sweaters and pressed slacks. He
also sported a small diamond earring in his left ear in order to "to ice any
impression that I'm a total geek."
David's best friend and constant companion was Cory Duncan. Cory
like David, was an honors student who took mostly advanced classes. In
corridors they would walk side by side, talking and laughing about things
they had done or seen. They especially liked to compare notes on pretty
girls which, David explained, was an interest stimulated by an "overdose
of the male hormone." Along the way, they would exchange cheerful greet-
22 CHAPTER 2

ings and conversation with other students. They enjoyed a popularity

that ultimately got David elected as the senior class president.
David acknowledged social divisions, especially racial divides in stu-
dent relations. But the separation was not due to racism, according to
him, but because "that's who our friends are." David, for his part, went
out of his way to get along with everyone. "I used to be bad and fight and
all that," he said. "But now I'm a new man and don't have any good reason
to get into it with anyone unless they get into it with me."
Lona Young had yet another take on the corridor scene at Jefferson
High. She was a tall, overweight, 19-year-old African American who wore
flannel shirts, blue jeans, and well-worn athletic shoes. Although her out-
ward appearance was nondescript like "normal" students, she did not lo-
cate herself within well-established social boundaries of cliques split along
racial gender, achievement, and other lines. She was a unusual person who
exuded what one of her friends described as a "magnetism" that attracted
"very, very strange people" to her.
Lena's magnetism eventually drew an unusually diverse group of
teenagers together into a peer clique that won the vote as the "weird-
est" for the yearbook. Among the members of the clique were lesbian
and gay students. Ashley, Lona's best friend, was a White lesbian who
had a partner named Beth. Paul was a gay youth who, according to
Lona, was one of the "sweetest" kids in the school. The clique also in-
cluded DeeDee, a White girl with a baby daughter, and Carole, an Afri-
can American who was pregnant with her first child. Dee Dee had a
White boyfriend named Stevie (not the father of her daughter), who
was a high achiever that Lona described as a "computer geek too geeky
even for geeks." Randy was a disabled White boy with a traumatic
brain injury incurred in a bus accident. He talked incessantly about
what Lona termed "crazy things." Ricky was a White boy who dyed his
hair purple. Naomi, a White girl, came to school dressed like a U.S. Ma-
rine with camouflage pants and t-shirts with the Semper Fi logo on the
front. Jennifer, another White girl, was regarded as the most normal
person in the group. Not wanting to be different, she insisted that she
was just as abnormal as everyone else. There were other members who I
did not get to know. But the more time I spent with Lona and her
friends, the more I realized that almost all of them were troubled or had
been in trouble throughout much of their adolescence.
When I asked Lona and her friends to talk about their general impres-
sions of students at Jefferson High, most of them painted a rather bleak
picture. Jennifer said students were "obnoxious, loud, pushy, slow, and un-
likely to graduate," a remark that made everyone laugh. Everyone, that is,
except Ashley, who said that Jefferson High was the "shit school" where
SURFACE DEPTHS 23

kids who "don't give a shit" go. No one, she continued, really cares about
students at her school:
Nobody cares about kids here so kids don't give a damn. Kids stand in your
way and if you try and say something or push them out of the way there's
always a bad attitude thrown up in the air. They don't care about you or
school or anything but themselves because nobody cares about them. The
security guards don't care because they're just standing around getting
their paychecks. Some teachers care, but a lot of them are so afraid of kids
that they just stand back and let students take over.

Paul had more positive things to say about the situation. The school
had been a good place for him because of all of the nice people he had got-
ten to know. "I've met a lot of nice people here. My friends are real nice.
They look after me which is saying a lot. School is going too fast and I'm
going to miss it because of all of the people I met."
Lona had the final say with one of her many insightful views on stu-
dents. "Every person in the school is different," she said, "and everyone is
changing all the time. Every kid is good, bad, crazy, unique, whatever. One
thing about this school is that it made me more open-minded about peo-
ple. You can't throw them all together and say they're the same when
they're not. They don't even stay the same, you know, like sometimes
they're well adjusted and other days they go all to hell. That's how it is."
And that's how it was in the corridors of Jefferson High.

JHS Classrooms

Jefferson High, like other comprehensive public high schools in the dis-
trict, offered an array of academic and vocational programs. Students
were assigned to various academic tracks in special education, reme-
dial, and regular-level programming and Advanced Placement. They
could enroll in technical or school-to-work programs housed in the
building that had been built as an addition to the school. According to
the student handbook, the school's overall curricular philosophy was
to provide students:
with a wide variety of educational and extracurricular opportunities to pre-
pare them for a lifetime of academic and social learning. The school's in-
tent is to foster responsible citizenship in a democratic society and to
reinforce traditional values of honesty tolerance and dignity of work in the
community, home and family.

The philosophy encapsulated the dominant ideal of public expecta-

tions for schooling. But the instructional patterns that emerged in class-
24 CHAPTER 2

rooms were less than ideal as teachers wrestled with the reality of students
who challenged their approaches to the basic common script.
One of the teachers I observed taught the English class in which most of
the seniors in my study were enrolled. Day after day, for nearly 2 months, I
watched as the teacher tried to convey standard curriculum. While half
the class went along with her directions, the other half would continually
crack jokes, talk or fool around with their friends, complain loudly about
assigned tasks, or spend entire class periods in somnolent repose. The
teacher would maneuver around the room firing off questions, calling on
individuals to read passages or do writing assignments, and demanding
that students "be quiet," "pay attention," or "get to work." She would
shake students who had their heads down on their desks and send the
most disruptive ones down to the office. Despite her stubborn resolve to
move every single member of the class through the curriculum, there were
students who simply refused to budge. Among them was a Black boy who
arrived every day yet literally slept through class. The teacher would wake
him up and threaten to fail him up if he did not pay attention. The boy
would raise his head, stare blurry-eyed into space, and fall back to sleep
the moment she left.
A few teachers tried to relate to students by appealing to what they con-
sidered to be adolescent interests. Adam's Advanced Placement psychol-
ogy teacher would lecture about "theories of love," sex, and other
somewhat off-color topics. Although some students found his approach
amusing, others, like Adam and his friends, thought it was disgusting.
Amused or not, everyone agreed that the class was a waste of time.
Then there were teachers who simply gave up. They would use up
class time talking about nonacademic topics. Or they would hand out
seat work, retreat to their desks, and let students do whatever they
wanted so long as nothing and no one got hurt. They, in effect, abdicated
their instructional responsibilities. Fortunately, these teachers were a
minoritvj in a school where most facultv j
members did what thevj could to
ready students for adulthood despite the on-going dilemmas students
created for them. The challenges they faced were very different from
those at Ridgewood High, where students were growing up in what
seemed to be an altogether different world.

RIDGEWOOD HIGH
Ridgewood High was located outside of the city limits in a predominantly
White, upper middle-class suburb. To get there, I drove along a tree-lined
boulevard with grassy medians accented with flowers planted by local vol-
unteers. The boulevard went through a quaint downtowrn area with up-
scale restaurants and specialty shops and meandered past parks, a town
SURFACE DEPTHS

hall, a new fire station, and a public swimming pool. I turned onto the
road that led to the school and drove by large, expensive homes with land-
scaped yards. United States census data in 1 990 listed the median house-
hold income in this section of the suburb as $46,339 and the median
housing unit value as $101,900. By 1996, the year that I conducted my
fieldwork, a booming economy had boosted these figures to all-time
highs, spawning housing developments with homes retailing at a quarter
of a million dollars or more. Signs of affluence were everywhere in the
places where people lived, purchased goods, worshipped, and entertained
themselves. They were very evident in local public schools, like
Ridgewood High, where children were sent to be educated.
The school was built in the 1970s on the side of a forested hill. The
two-story, brick building was originally designed with an open class-
room layout that was partitioned over time. I entered the school
through a door next to a parking lot filled with cars, many of them
owned by students. The door opened onto a spacious second-floor
foyer with rows of lockers painted in bright school colors. The foyer
and hallways were covered with brand-new, rust-colored carpet. As I
walked to the administrative offices, I passed dozens of students stand-
ing or sitting on the floor. Some were gathered in the middle of the
building where there was a large opening surrounded by a chest-high
wall where people could lean over and look down into the cafeteria and
library on the first floor. I noticed that there were no security guards.
Instead, the hallways were monitored by teachers who stood idly by un-
til the bell rang signaling the beginning of classes.
I passed by classrooms grouped together into departmental suites de-
marcated in colorful letters on the walls as mathematics, science, lan-
guage arts, and other academic subjects. Most classrooms had small,
two-person tables and chairs that faced the front of the room where the
teacher's desk was positioned. All of them were well equipped with
state-of-the-art computers, audiovisual equipment, books, and other
supplies. There were no signs anywhere of vandalism or graffiti or gar-
bage or grime or discarded or outdated curricular materials or broken ob-
jects and windows. Rooms were clean, modernized, and aesthetically
appealing, with large rectangular windows exposing picturesque views of
the woods surrounding the school.
I arrived at the office where I was scheduled to meet the assistant prin-
cipal, Dr. Grayson, and the seniors who volunteered to be in the study. Dr.
Grayson was a petite White woman with a soft, reserved manner. She
greeted me with a warm, welcoming smile and introduced me to Stuart
Lyon, Cassandra Sommers, Christina Sanchez, and Peter Hsieh. I ex-
plained my study to the students and asked if they still wanted to partici-
pate. I handed out parental consent forms after they all assented with an
26 CHAPTER 2

enthusiastic "yes." We then decided that Stuart would be the first to lead
me through corridors and classrooms at Ridgewood High.

RHS Corridors
Stuart was a six-foot-tall White Jewish American. He had short auburn
hair, penetrating hazel eyes, a trimmed goatee, and two earrings in his
left earlobe. Most of the time he came to school wearing t-shirts, athletic
shoes, and khaki slacks or jeans. He looked and acted like a "preppie,"
who, in contrast to Jefferson High, were what the majority of students
identified as the most dominant peer grouping. Preppies were students
being groomed for college and ultimately for high-status, middle-class
positions. Like many other preppies, Stuart was from an affluent family.
He clearly enjoyed his place in a group that literally dominated the stu-
dent social scene.
Stuart loved being the center of attention. He especially liked the at-
tention of girls, with whom he was thoroughly preoccupied. "I date a lot of
girls," he said, "because I haven't found what I want yet. I like sweet girls. I
like strong girls who can rein me in. I'm food to girls because I take them to
nice places. They eat me up."
But not every girl ate him up. He had been dating a girl named Carrie
who suddenly began to avoid him. The first day we were together, Stuart
went on a single-minded mission through corridors to find Carrie or at
least find out why she was avoiding him. He took me to places where she
usually waited for him. She wasn't there. He asked her friends what was
wrong. They didn't know. He finally concluded she was angry because he
hadn't been "playing the phone game." Stuart explained how the rule of
the game was to call a girl every night and "bullshit" her. When I asked
why he was so determined to find Carrie, he said it was not because he
wanted to go steady but, rather, to be the one who breaks off the relation-
ship. "I can't tolerate the thought of a woman leaving me before I'm com-
pletely through with her."
Stuart was candid about his desire to "control relationships with
women" (his exact words) and, for that matter, with people in general. His
friends also came off as controlling preppie White boys. When I met them
at lunch, I asked them to give me their impressions of themselves and
other students at Ridgewood High. One of them said, "Kids here are to-
tally stuck up. Kids are stuck up like they are into themselves. Sometimes
you think you have a friend and then they turn on you. Suddenly you're
no use to them so they abandon you."
Another boy said everyone tries to have a "distinguishing mark." He
pointed to a boy wearing a football jersey. "That guy is the quarterback of
the football team." Then he moved his finger around the cafeteria pointing
SURFACE DEPTHS 27

at other students. "That guy is a genius, that girl is a cheerleader. That one
is a musician." He then turned to me and explained how vitally important it
was to have a distinguishing mark. "If you don't have it, you're a complete
nobody. Everybody has to feel important like they are somebody who's
known for something. It's starts at home and goes on from there."
As I trailed Stuart through the hallways, I spoke with other students
with similar impressions. I chatted with a group of girls, one of whom saw
the situation this way: "Kids are stuck up and snobby because they are
rich and they're competitive about GPAs and things. They are told from
day one by their parents that they are special and you better be smart and
go to college or you're worthless." Everyone was under pressure to be
self-promoting, socially successful, academically competitive, and, above
all else, in control.
Peter Hsieh certainly felt the pressure. He was an Asian American
about 5'9" tall with a solid, athletic build. His slicked his short black hair
down with gel and had several gold rings pierced through his ears. He wore
preppie garb such as khaki slacks, blue jeans, and sweatshirts with univer-
sity logos on the front. A straight-A student, Peter's ambition was to enroll
in a university ROTC program and become an Army officer.
Peter, like Stuart, talked about "playing the field" with girls and his
ability to control people with his eyes. "There's a sucker born every sec-
ond," he told me. "Just look at their eyes and that's howyou find out what
you can get out of them." But although he came off as a controlling prep-
pie, Peter actually existed on the outskirts of the preppie social scene. His
marginal status was more than apparent as he raced through corridors try-
ing hard to interact with others along the way. I watched as he ran up to
students and greeted them with a friendly "How's it going?" or attempted
to start a conversation. Most of the time, his advances were rebuffed with
frigid stares or out-and-out rejections. It did not take long for me to figure
out that Peter was a social outcast searching desperately for social accep-
tance. He had no close friends even though he was a member of the track
team, the cofounder of a student organization called the Asian U.S. Am-
bassadors, and in the Army reserves. Something about him caused other
preppies to keep him at bay.
Like many outsiders who want to be insiders, Peter was a keen observer,
especially of the teenagers with whom he longed to belong. He described
Ridgewood High students as "superficial" in that they were "nice in public
but suspect when people aren't looking." Students had a public image of
well-behaved teenagers who did well in school, got along, followed rules,
and contributed in meaningful ways to their communities. This image
was reinforced by a number of facts. Students' standardized test scores
were among the highest in the metropolitan area. Fights in school were in-
frequent and disputes, when they did occur, were usually resolved through
28 CHAPTER 2

some kind of staff intervention or by students themselves. Kids from dif-

ferent racial and ethnic backgrounds coexisted peacefully. They cooper-
ated in classes, played sports together, and often accompanied each other
to dances, parties, and other social events. Thefts, assaults, and other
types of criminal activity were rare. Peter could not recall any arrests or in-
cidences where police had been called out to the school. The only time he
ever saw police at Ridgewood High was when they came to talk about
D.A.R.E., a drug intervention program, or to direct traffic.
But students behind the scenes and out of public sight could be ruth-
less in their competitiveness. Kids jockeyed for positions in a social hierar-
chy where jocks and "white caps" (Peter's term for preppies) were at the
top and "druggies, dirties, and White trash" were at the bottom. Black
kids segregated themselves in the midst of the competition. There was a
section in the far corner of the cafeteria that was packed at lunch with
Black boys and girls from all grade levels. Much of the rest of the cafeteria
was occupied by White students, who separated themselves into smaller,
more exclusive cliques. Gender relations were marred by incidences of ha-
rassment and unwanted predation. "Guys," Peter said, "got this thing
about hassling girls. Some girls get picked on more than others, but the
hassling is pretty constant. It happens at colleges and everywhere else, so
who cares. Like a guy will tell a girl, 'Hey, I saw what you were doing at that
party.' Or 'You look like you want to have sex with me.' Lots of sexual
stuff. Mostly sexual stuff but other stuff, too."
Students also indulged in illegal drugs. As a recovering drug addict, Pe-
ter was quite familiar with the drug scene. Most kids were casual users.
Some, like him, became hooked. He explained how easy it was for rich
kids to get money to buy drugs. "They get it from their parents or
part-time jobs. They don't have to resort to stealing or violent crime like
low-income kids in the inner city." Most drugs and alcohol were acquired
and consumed at unsupervised parties or private gatherings. "In some
ways," Peter said, "We're no different than the street gangs you see on TV
except we can afford it and they can't."
Cassandra Sommers had much more positive things to say about her
school. She was an African American who loved Ridgewood High pre-
cisely because she could be a preppie. On the day we met, she had on a
nice black-and-white sweater, designer jeans, and a brand new pair of
shoes. Her hair was tied back into a neat bun and she had a pair of glasses
that she wore during class. Not only did Cassandra dress like a preppie,
but she also acted her part on the preppie stage as an upwardly mobile
Black woman with a real opportunity to secure a decent, middle-class life
for herself and her son.
Cassandra was glad to be a student at Ridgewood High for other rea-
sons that came to light as I accompanied her through the hallways. Several
SURFACE DEPTHS 29

Black students, Asian Americans, White boys and girls came up to her as
we walked along. Cassandra always took the time to talk and listen to
them. She was a popular girl who very much enjoyed what she described
as a "relaxed" social atmosphere. "I would say it's real relaxed here. Our
administration doesn't have to worry about lads bringing guns to school,
fights happening everyday, and stuff like that because basically we get
along. Basically we're all preppies."
Christina Sanchez, unlike Cassandra, purposefully distanced herself
from the preppie scene. A petite Mexican American girl with long silky
black hair and big brown eyes, Christina was a dissenter who, along with
other girls in her clique, purposely positioned herself on the margins. Co-
rinna, her best friend, was Japanese American. The two were inseparable,
often walking arm-in-arm through the hallways. Her other friends in-
cluded a Pakistani Muslim girl, a Russian immigrant, and a girl from India.
Christina said the girls had become close friends because they came from
families that were different from those of preppies. "Our families are re-
ally, really strict about things. Like we're not allowed to go on dates and
church is the center of our lives. Preppie kids can go to parties and have
cars and things. If I go to a party, I have to crawl out the window so my par-
ents don't know. That's true for all of my friends."
Christina's clique had strong ethnic affiliations and family loyalties.
But they also identified with fringe groups. Many of these groups adopted
styles meant to upset middle-class sensibilities. They sported odd haircuts
such as Mohawks or long pony tails sprouting from the tops of their heads
with shaved scalps along the bottom. One group dressed entirely in black.
Another group of girls went "totally gothic" with black lipstick and white
facial makeup. Christina and her friends were attracted to artists on the
fringe. They signed up for art courses where they painted pictures, carved
sculptures, molded clay, and created their own self-portraits. Christina
created a 1960s pop-art image of herself by wearing tie-dyed t-shirts and
bell-bottomed jeans that she covered with holes and patches. Her friends
were not so boldly attired, mostly because their families forbade such ap-
parel for women.
Christina also claimed to have ties with the underworld subcultures of
druggies. Although she did not actually use drugs, Christina liked drug-
gies' antipreppie stance. "Preppies," she said,

are the biggest hypocrites 'cause they look down on people then turn right
around and copy them. They think they are so superior but are so hypocrit-
ical. Take druggies for example. Druggies smoke pot and stuff and know
how to do it. They know when to do it so that no one is bothered or finds
out. Preppies are into the drug trend but don't know what they're doing.
They get into trouble and before you know it their parents send them to
30 CHAPTER 2

rehab centers. Their parents come to school and want administrators to get
rid of druggies. It's like they blame druggies for getting their kids into drugs
when it's not true. It's preppies who copy druggies. Druggies don't copy
preppies or even want to be around preppies.

Christina carried her antipreppie stance one step further. She was an
underachiever who flunked math three times and barely passed her other
classes. But somewhere along the line she seemed to have internalized
preppie aspirations. "I want to go to college even though I don't do my
homework very well. I get scared when I think about going off to college
and being on my own, but then I sort of like the idea, you know, the idea of
having a college degree and being on my own."
Other seemingly contradictory subjectivities began to emerge as I got to
know Christina. She was trying to deal with a number of pressures includ-
ing one that weighed very heavily on her and her classmates. This pressure,
which permeated classroom instruction, was the expectation that students,
regardless of their aspirations, were destined to go to college.

RHS Classrooms
Most Ridgewood High seniors signed up for classes in U.S. government,
world literature, British literature, physics, chemistry, precalculus, and/or
Algebra II. Some took electives in art, creative cooking, military history,
or marketing, but the main thrust in their class schedules was to put the
finishing touches on their preparation for college. Few teachers, or stu-
dents for that matter, saw it otherwise. Ridgewood High was a school
where over 80% of graduating seniors went on to 4-year colleges and uni-
versities. Going to college was more than an expectation. For most stu-
dents, it was a given.
I observed teachers as thevy dedicated themselves to the transmission of
college-prep curriculum. Some were methodical in their approaches, like
Peter's precalculus teacher who plodded step-by-step through problem af-
ter problem pausing only to answer questions. Others were much more
entertaining, like Mr. Samuels, a chemistry teacher, who was quite theat-
rical in his scientific demonstrations. This teacher came to class on Hal-
loween dressed like Count Dracula and proceeded to conduct a series of
what he called "spooky experiments." Students were spellbound as he
told ghost stories while mixing chemicals to create witches' cauldron
flames and change clear liquids into colors like "animals who in their
search for light in the darkness burned themselves on the sun and stars."
Students liked their teachers and felt they were good if not exceptional.
Yet they sat through many of their classes in an agitated state of restless-
ness that rippled across the otherwise smooth gloss of instruction. Stu-
Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
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l’anglaise (eskouay’r).

III. Devant O et A.—Quoique le groupe qu ne soit proprement utile

dans les mots français que devant e et i, on le trouve aussi devant o et a, où
il s’est conservé du latin, dans des mots plus ou moins savants, comme
q(u)alité, q(u)otient, à côté de carré, casser, carême, qui sont d’origine
populaire. Mais du moins -quo- se prononce toujours co[719]. Au contraire,
-qua- se prononce coua (kwa) dans un certain nombre de ces mots,
incomplètement francisés:
1º Dans le latin quater ou quatuor, sine qua non, exequatur, à côté de
q(u)asi, q(u)asiment, q(u)asimodo, francisés depuis le moyen âge le plus
reculé; à côté de partie aliq(u)ante, francisé lui-même aussi comme q(u)ant
et ses dérivés;
2º Dans aquafortiste (et aqua-tinte, de l’italien), aquarelle, aquarium et
aquatile, qui ont réagi sur aquatique, francisé autrefois;
3º Dans adéquat, équateur, équation, équatorial, mais non dans
reliq(u)at;
4º Dans une partie des dérivés du latin quatuor, car nous ne prononçons
pas l’u dans des mots aussi complètement francisés que q(u)adrille, q(u)art,
q(u)artaut, q(u)atre, q(u)atorze, q(u)arante, et leurs dérivés naturels, y
compris éq(u)arrir; mais nous le prononçons ou dans quadragénaire, et
tous les mots commençant par quadr-[720], y compris quadrige, mais non
q(u)adrille, dans quartette (de l’italien), quartidi, quartil et in-quarto, dans
quaterne et quaternaire[721];
5º Dans loquace et loquacité, qu’on écorche parfois; dans quassier et
quassia amara, colliquatif et colliquation; dans squameux et desquamation;
6º Enfin, dans quelques mots étrangers, squale, square, quaker et
quakeresse, quartz et quartzeux, quattrocento, quattrocentiste et tutti
quanti[722].
 R

1º L’R simple.
L’r, comme l’l, se prononce aujourd’hui régulièrement à la fin des mots.
On l’articule partout, sauf dans monsieu(r) et messieu(rs), et dans la plupart
des mots en -er. Ainsi char, cauchemar, boudoir, asseoir, clair, offrir, désir,
zéphir, chaleur, amour, trésor, obscur, etc.[723].
Pour les mots en -er, il faut distinguer les cas avec précision.
L’r final est muet:
1º Dans les innombrables infinitifs en -er[724];
2º Dans les innombrables substantifs et adjectifs terminés par le suffixe -
ier: premie(r), menuisie(r), régulie(r), foye(r), etc., etc., et l’adverbe
volontie(rs)[725];
3º Dans les substantifs et adjectifs en -cher et -ger, parce qu’en réalité ils
appartiennent à la même catégorie que les précédents, ayant été autrefois en
-chier et -gier: ils sont une trentaine environ, comme arche(r), dange(r),
lége(r)[726].
L’r final est au contraire sonore en principe dans les mots en -er
(infinitifs à part) qui n’ont pas le suffixe -ier, et ne l’ont jamais eu, ce qui
veut dire qu’ils ne sont non plus ni en -cher ni en -ger. Mais ici, les mots
proprement français sont en petit nombre. Ce sont des mots où -er
appartient au radical même du mot:
1º L’adverbe hier, et les adjectifs fier, tiers et cher, malgré l’i et le
ch[727];
2º Fer et enfer, mer et amer, ver et hiver;
3º Les formes de quérir et de ses composés: j’acquiers, tu acquiers,
requiers, conquiers, etc.[728];
4º Le mot cuiller, autrefois cuillie(r), qui s’est joint à ce groupe après
beaucoup d’hésitation;
5º Les mots qui sont proprement latins, quoique francisés: liber, cancer,
pater, éther, magister, auster, etc., et tous les mots étrangers, francisés ou
non: bitter, chester, eider, kreutzer, messer, placer, etc.[729].
 *
**
Quand le groupe er est suivi d’une consonne, même muette, et
notamment d’un t, l’r n’est plus final, mais intérieur, et s’y prononce
comme partout: dans haubert, offert, clerc, nerf, perd ou perds, comme dans
bavard, part, je pars, corps, bourg, etc. Il n’y a d’exception que pour ga(rs)
[730].
*
**
On a vu au chapitre de l’e muet, que l’r final suivi d’un e muet tombe
facilement avec l’e devant une consonne dans la prononciation rapide,
quand il est précédé d’une muette ou d’une des spirantes f et v: maît(re)
d’hôtel. C’est une prononciation dont il ne faut pas abuser. Elle est
certainement admissible dans la conversation familière, entre deux mots
comme ceux-là; elle est surtout fréquente avec notre, votre et quatre: vot(re)
cheval, quat(re) sous; encore faut-il excepter, comme on l’a vu, Notre-
Dame, le Notre Père, où le respect a maintenu l’r, et quatre-vingts, où le
besoin de clarté a joué le même rôle. Mais, dans la lecture, il vaut mieux
conserver l’r partout.
La chute de l’r est particulièrement incorrecte quand la finale muette
n’est pas suivie d’une consonne: du suc(re), du vinaig(re), encore qu’ils
datent de fort loin, sont certainement à éviter[731].
Me(r)credi a été autrefois très correct, et Vaugelas l’approuvait[732]. Les
grammairiens se sont longtemps battus là-dessus, mais la diffusion de
l’instruction primaire a rétabli définitivement l’r, sans pourtant faire
disparaître entièrement me(r)credi. Je ne saurais trop vivement déconseiller
aujourd’hui cette prononciation, car on a une tendance à la tourner en
ridicule, ainsi que celle qui double l’r dans mairerie, pour mairie[733].

2º L’R double.
Les deux r se prononcent toujours dans les futurs et conditionnels de
trois verbes en -rir: quérir, courir et mourir, et leurs composés[734]. Ce qui
a dû contribuer tout au moins à les maintenir, c’est qu’ils empêchent la
confusion du futur avec l’imparfait: je cou-rais, je cour-rai. En revanche,
c’est une faute très grave que de ne pas laisser l’r simple dans les futurs
ve(r)rai, enve(r)rai, pou(r)rai, et leurs conditionnels, et aussi, la bobinette
che(r)ra, toutes formes pour lesquelles il n’y a pas de confusion possible: on
se contente d’allonger la voyelle qui précède.

Ce cas spécial étant mis à part, l’r double se prononce assez

généralement comme un seul, beaucoup mieux que ne font l ou m.
1º Cela est particulièrement sensible après un a. Les composés qui
commencent par ar-, notamment, ne font entendre qu’un r, sauf
quelquefois, par exemple, dans ar-racher, ar-rogance, ou ar-roger[735]. On
n’y peut guère ajouter que des mots comme far-rago ou mar-rube, qui sont à
peine français, et, trop souvent, nar-ration, nar-rateur, inénar-rable, et
même nar-rer, qui auraient pu être respectés.
2º Après e, l’r double est un peu plus atteint qu’après a. Ainsi, quoique
fe(r)rer, fe(r)raille et tous les autres ne laissent entendre qu’un r, on en
prononce quelquefois deux dans fer-rugineux, qui a un air plus savant. Dans
tous les dérivés de terre, et ils sont nombreux, on n’entend qu’un r, et
pourtant on en prononce parfois deux dans ter-restre, et même dans le vieux
mot ter-raqué. Malgré ve(r)rue, ve(r)ruqueux reste douteux. Inte(r)roger et
inte(r)rompre sont à peu près intacts; mais on entend souvent inter-rogation,
inter-ruption, inter-rupteur, à côté d’inter-règne. Des mots d’usage très
courant, et qui n’ont aucune apparence savante, sont parfois atteints. Ainsi
les deux r d’aber-ration, er-rata ou er-ratique, ont réagi sur er-roné, er-rer et
même er-reur[736]. De même ter-roriser, ter-roriste, ter-rifier, ont réagi sur
ter-rible et même ter-reur, où l’emphase d’ailleurs explique ou excuse le
double r[737].
3º Nous savons que les mots commençant par ir- font entendre les deux
r, même ir-riguer et ir-riter, qui n’ont pas le sens privatif. Toutefois, i(r)riter
ou i(r)ritation sont encore parfaitement corrects. On dit naturellement cir-
rus, cir-ripède et pyr-rhique.
4º Parmi les mots commençant par cor-, on ne prononce qu’un r dans
co(r)ridor, co(r)riger ou inco(r)rigible, co(r)royer et co(r)roi, ordinairement
aussi dans co(r)respondre et ses dérivés et dans co(r)rompre. Mais ces
derniers mots sont déjà atteints depuis longtemps, surtout dans le participe
cor-rompu, et l’on entend généralement deux r dans tous les mots où figure
le radical corrupt-; de même dans ceux où figure le radical correct- (avec
cor-régidor), en outre dans cor-rélatif, cor-roborer, cor-roder ou cor-rosif.
D’autre part, on dit fréquemment hor-reur, hor-rible et abhor-rer, par
emphase, comme ter-reur et ter-rible, et toujours hor-ripiler. On dit aussi
tor-réfier et tor-ride; et tor-rentiel réagit parfois même sur tor-rent. Je ne
parle pas de mots tels que bor-raginées ou por-rection. On notera que l’r
reste pourtant simple, même dans des mots savants comme hémo(r)ragie ou
hémo(r)roïdes.
5º Après ou, l’r simple se maintient: cou(r)roie, cou(r)rier, cou(r)roux,
pou(r)rir. Encore cou(r)roucé n’est-il pas intact[738].
6º L’r simple se maintient aussi tant bien que mal, plus mal que bien,
dans résu(r)rection; plus mal encore dans insu(r)rection, presque plus dans
concur-rent et ses dérivés. On dit naturellement scur-rile, sur-rénal et vase
mur-rhin[739].
 S

1º L’S final.
A la fin des mots, en principe, l’s ne se prononce plus en français depuis
fort longtemps. Pour l’s du pluriel, notamment, il n’y a pas
d’exceptions[740].
Les exceptions sont, au contraire, assez nombreuses pour l’s qui n’est
pas la marque du pluriel, et alors il a toujours le son dur ou sourd.

1º Après un a, il y a très peu d’exceptions dans les mots proprement

français. Je n’en vois même que deux: l’une pour le monosyllabe as, terme
de jeu, et par suite ambesas: la prononciation a(s) est purement dialectale;
l’autre pour les interjections las, hélas, qui n’en font qu’une. Quant à atlas,
stras, hypocras, ce sont en réalité des noms propres.
Les autres exceptions sont des mots grecs, latins ou étrangers: Deo
gratias, per fas et nefas, habeas corpus, pancréas, lias et trias, flint glas,
christmas, papas, lépas, upas, lampas (s’humecter le), madras, abraxas,
alcarazas, vasistas, ou le provençal mas[741].
On hésite aujourd’hui pour vindas, autrefois guindas, d’ailleurs peu
usité; mais on ne prononce plus l’s, ni dans les noms d’étoffes, jacona(s),
lampa(s), ginga(s) ou dama(s), celui-ci malgré l’étymologie; ni dans
balandra(s), sassafra(s), matra(s) ou tétra(s), ni enfin dans pampa(s), où l’s
n’est que la marque du pluriel, dans un mot d’ailleurs francisé[742].

Après oi, l’s ne se prononce jamais: boi(s), parfoi(s), courtoi(s), etc. L’s
même de troi(s), longtemps sonore, comme la consonne finale de tous les
noms de nombre, a fini par s’amuir.
2º Après un e, l’s ne se prononce que dans pataquès, altération de pat-à-
qu’est-ce[743]; dans des mots latins ou grecs: facies, aspergès, hermès,
palmarès, herpès, faire florès, népenthès; dans les mots étrangers: aloès et
cacatoès[744], kermès, xérès, londrès, cortès[745].
On ne doit donc pas plus prononcer l’s dans profè(s) que dans progrè(s),
succè(s) ou prè(s). Il se prononce aujourd’hui, à grand tort d’ailleurs, dans
ès lettres, ès sciences et autres expressions analogues, où figure un
pluriel[746].
Après ai, comme après oi, l’s ne se prononce jamais: jamai(s),
j’aimai(s), etc.[747].

3º Après un i, les exceptions sont plus nombreuses qu’après a ou e.

L’s s’est maintenu ou définitivement rétabli depuis plus ou moins
longtemps dans maïs, jadis, fi(l)s et lis (y compris fleur de lis le plus
souvent, malgré l’Académie); dans métis, cassis, vis (substantif) et
tournevis[748]. La prononciation de ces mots sans s est tout à fait surannée;
on ne peut plus la conserver que pour les nécessités de la rime, et encore!
[749].
Les autres mots où l’s se prononce sont des mots grecs ou latins: bis (ne
pas confondre avec l’adjectif), ibis, de profundis, volubilis, in extremis,
tamaris, iris, ex libris, corylopsis, oasis, mitis, gratis, myosotis; ou des mots
étrangers: maravédis (et encore pas toujours), tennis, et les vieux jurons
gascons cadédis ou sandis[750].
On peut y joindre spahis. Les dictionnaires ont conservé spahi, qui est
assurément plus correct, étant un doublet de cipaye, et Loti s’en est
contenté; mais l’armée d’Afrique a souvent dit spahis; c’est un fait, et
comme il convient d’appeler les gens comme ils s’appellent eux-mêmes, je
crois qu’on peut dire spahis plutôt que spahi, malgré l’autorité de Pierre
Loti[751].

4º Après eu, l’s final ne se rencontre que dans des mots grecs et il s’y
prononce; mais il n’y a de nom commun employé parfois que basileus[752].

5º Après o, le seul mot de la langue vulgaire où l’s se prononce est os;

encore n’est-ce tout à fait correct qu’au singulier[753].
Les autres mots où l’s se prononce sont parfois d’origine latine, comme
salva nos ou nescio vos, ou étrangère: albatros, puis albinos et mérinos,
pluriels devenus singuliers, ainsi que le gascon escampativos[754].
Presque tous sont d’origine grecque: atropos, paros, cosmos, tétanos,
rhinocéros, ithos et pathos, lotos et autres mots savants[755].
 6º Après ou, l’s se prononce dans le monosyllabe tous, non suivi de
l’article ou d’un substantif devant lequel l’article est sous-entendu,
autrement dit quand tous est accentué: ils viendront tous, tous viendront, un
pour tous et tous pour un, tous debout et même tous soldats, soldats étant
ici une apposition; on dira au contraire tou(s) les hommes, ou tou(s) soldats
qui...
Cette distinction très nette empêche toute confusion entre ils ont tous dit
et ils ont tou(t) dit, ils sont tous fiers et ils sont tou(t) fiers, ils savent tous ce
qu’on a dit et ils savent tou(t) ce qu’on a dit; mieux encore, entre nous
connaissons tous les livres de... et nous connaissons tou(s) les livres de...
L’s se prononce aussi dans les mots arabes burnous et couscous, et dans
négous, écrit aussi négus[756].

7º Après un u, l’s final se prononce surtout dans un très grand nombre

de mots latins ou qui peuvent passer pour tels: angelus, cactus, calus,
carolus, chorus, convolvulus, crocus, détritus[757], eucalyptus, fœtus,
hiatus, humus, in manus, in partibus, lapsus, mordicus, omnibus, papyrus,
orémus, prospectus, rébus, rictus, sénatus-consulte, sinus et cosinus,
typhus, virus, etc., dans blocus et négus, mots étrangers, sans parler des
mots familiers qui se sont formés sur l’analogie des mots latins, comme
laïus, motus, olibrius, quitus ou rasibus, avec gibus.
Dans les mots proprement français, l’s ne se prononce pas[758]. Obus lui-
même, où l’s se prononce régulièrement avec le son doux (obuse), peut-être
par l’analogie d’obusier, s’est si bien francisé que dans l’armée on
prononce régulièrement obu, qui est donc devenu la meilleure
prononciation. La seule prononciation qui ne vaille rien du tout, c’est
obusse.

Pourtant l’s se retrouve dans deux ou trois mots.

Quoique l’s d’abu(s) ne se prononce pas, le monosyllabe us paraît avoir
repris assez généralement le sien, sans doute en qualité de monosyllabe
réduit à une voyelle, et pour s’élargir un peu; mais ce mot ne s’emploie
guère que dans l’expression us et coutumes, où la liaison se fait tout aussi
bien avec un s doux: u(s) zet coutumes.
 D’autre part, la prononciation de plus est assez délicate et assez variable.
On ne prononce jamais l’s dans la négation ne... plu(s): je n’en veux
plu(s) et de même sans plu(s)[759]; ni dans les comparatifs ou superlatifs:
plu(s) grand, le plu(s) grand, plu(s) justement, j’ai plu(s) fait que vous ne
pensez, une plu(s)-value; ni devant de, dans tous les sens: plu(s) de monde,
plu(s) d’amour; ni quand il est répété: plu(s) j’en ai, plu(s) j’en veux, ou
opposé à moins: plu(s) j’en ai, moins j’en veux, ou ni plu(s) ni moins[760].
Mais quand plus est suivi immédiatement de que, on prononce volontiers
l’s, sauf après pas ou d’autant: pas plu(s) que vous, d’autant plu(s) que je
ne sais si..., mais j’ai fait plu(s) ou plus que vous ne pensez, j’ai cinq ans de
plu(s) ou de plus que lui.
On le prononce aussi quand plus est séparé par que d’un adjectif ou d’un
adverbe: plus que content, à côté de plu(s) content; plus qu’à moitié, à côté
de plu(s) d’à moitié; mais surtout on prononce régulièrement et
nécessairement l’s de plus-que-parfait, malgré la résistance de beaucoup
d’instituteurs et d’institutrices: plu(s)-que-parfait est tout à fait suranné.
On prononce également l’s dans les opérations de l’arithmétique ou de
l’algèbre: le signe plus, deux plus deux égalent quatre, plus par plus donne
plus.
Enfin, d’une façon générale, sauf dans ne... plu(s) et de plus en plu(s), il
y a une tendance à prononcer l’s quand plus est final. A vrai dire, rien de
plu(s) vaut mieux que rien de plus, sans doute à cause de la négation; et
dans le style tragique, je te dirai bien plu(s), il y va de bien plu(s), semblent
encore s’imposer; mais on dira très bien, surtout dans le langage familier, il
y a plus ou trois jours au plus; on dira même nécessairement: plus... un lit,
et même, quoique moins bien, de plus... un lit, ou de plus, je n’en crois rien,
ou encore après mille ans et plus, sauf en vers, s’il y a une suite:

Après mille ans et plu(s) de guerre déclarée

L’analogie de plus s’est exercée sur sus, dont on prononce souvent l’s
dans en sus, comme dans en plus. Mais à part l’expression en sus, le mot est
généralement suivi de a, ce qui amène une liaison; il en résulte que
beaucoup de personnes prononcent courir sus avec l’s, mais c’est une
prononciation discutable[761].
 8º Après les voyelles nasales, l’s final n’est pas moins muet qu’après les
voyelles orales: dan(s), céan(s), san(s), gen(s), repen(s), consen(s), plain(s),
étein(s), tien(s), vien(s), moin(s), aimon(s), etc. Il faut donc éviter moinsse
avec le plus grand soin, et aussi gensse[762].
Pourtant le mot sens a repris peu à peu son s dans presque tous les cas:
bon sen(s) ou contresen(s), qui ont résisté longtemps, ont à peu près
disparu[763]; sen(s) commun lui-même, qui s’est conservé plus longtemps et
tient encore, sans doute parce que la prononciation de l’s y est entravée par
la consonne qui suit, est déjà néanmoins fort atteint, et sans doute destiné à
disparaître. Il ne restera bientôt plus que sen(s) dessus dessous et sen(s)
devant derrière, qui justement sont sans rapport avec sens[764].
On prononce également l’s dans mons pour monsieur, dans le mot savant
cens, dans le vieux mot ains, et dans les mots latins où en sonne in: gens,
delirium tremens, sempervirens, etc., sur l’analogie desquels Labiche a
formé labadens[765].

9º Après les consonnes, il faut distinguer, suivant la consonne qui

précède.
Quand l’s est séparé de la voyelle par une consonne non articulée, il ne
se prononce pas non plus: ga(rs), la(cs) et entrela(cs), poi(ds), le(gs) et
me(ts), pui(ts), pou(ls), tem(ps) et défen(ds), rom(ps) et fon(ds), cor(ps) et
remor(ds)[766].
Ceux même qui prononcent à tort le g de le(gs) ne vont pas jusqu’à
prononcer l’s. La seule exception est fi(l)s, que nous avons vu à l’i.
En revanche, à part cor(ps), le groupe final ps se prononce toujours
entier, parce qu’il n’appartient pas à des mots proprement français: laps et
relaps, schnaps, reps, seps, biceps, princeps, forceps, éthiops et anchilops.
On articule aussi intégralement rams et aurochs (aurox). On notera
seulement la tendance qui se manifeste, notamment chez Victor Hugo, à
remplacer aurochs par auroch: en ce cas, le pluriel se prononce comme le
singulier; mais c’est aurochs qui est le vrai mot[767].
D’autre part, quand l’s est séparé de la voyelle par un r, l’r se prononce
toujours[768]; mais l’s ne se prononce pas: univer(s), alor(s), toujour(s),
ailleur(s), etc. Il faut éviter avec grand soin de prononcer alorsse,
quoiqu’on prononce l’s dans le composé lorsque. Le substantif cour(s) se
prononce de même sans s.
Il y a pourtant trois exceptions: le mot mars a repris son s depuis
longtemps[769]; les mots mœurs et ours ont repris le leur au dernier siècle,
et il n’est plus possible de le supprimer qu’en vers, pour l’harmonie, et
surtout quand la rime l’exige[770].

2º L’S intérieur.
Dans le corps des mots, l’s se prononce presque toujours, mais quand il
se prononce, il est tantôt dur ou sourd, ce qui est le son normal, tantôt doux
ou sonore.

I.—Devant une consonne, l’s se prononce partout en principe, et

toujours ou presque toujours avec le son dur: les s qui ne se prononçaient
pas ont en effet disparu de l’orthographe. Il se prononce ainsi même à la fin
des mots: fisc, busc, musc et les mots en -st[771].
Mais tous ces mots où l’s se prononce devant une consonne sont en
réalité des mots d’emprunt, ou bien des mots que l’orthographe a altérés en
y restaurant un s autrefois muet[772].
Par analogie, l’s se prononce depuis longtemps même dans lorsque,
presque, puisque, malgré l’étymologie lor(s), prè(s), pui(s), parce que les
éléments se sont fondus en un mot unique, comme dans jusque; mais
tandi(s) que n’est pas dans le même cas, les composants étant encore
distincts: il vaut donc mieux éviter d’y prononcer l’s.
L’s se prononce aussi dans susdit, qui s’écrit en un seul mot, mais non
dans sus-tonique et sus-dominante, qui s’écrivent en deux. Il me paraît
choquant dans susnommé et susmentionné, qui pourraient bien se prononcer
comme les précédents.

Dans les mots composés commençant par les articles les et des ou
l’adjectif possessif mes, ces monosyllabes sont demeurés distincts, et l’s ne
s’y prononce pas: le(s)quels, de(s)quels, me(s)dames[773].
Il y a aussi un mot simple où l’s intérieur, muet devant une consonne, a
été conservé dans l’écriture, probablement par oubli, tous ceux qui étaient
dans le même cas ayant été éliminés: c’est cheve(s)ne, résidu singulier
d’une orthographe disparue[774].
Aux mots commençant par un s suivi d’une sourde, c, p, t, le peuple,
surtout dans le Midi, ajoute volontiers l’e prosthétique des grammairiens:
estatue. Cela n’est sans doute point à imiter[775].

Dans le groupe sc, qu’on ne trouve que dans les mots relativement
récents ou qui ont repris des lettres abolies, les deux consonnes se
prononcent sans difficulté devant a, o, u: es-cargot, es-compte, scolaire,
sculpture.
Devant e et i, on entend généralement deux s: as-cète, trans-cendant,
las-cif, res-cinder[776].
Toutefois on ne peut entendre qu’un s en tête des mots: un s(c)eau, une
s(c)ie[777]. On n’entend qu’un s aussi (ou un c) à l’intérieur d’un certain
nombre de mots: d’abord ob(s)cène et ob(s)cénité, où il est difficile de faire
autrement; puis fa(s)cé, de fa(s)ce, terme de blason[778]; de(s)cendre et ses
dérivés; con(s)cience et ses dérivés, quoiqu’on entende généralement deux s
dans es-cient, pres-cience et cons-cient; enfin di(s)ciple et di(s)cipline avec
ses dérivés; et l’on peut encore y joindre, si l’on veut, a(s)censeur et
a(s)cension (surtout la fête), di(s)cerner et di(s)cernement, su(s)ceptible et
su(s)citer.

Nous avons vu déjà que l’s prenait naturellement le son doux du z, par
accommodation, devant une douce, b, d, g, v et j: sbire et presbyte,
pélasgique et disjoindre, transgresser, svelte ou transversal. C’est là un
phénomène spontané pour lequel il ne faut aucun effort, aucune étude[779].
L’s prend souvent aussi le même son dans les mots en -isme comme
rhumatisme (izme) ou même en -asme; mais ceci s’impose beaucoup
moins[780].

II. Entre consonne et voyelle, l’s est encore dur en principe.

Il est dur notamment après un r: sur-seoir et sur-sis (et non surzis),
traver-sin, subver-sif, etc.; mais il est doux dans jersey[781].
Il est doux entre l et a, dans balsamique et les mots de cette famille[782].
 On a vu que l’accommodation changeait le b en p dans les mots qui
commencent par abs- et obs-, et aussi subs-, mais sauf devant i. En effet,
dans subsister, l’accommodation paraît être plus souvent régressive, c’est-à-
dire que c’est la seconde consonne qui s’accommode à la première:
subzister plutôt que supsister, et de même subzistance, sans doute par
l’analogie de désister, exister et résister, dont nous allons parler dans un
instant[783].
Il en est de même le plus souvent dans subside et subsidiaire[784].
Au contraire, c’est le b qui se change normalement en p dans abside et
dans subséquent[785].

III. Entre deux voyelles dont la première n’est pas nasale, l’s prend
régulièrement le son doux, quelle que soit l’étymologie: rose, vase, cytise,
basilique, vasistas, philosophe, misanthrope, etc.[786]. Il prend le son doux
même dans les préfixes à s final dés- et més-, et cela peut passer pour une
liaison naturelle: dés-unir, dés-armer, més-user, més-intelligence, etc.[787].
Pourtant l’s est resté dur dans dys-enterie et dys-entérique[788].
L’s prend encore le son doux, et ceci pourrait surprendre, dans dé-signer
et se dé-sister (sans parler de désoler), et généralement après les préfixes
ré- et pré-: ré-server et pré-server, ré-sider et pré-sider, ré-solution, ré-
sonance, ré-sumer et pré-sumer, présage, pré-somption, etc. Cela tient à ce
que, dans ces mots, le simple a disparu, ou bien il est resté avec un sens très
différent: dans les deux cas, le composé est traité comme un mot simple.
Il en est de même du mot abasourdir, où l’élément sourd a pu être
méconnu, et par l’absence d’un préfixe usité, et à cause du sens abstrait
qu’a pris le mot.

Néanmoins, l’s reste dur dans certains cas, avec ou sans préfixe, et
beaucoup plus souvent qu’on ne croit:
1º Après les préfixes pré-, ré- et dé- eux-mêmes, dans pré-séance et pré-
supposer, sans doute parce qu’ici le simple est trop connu pour s’altérer;
dans pré-su (le mot est dans Pascal); dans ré-section et ré-séquer, dé-suet et
dé-suétude, qui gardent la prononciation du latin.
2º Et cette fois sans exception, à la suite de toute une série de préfixes
qui restent toujours distincts du mot principal: a-, dans a-septique, a-
symétrie ou a-symptote; para-, dans para-sélène et para-sol (malgré l’s
doux de para-site, vieux mot dont le simple n’existe pas); contre- et entre-,
dans contre-sens, contre-seing, contre-signer et contre-sol, s’entre-secourir
ou s’entre-suivre, et entre-sol; anti-, dans anti-social ou anti-septique; co- et
pro-, dans co-seigneur, co-signataire, co-sinus ou co-sécante, et pro-
secteur; uni-, bi- et tri-, proto- et deuto-, etc., dans uni-sexuel et une foule
de composés chimiques, botaniques ou même mathématiques[789]; plusieurs
autres encore, qui marquent également le nombre, surtout dans le
vocabulaire grammatical: mono-syllabe et mono-syllabique, tétra-syllabe,
déca-syllabe, etc., poly-syllabe et poly-synodie, pari-syllabique et impari-
syllabique[790].
3º Dans quelques mots composés à éléments mal soudés, quoique liés
dans l’écriture: tournesol et girasol, soubresaut, havresac, vraisemblable et
vraisemblance, présalé, vivisection, gymnosophiste, idiosyncrasie,
petrosilex, sanguisorbe, etc.[791].
4º Dans quelques mots simples, exclusivement savants et techniques, où
l’on conserve la prononciation d’origine, comme thésis ou basileus.
5º Dans une onomatopée comme susurrer, susurrement, que les
dictionnaires altèrent fort mal à propos[792].
6º Enfin dans quelques mots étrangers plus ou moins employés,
l’adoucissement de l’s entre deux voyelles étant propre au français: ainsi le
grec kyrie eleison, ou l’italien impresario, à demi francisé d’ailleurs,
puisqu’on nasalise im[793]. Pourtant l’s s’est adouci dans l’espagnol brasero
et l’italien risoluto ou fantasia, apparemment par l’analogie de brasier,
résolution, fantaisie[794].
IV. Entre une voyelle nasale et une autre voyelle, l’s reste dur, parce
qu’autrefois l’n se prononçait: anse, penser, pension, encenser, insigne,
considérer, etc., et même insister, malgré l’s doux de résister et des autres.
Toutefois, avec le préfixe trans-, on a encore un phénomène de liaison,
comme avec dés- et més-, et c’est un z qu’on entend, sans exception, dans
transalpin, transaction, transatlantique, transiger, transit, transitaire,
transitif, transition, transitoire, transhumer et transhumance.
Mais l’s du substantif transe est nécessairement dur, comme dans toutes
les finales en -anse, et il se maintient encore dur tant bien que mal dans
transi et transir, très fréquemment altérés par le voisinage de transit.
Transept a aussi l’s dur, étant pour transsept[795].
On entend quelquefois, mais à tort, l’s doux dans in-surrection, par
analogie avec résurrection.
Enfin l’s est doux dans nansouk[796].

3º L’S double.
L’s double final se prononce comme l’s dur, mais il abrège la voyelle qui
précède: ray-grass, mess, express, miss, etc.
L’s double intérieur, qui n’a jamais le son doux, représente d’abord assez
souvent un s simple, qu’on a doublé après un e dans certains composés,
uniquement pour empêcher que le son doux ne remplace mal à propos le
son dur, entre deux voyelles.
Nous avons vu tout à l’heure qu’après é fermé on se contentait souvent
d’un seul s en pareil cas, malgré le danger d’adoucissement: pré-séance, dé-
suet; mais on écrit avec deux s, et peu de logique, pre(s)sentir et
pre(s)sentiment[797].
Après un e muet, un seul s a suffi encore, dans quelques composés cités
plus haut, comme entresol, havresac ou soubresaut; mais on met deux s à
re(s)saut et à re(s)sauter, et partout après le préfixe re-, dans les mots de la
langue écrite: re(s)sembler, re(s)sentir, re(s)sort, re(s)source, etc.[798], ainsi
que dans de(s)sus et de(s)sous, sans compter re(s)susciter, dont l’e est
fermé. Je ne sais si cet emploi de l’s double après le préfixe re- est très
heureux, car s’il fait respecter le son de l’s, en revanche il fait altérer
malencontreusement à beaucoup de personnes la prononciation de l’e muet
lui-même, et le mal n’est guère moindre[799].
Il va sans dire que dans tous ces mots, que l’e soit fermé ou muet, on ne
peut prononcer qu’un seul s, puisque l’s ajouté n’y est en quelque sorte
qu’un signe orthographique conventionnel, destiné à maintenir le son dur ou
sourd.
Mais on peut aller plus loin, et dire qu’en français, d’une façon générale,
entre deux voyelles, l’s simple est un s doux et l’s double un s dur.
Cette distinction très nette a peut-être contribué à maintenir
généralement la prononciation d’un s simple quand il y en a deux. Toujours
est-il que l’s double se prononce simple beaucoup plus souvent que les
liquides l, m, n, r, malgré la tendance générale que nous avons signalée si
souvent. Il est rare qu’on prononce deux s dans les mots d’usage courant,
qui sont très nombreux, et peut-être même ne l’a-t-on jamais fait dans les
mots tels que a(s)seoir, pa(s)sage, va(s)sal, ma(s)sacre, e(s)sai, e(s)suyer,
me(s)sie, me(s)sage, i(s)su, bo(s)su, fau(s)saire, bou(s)sole, hu(s)sard, etc.
L’s reste simple notamment dans tous les composés de des-, comme
de(s)saler, de(s)serrer, de(s)souder, et dans tous les mots en -seur, -sion, -
soir ou -soire, quelle que soit la voyelle précédente: embra(s)seur,
oppre(s)seur, régi(s)seur ou endo(s)seur, pa(s)sion, pre(s)sion,
commi(s)sion ou percu(s)sion, pre(s)soir ou acce(s)soire.
Il y a pourtant des exceptions, cela va sans dire aussi notamment pour les
préfices as- et dis-[800].
1º Le préfixe as- étant plus populaire que savant, dans tous les
composés, sauf as-similer et ses dérivés, on devrait ne prononcer qu’un
s[801]. Toutefois, je ne vois guère que a(s)saut, a(s)sembler et a(s)semblage,
a(s)seoir, a(s)siéger, a(s)siette et a(s)sise, a(s)sez, a(s)surer et ses dérivés,
qui soient à peu près intacts. Les plus atteints sont as-sagir, as-sainir, as-
sécher, as-séner (pour a(s)sener), as-sentiment, as-sermenté, assertion, as-
servir, as-sidu et as-siduité, as-signer et as-signation, as-sombrir, as-
somption, as-sonance, as-sourdir, as-souvir et as-sumer. Mais pas plus dans
ceux-là que dans les autres, il n’est indispensable de prononcer deux s.
2º Au contraire, le préfixe dis- étant expressément un préfixe savant, les
composés font entendre généralement deux s. Il n’y a d’exception
incontestable que pour di(s)siper et ses dérivés et di(s)soudre[802]; mais on
fera bien de prononcer aussi avec un seul s di(s)solu[803], di(s)serter et
di(s)sertation, di(s)simuler et di(s)simulation[804], voire même
di(s)séminer, di(s)sension ou di(s)sentiment, ces mots étant d’un usage fort
général[805].
3º Aux préfixes as- et dis- on peut ajouter intus- et trans-, dans intus-
susception, trans-sudation ou trans-substantiation.
4º Il n’y a plus qu’un certain nombre de mots plus ou moins savants où
l’on prononce deux s: as-sa fœtida, pas-sible et impas-sible, pas-sif et ses
dérivés (sauf en grammaire) et pas-siflore, clas-sification et quelquefois
clas-sique, et aussi juras-sique[806];—tes-sère et pes-saire, es-sence (au
sens figuré) et ses dérivés, inces-sible et immarces-sible, et les composés en
pres-sible; congres-siste et progres-siste, qui, avec proces-sus, réagissent
sur progres-sif, proces-sif et quelques mots en-essif; mes-sidor, ses-sile,
pes-simiste et pes-simisme, et au besoin es-souflé ou es-saimer;—les mots
en is-sible et leurs dérivés, et, si l’on veut, les mots en is-sime et is-simo,
avec commis-soire, fis-sipare et fis-sipède, et bys-sus, auxquels on joint
quelquefois fis-sure et bis-sextile;—enfin glos-saire, os-sature, os-
sification, os-suaire et quelquefois os-seux, avec fos-sile et opos-sum[807].
*
**
Nous savons que le groupe anglais sh équivaut au ch français à toute
place: shelling, shocking ou shampoing, english, mackintosh ou
stockfish[808]. A la vérité fashion se prononçait aussi bien fazion à la
française, que facheune, à l’anglaise, et de même fashionable; mais ces
deux mots sont tout à fait tombés en désuétude.
C’est aussi au ch français que correspondent le groupe germanique
sch[809], le danois sj, le polonais sz et l’s hongrois[810].
 T

1º Le T final.
A la fin des mots, le t, comme l’s, en principe ne se prononce pas:
acha(t), avoca(t), étroi(t), bonne(t), livre(t), tombai(t), crédi(t), peti(t),
calico(t), tripo(t), prévô(t), défau(t), ragou(t), institu(t), cha(t)-huan(t),
vacan(t), accen(t), événemen(t), sain(t), poin(t), fron(t), défun(t), dépar(t),
concer(t), transpor(t), meur(t), accour(t), etc., etc.[811]. Les exceptions sont
même beaucoup plus rares que pour l’s parmi les mots proprement français.
Naturellement elles affectent surtout des monosyllabes, qui sont en quelque
sorte renforcés ou élargis par cette prononciation.

1º Après a, il n’y a que les adjectifs fat et mat, avec les termes d’échecs
mat et pat; adéqua(t) et immédia(t) n’en sont plus, ni opia(t), quoique
l’Académie ait encore maintenu le t en 1878.
Il faut ajouter cependant les mots latins, exeat, fiat, stabat, magnificat,
vivat, qui ne sont pas en voie de se franciser dans la prononciation; on
entend bien parfois des viva(ts), mais c’est une fâcheuse analogie, amenée
sans doute par le pluriel[812].
Après oi, il n’y a rien, pas plus doi(gt) que adroi(t) ou pourvoi(t).
Toutefois, quand soit est employé seul, on fait volontiers sonner le t, pour
renforcer le mot, comme on l’a déjà vu ailleurs.

2º Après e, il n’y a que net, fret et se(p)t.

Pour net, il ne saurait y avoir de discussion[813].
Pour fret, tous les dictionnaires maintiennent fre(t). Ils pourraient peut-
être se corriger, parce que la marine marchande ignore absolument cette
prononciation: or quel est l’usage qui doit prévaloir ici, sinon précisément
celui de la marine marchande?
Enfin, pour se(p)t, il faut naturellement dire sè devant un pluriel
commençant par une consonne: se(pt) sous, se(pt) cents, se(pt) mille[814].
Malheureusement nos cuisinières, marchands et comptables ne connaissent
guère d’autre prononciation que se(p)t, en toute circonstance, sous le
fallacieux prétexte que l’on pourrait confondre se(pt) sous et se(pt) cents
avec seize sous et seize cents! Et leur prononciation a passé peu à peu de la
cuisine à la salle à manger, du comptoir au salon. Essayons encore de réagir
si nous pouvons, mais je crains fort qu’il ne faille bientôt céder sur ce
point[815].
A net, fret et se(p)t on fera bien de ne pas ajouter juillet, pas plus
qu’alphabet, la prononciation du t dans ces mots étant surannée ou
dialectale. Quant à cet, il ne s’écrit que devant une voyelle, et
nécessairement il se lie.
On prononce naturellement le t dans quelques mots latins ou étrangers:
et cetera[816], hic et nunc, hic jacet, licet, tacet, claret, et water-closet; mais
débe(t) et place(t) sont francisés depuis fort longtemps; croque(t), cricke(t),
ticke(t) le sont aussi, et même pick-pocke(t), et souvent water-close(t)[817].
Après ai, il n’y a pas d’exceptions, sauf une tendance très marquée à
faire sentir le t du substantif fait, au singulier, surtout quand il est final ou
accentué: en fait, au fait, par le fait, voie de fait, voici le fait, il est de fait, je
mets en fait, je l’ai pris sur le fait, c’est un fait, et même c’est un fait
constant, c’est le fait d’un honnête homme, le fait de mentir, le fait du
prince; mais on ne doit jamais faire sentir le t au pluriel, ni dans fait divers,
singulier identique au pluriel, ni dans en fait de ou tout à fait.

3º Après i, le t sonne encore presque toujours dans les mots qui viennent
de mots latins en -itus et -itum: coït, introït, obit, bardit, aconit, rit (même
mot que rite), prétérit, prurit et transit; mais on a cessé généralement de le
prononcer dans subi(t) aussi bien que dans gratui(t). Il en est de même dans
ci-gî(t). On le prononce encore le plus souvent dans granit, mais grani(t) se
répand.
On le prononce aussi, naturellement, dans huit, avec la seule restriction,
toujours la même, des pluriels commençant par des consonnes: page huit,
in-dix-huit, le huit mai, et aussi, par liaison, huit hommes, mais hui(t) sous,
hui(t) cents, hui(t) mille[818].
Enfin il doit toujours sonner dans les mots latins, francisés ou non, dans
accessit, satisfecit et même déficit, malgré l’usage de quelques personnes,
aussi bien que dans incipit, sufficit, explicit, exit et affidavit, ainsi que dans
vooruit et dead-heat[819].
 4º Après o, le t ne sonne plus aujourd’hui que dans dot, où il ouvre l’o,
bien entendu. Cette exception paraît venir de ce que le mot avait autrefois
deux formes, un masculin do(t) et un féminin dote (cf. aubépin et
aubépine); le féminin se serait ici conservé avec l’orthographe du masculin.
C’est d’ailleurs le seul mot en -ot qui soit féminin. Quoi qu’il en soit, la
prononciation do(t) est aujourd’hui particulière au sud-ouest[820].

5º Dans les finales -aut et -ault, le t ne sonne jamais[821]; pas davantage

dans -eut, ni dans -out et -oult, les mots étrangers, lock-out, vermout, knout,
raout et stout, mais non racahou(t).
Surtout il ne doit pas plus sonner dans (a)oû(t) que dans debou(t), malgré
l’usage de quelques provinces[822].

6º Après u, le t final sonne toujours dans un certain nombre de mots

savants: azimut, cajeput, occiput, sinciput et comput, avec ut et caput;
quelquefois aussi, mais à tort, dans scorbu(t) et précipu(t); de plus, dans les
interjections chut et zut, et dans les monosyllabes lut, rut et brut[823]. La
province y ajoute généralement un autre monosyllabe, but, malgré débu(t),
mais à Paris on prononce toujours bu(t)[824].

7º Après les voyelles nasales (les mots en -ant et -ent sont

particulièrement innombrables), le t ne sonne pas plus en français qu’après
les voyelles orales, même si une autre consonne s’intercale, comme dans
exem(pt), vin(gt), prom(pt), rom(pt), corrom(pt), interrom(pt).
Il a longtemps sonné dans ving(t), comme sonnaient l’s et l’x de trois et
deux, conformément à l’usage de tous les noms de nombre; c’est aussi
incorrect aujourd’hui que le serait cente pour cen(t), qui ne semble pas avoir
jamais été dit. Toutefois le t de vingt sonne encore dans vin(g)t et un, par
liaison, et aussi dans vin(g)t-deux, vin(g)t-trois, etc., malgré la consonne qui
suit, soit par un souvenir de vin(g)t et deux, vin(g)t et trois, où se faisait la
liaison, soit plutôt par analogie avec trente-deux, quarante-quatre,
cinquante-sept, etc. Mais il ne sonne pas dans quatre-vin(gt)-un, -deux, -
trois, etc., et cela se comprend: s’il sonnait par exemple dans quatre-vingt-
trois, ce serait quatre fois vingt-trois, et non quatre fois vingt plus trois; il y
a des siècles que cette distinction a été faite inconsciemment. Il est vrai que
tous ces t, devant deux, deviennent nécessairement des d: vind deux; ce
n’est pas une raison cependant pour prononcer vin(g)te-deux[825].
Le t sonne encore dans quelques mots étrangers, comme cant ou
pippermint[826].

8º Restent les consonnes. Le t ne sonne pas après un r: écar(t), exper(t),

ressor(t), cour(t), et aussi heur(t), où il a longtemps sonné; spor(t) lui même
est francisé, et dog-car(t) à peu près; mais flirt garde son t, même quand on
le francise[827]. En revanche, le t sonne après et avec les consonnes c, l, p,
s.
Pour les mots en -ct, nous avons vu plus haut qu’il ne fallait plus
excepter que les mots en -spect, ami(ct) et instin(ct), mais non exact, abject,
verdict, district, succinct et distinct, ni aucun autre[828].
Les mots en lt ne sont pas des mots français: cobalt, malt, smalt, spalt,
veldt, volt, sauf le vieux mot moult, et indult, où l’orthographe a rétabli la
prononciation disparue de lt[829].
Si des mots en pt nous éliminons se(p)t, examiné tout à l’heure, où le p
ne sonne pas, et les mots en -empt et -ompt, où ne sonnent ni p ni t, il reste
trois ou quatre mots savants où les deux consonnes se prononcent: rapt, qui
a longtemps flotté, concept, transept et abrupt[830].
Le groupe final st se prononce dans quelques mots, la plupart étrangers:
hast (armes d’), ballast, to(a)st, est et ouest, lest, zist et zest, whist, ost et
souvent compost. Il est muet dans le verbe e(st)[831].
Ajoutons pour terminer que l’h après le t final, qui d’ailleurs est toujours
d’origine étrangère, ne change rien en français au son du t; mais
naturellement le t suivi d’un h se prononce toujours: feldspath, aneth,
zénith, mammouth, luth et bismuth[832].

2º Le T intérieur et le groupe TI.

Dans le corps des mots, le t se maintient difficilement entre deux
consonnes, si la dernière n’est pas un r, comme dans astral. Aussi est-il
devenu muet dans as(th)me et as(th)matique, is(th)me et is(th)mique, et
même pos(t-s)criptum et parfois pos(t)dater: c’est toujours la répugnance
du français à prononcer trois consonnes consécutives qui ne s’accommodent
pas ensemble, et c’est ordinairement celle du milieu qui est alors écrasée
entre les autres, à moins qu’elle ne soit un s[833].
Dans les mots en -iste, comme dans les mots en isme, le peuple laisse
volontiers tomber la syllabe finale: artis(te), anarchis(te). Il dit de même
prétex(te) ou insec(te): paresse de langage, qu’il faut éviter.
L’h ne change rien au t, bien entendu: t(h)éâtre, t(h)on, t(h)ym, at(h)ée,
got(h)ique, etc.
*
**
Mais la question la plus intéressante concernant le t intérieur est celle de
son traitement devant l’i suivi d’une voyelle.
La règle générale n’est pas douteuse: Devant un i suivi d’une autre
voyelle, le t prend le son de l’s dur[834].
Cette règle s’applique notamment à la plupart des mots en -tie et -tien, à
presque tous les mots en -tiaire, -tiel, -tieux, -tion, avec tous leurs dérivés,
et à une foule d’autres mots: suprématie, inertie, béotien, tertiaire,
torrentiel, ambitieux, nation, national, etc., et aussi bien nuptial, gentiane,
spartiate, patient, patience, satiété, pétiole, etc., etc.[835]
En réalité cette prononciation nous vient tout simplement de la
prononciation adoptée depuis des siècles, à tort ou à raison, pour le
latin[836]. Aussi appartient-elle essentiellement à des mots d’origine
savante, tandis que les mots d’origine populaire conservent en principe le
son normal du t, notamment quand l’i fait diphtongue étymologiquement
avec un e, comme dans pitié.
On peut dire pourtant que la prononciation sifflante est la règle générale,
d’abord parce que les mots de formation savante sont les plus nombreux,
ensuite parce que les mots nouveaux ont ordinairement suivi l’analogie des
précédents, et que les mots isolés qui sont restés en dehors de la règle
tendent souvent à s’y soumettre. On constate même ce phénomène curieux
d’une prononciation d’origine savante devenant populaire, et altérant par
cela même d’autres mots savants, faute de pouvoir altérer les mots les plus
usités.
J’ajoute qu’il est plus facile d’énumérer les exceptions que les cas où la
règle s’applique, ainsi qu’on le fait parfois, non sans beaucoup d’omissions.
 Les exceptions sont d’ailleurs nombreuses, et il y en a de toutes les
sortes. On se rappelle la réponse de Nodier à Dupaty, qui prétendait
qu’entre deux i le t avait toujours le son de l’s: «La règle est sans
exceptions,» répondait-il à Nodier. Et Nodier de répliquer, du tac au tac:
«Mon cher confrère, prenez picié de mon ignorance, et faites-moi l’amicié
de me répéter seulement la moicié de ce que vous venez de dire.» Ceci se
passait à l’Académie, où l’on peut croire que les rieurs ne furent pas pour
Dupaty. Mais ce n’était là qu’un exemple, et il y a d’autres exceptions
même entre deux i, sans compter les autres combinaisons, qui sont
multiples[837].

I.—Il y a d’abord deux catégories de mots qu’il faut éliminer, parce que
la prononciation sifflante est impossible ou à peu près. Ce sont:

1º Tous les mots dans lesquels le t est déjà précédé d’une sifflante, s ou
x, ce qui empêche absolument le t de s’altérer, aussi bien en latin qu’en
français: bastion, question, immixtion (une douzaine de mots en -tion);
dynastie, modestie, amnistie (une douzaine de mots en -tie); bestial,
bestiole, vestiaire, etc., etc.[838].
A cette catégorie appartiennent aussi étiage, châtier et chrétien avec sa
famille, autrefois estiage, chastier et chrestien.

2º Tous les imparfaits et subjonctifs présents, où le t ne peut pas changer

le son qu’il a dans les autres formes: étais, étions, étiez, portais, portions,
portiez, que nous mentions, que vous mentiez, etc.[839].
De plus, pour le même motif, les participes féminins des verbes en tir:
sorti, sortie, anéanti, anéantie, etc., avec les substantifs de formation
française dérivés des mêmes verbes: rôtie, garantie, partie, sortie, et le
féminin d’apprenti[840].
II.—Voici maintenant toute la collection des mots d’origine populaire où
-ti- est suivi d’un e, et où le groupe ie est une diphtongue étymologique, le
latin ayant à la place une voyelle unique, devant laquelle le t n’a pas pu
s’altérer. Ce sont:

1º Les trois substantifs en -tié: pitié, moitié, amitié, avec inimitié[841];

 2º Les adjectifs et substantifs en -tier ou -tière, à suffixe -ier, féminin -
ière, comme entier ou héritier, jarretière ou tabatière: ils sont près de deux
cents[842];

3º Les mots qui ont le suffixe -ième, à savoir septième, huitième,

vingtième, etc., avec quantième ou pénultième[843];

4º Les formes verbales de tenir et ses composés, tient ou contient,

détiendra on maintiendrait, avec les dérivés entretien, maintien,
soutien[844];

5º Enfin les mots tiède, tiers et tien, où le t est initial, et antienne, où il

ne l’est pas[845].

III.—Il y a encore un certain nombre de mots d’origines diverses.

1º Voici d’abord trois mots en -tie: ortie, d’origine populaire[846]; sotie,
dérivé populaire de sot, qui avait deux t autrefois comme sottise, et qui a
gardé sa prononciation en devenant savant; enfin tutie, qui ne vient pas du
latin[847].
Épizootie est encore flottant[848].
2º Voici quelques mots plus ou moins savants, où ti- a résisté à l’analogie
et a gardé la prononciation du grec: d’abord éléphantiasis ou étiologie, sans
compter tiare; d’autre part tous les mots où le t est séparé de l’i par un h, ce
th étant grec: sympat(h)ie, pyt(h)ie, corint(h)ien; de sorte qu’ici non
seulement l’h ne change rien au t, mais aide à le conserver intact[849].
Pourtant la tendance générale est telle que le mot chrestomat(h)ie a été
fortement altéré et l’est encore assez généralement; mais la prononciation
correcte de ce mot savant, qui n’est pas latin, est tie et non cie, et les jeunes
professeurs commencent à la restaurer.
3º Il y a encore les mots qui ont un préfixe en -ti, à savoir: d’une part le
mot centiare, qui a gardé devant le mot are la prononciation uniforme du
préfixe centi-, quoiqu’une diphtongue s’y soit formée dès le principe;
d’autre part les mots commençant par le préfixe anti-, comme
antialcoolisme, où il n’y a point de diphtongue.
4º Restent quelques mots populaires d’origine inconnue: galimatias,
qu’une étymologie fantaisiste a rattaché à Mathias; étioler, étiolement, qui
se rattachent peut-être à éteule; et aussi l’espagnol patio[850].
Cette énumération, qu’on trouvera ici pour la première fois, fut longue
sans doute, mais celle des mots où le t est sifflant l’eût été davantage, et
peut-être même impossible, en tout cas beaucoup plus difficile à classer
méthodiquement[851].

3º Le T double.
Le t double se prononce encore simple assez généralement, et autrefois il
n’y avait point d’exception.
Parmi les mots commençant par att-, qui sont fort nombreux, il n’y a
guère qu’at-tique et at-ticisme où l’on soit à peu près obligé de prononcer
deux t[852]; mais il faut avouer que cette prononciation commence à
atteindre fortement beaucoup d’autres mots où elle ne s’impose nullement,
comme at-tenter, at-tentif, at-ténuer, at-terrer, at-tester, at-tiédir, at-titré,
at-titude, at-touchement, at-traction, at-tributif, at-trister, at-trition.
Cette prononciation est plus correcte dans bat-tologie, intermit-tent et
intermit-tence, commit-timus et commit-titur, gut-tural et gut-ta-percha;
mais elle atteint aussi depuis plus d’un siècle d’autres mots, comme sagit-
taire, lit-téraire, lit-téral, lit-térature, lit-toral et pit-toresque.
Elle est d’ailleurs légitime dans les mots qui viennent de l’italien, où les
deux consonnes se prononcent régulièrement: concet-ti, vendet-ta, jet-
tatura, dilet-tante, libret-to et libret-tiste, grupet-to, tut-ti et sot-to voce, et
aussi dans gut-ta-percha. Mais on ne prononce plus qu’un t généralement
dans ghe(t)to et confe(t)ti, qui se sont popularisés, souvent aussi dans
larghe(t)to[853].
On ne prononce jamais qu’un t dans sco(t)tish[854].
 V et W.
Le v s’appelait autrefois u consonne, et ne se distinguait pas
typographiquement de l’u[855].
Du v simple il n’y a rien à dire, sinon qu’il faut éviter de le supprimer
devant oi, et de dire (v)oiture, (v)oilà, la(v)oir, au r(ev)oir[856].
Le v allemand se prononce f; mais cela ne nous intéresse guère que pour
les noms propres non francisés[857].
Le v a aussi le son de l’f à la fin des noms slaves, surtout après un o, où il
est souvent double[858].
Le w n’est pas français. Mais le w germanique se prononce comme le v
français, ainsi que celui du polonais redowa[859].
Le w anglais demande plus d’attention.
En principe, devant une voyelle, il a le son de la semi-voyelle ou: water-
closet ou waterproo373 , wattman, warf, whist, whig, wisky, wigwam,
workhouse, swell, tramway, railway, sandwich[860]. Mais quand il se
francise, c’est presque toujours en v; ainsi il est complètement francisé en v
dans wagon et ses dérivés, à peu près dans warrant et ses dérivés, souvent
aussi dans waterproof, quoiqu’on ne francise pas oo, et dans water-closet
ou wattman. S’il s’est francisé définitivement en ou dans whist, c’est parce
que le mot ne s’est pas répandu dans le peuple; mais tramway a beaucoup
de peine à se franciser tout à fait avec le son ou, qui pourtant semble
l’emporter[861].
Nous avons réduit aw à au dans outlaw, lawn-tennis, tomahawk,
drawback[862].
Nous avons accepté pour l’anglais ew la prononciation iou; ainsi pour
mildew, qui eut la chance d’être appris par l’oreille et non par l’œil; mais
nous l’écrivons beaucoup mieux mildiou, comme il convient. Interview se
prononce indifféremment viev ou viou, et le premier finira sans doute par
s’imposer, ne fût-ce qu’à cause du dérivé interviewer, pour lequel la
prononciation viou-ver est assez ridicule[863].
L’anglais ow se prononce comme o fermé dans bo(w)-windo(w),
ro(w)ing, arro(w)-root, sno(w)-boot, et quelquefois co(w)-boy (pour
caouboï); d’autre part nous réduisons facilement ow à ou dans clown,
teagown, cowpox ou browning[864].
 X et Z
1º L’X final.
A la fin des mots français, l’x n’est plus généralement qu’un signe
orthographique qui tient simplement la place d’un s[865]. Aussi ne se
prononce-t-il pas plus que l’s du pluriel, notamment après u, dans tous les
mots en -aux, -eux, -oux, au singulier comme au pluriel: fau(x), veau(x),
aïeu(x), heureu(x), dou(x), genou(x), etc., etc.[866]. Il n’y a même pour
ceux-là aucune exception, pas même pour deu(x), dont l’x s’est amui,
comme l’s de troi(s), quoiqu’il se soit conservé dans six et dix, dont nous
allons parler[867].
L’x final ne se prononce pas davantage dans pai(x), fai(x) et ses
composés, ni dans les mots en -oix[868].
Il ne se prononce pas non plus dans pri(x), perdri(x) et crucifi(x), ni dans
flu(x), reflu(x), influ(x)[869].
On vient de voir que l’x final se prononce par exception dans les noms
de nombre six et dix, comme se prononcent les consonnes finales de cinq,
sept, huit, neuf; mais ceci demande des explications.
D’abord cet x devrait s’écrire s, comme autrefois, car il a conservé ici le
son de la langue vulgaire, où il a toujours sonné comme un s: j’en ai six,
page dix, Charles dix, le six mai, le dix août.
En second lieu, il faut excepter, bien entendu, suivant la règle des
adjectifs numéraux, les cas où six et dix sont suivis d’un pluriel
commençant par une consonne: di(x) francs, si(x) sous, si(x) cents, di(x)
mille[870].
Mais d’autre part, si le pluriel commence par une voyelle, ce n’est
encore pas le son normal de l’s qu’on entend; car il se produit alors
simplement un phénomène de liaison, d’où il résulte que l’s est doux[871].
De là la différence qu’il y a entre six hommes (si-zom) et six avril (si-
savril): le nom du mois n’étant pas multiplié, dix et six se prononcent dis et
sis devant avril, août, octobre, comme devant mai, juin ou septembre. A
vrai dire, on prononce souvent si zavril comme si zhommes, comme on dit
aussi entre si zet huit, mais ce sont des abus de liaison; au pis aller, pour six
et huit, on peut choisir entre le son dur et le son doux, tandis que pour six
hommes on n’a pas le choix: l’s est nécessairement doux.
On fait aussi la liaison par analogie, et quoiqu’il n’y ait pas
multiplication, dans dix-huit (dizuite) et ses dérivés.
Par analogie avec dix-huit, on prononce également un s doux dans dix-
neuf, comme on prononce le t dans vingt-quatre ou vingt-neuf.
Dans dix-sept, l’x garde le son de l’s dur à cause de l’autre s qui suit: dis-
sète; d’ailleurs, quand on parle vite, on dit facilement di-sète, l’s double se
réduisant à un, comme dans tous les mots populaires[872].
On prononce de même avec un s dur les termes de musique six-quatre
ou six-huit, quoiqu’il y ait multiplication, parce qu’en réalité ce n’est pas
quatre et huit qui sont multipliés, mais seulement les notes représentées par
ces chiffres, de sorte que les deux chiffres qui indiquent la mesure restent
toujours distincts; sizuit est donc encore un abus de liaison, d’ailleurs très
tolérable.

Comme six et dix, coccyx se prononce avec un s simple, au moins par

euphonie[873].

En dehors de six, dix et coccyx, quand l’x final se prononce, il se

prononce cs. Mais cela n’a lieu que dans des mots grecs, latins ou étrangers,
comme index, silex ou sphinx[874].
2º L’X intérieur.
Dans le corps des mots, l’x se prononce en principe cs devant une
voyelle comme devant une consonne: d’abord dans les finales muettes, axe,
rixe, sexe[875]; et aussi bien dans laxatif, axiome ou maxime, lexique ou
sexuel, fixer ou luxure, comme dans textuel, bissextil ou mixture[876].
Mais en réalité tous ces mots sont des mots d’emprunt, et il en reste
beaucoup d’autres où l’x ne se prononce pas ou pas toujours cs[877].
D’abord nous retrouvons l’s dur simple de la prononciation populaire
dans soixante et ses dérivés, où l’x étymologique a été rétabli après coup,
comme dans six et dix[878].
Nous retrouvons aussi l’s doux de la simple liaison dans les dérivés de
deux, six et dix: deuxième, dixième, sixième, sixain se prononcent comme
deu(x) hommes ou si(x) hommes[879].

Mais surtout les mots qui commencent par ex ou x demandent un

examen spécial.
On notera en premier lieu que devant une consonne sifflante, c’est-à-dire
devant ce ou ci ou devant un s, la seconde partie de l’x se confondant
nécessairement avec le son qui suit, le son ecs se trouve réduit à ec: ec-
cellent, ec-centrique ou ec-sangue[880].
Au contraire, devant une consonne non sifflante, on a une tendance
naturelle, quand on parle vite, et même sans cela chez le peuple, à réduire
ecs, non à ec, mais à es: estrême, escuse, espress[881].
Cette tendance doit être combattue en général, notamment quand il n’y a
qu’une consonne, comme dans escuse, autrefois correct. Elle est plus
admissible dans les mots commençant par excl- ou excr-, comme
exclamation ou excrément, mais là même elle est familière et médiocrement
correcte[882].

D’autre part et surtout, devant une voyelle, ex- initial (ou hex-) s’adoucit
régulièrement en egz. Par exemple: exalter, exhaler, exécuter, exiger,
exotique, exubérant, hexamètre, etc., et, par suite, inexigible ou inexact; il
faut y ajouter sexagénaire et sexagésime, et peut-être aussi sexennal[883].
Seuls exécration et exécrable sont très souvent prononcés avec cs, par
emphase.
Cette tendance à adoucir l’x après l’e initial est si forte qu’elle atteint
chez nous jusqu’à la prononciation du latin. On croit même qu’elle a
commencé par le latin. En tout cas, il ne nous suffit même pas de dire exeat
ou exercitus avec gz: même une expression latine composée comme ex
æquo, qui ne peut guère s’altérer en latin, s’altère en français, où nous la
traitons comme un substantif: un ex æquo, des ex æquo, et par suite comme
un mot simple. Ex abrupto s’altère beaucoup moins souvent[884].
En tête des mots, l’x ne garde le son de cs que parce que les mots,
d’ailleurs en très petit nombre, sont savants et d’un usage restreint: xérasie,
xérophagie, xiphoïde, xylographie; encore devient-il gz très souvent dans
xylophone, qui est un peu plus connu[885].
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