INTRODUCTION

In all languages ​​and from one end of the planet to the other, swear words, insults and blasphemies are favored by speakers to emphasize their point. Indeed, "[E]ach society has at its disposal an arsenal of derogatory terms" which "refer to a need for identity affirmation" (Hennuy 28). All of these swear words, insults and blasphemies exploit the taboos of a given society. Of course, the socio-political context of a society plays a large part in the creation, evolution and maintenance of these linguistic practices. France, whose "long process of secularization and secularization [has] been underway since the French Revolution" ("Promulgation of the relative law") does not exploit the same taboos as Quebec, where this same process of secularization occurred much later. In this Canadian province, we had to wait for the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, which followed the end of the reign of Maurice Duplessis and, consequently, the end of a period commonly called the "Great Darkness" (Lacoursière 164). If the Catholic lexicon had already been feeding the vocabulary of blasphemies for a long time, it fed the lexicon of Quebec swearing throughout the 19th and 20th centuries . Using studies spanning a period of approximately forty years (1978-2017), this text will first present an attempt at a definition, both of the origins and of the semantic considerations surrounding the notion of swearing [1]. Then, explanations will follow on the diastratic and diachronic evolution of the use of Quebec swearing [2]. 

HISTORICAL AND SEMANTIC CONSIDERATIONS

In his book entitled Une histoire du Québec , Jacques Lacoursière tells the story of the conquest, a deeply disruptive event for the French-Canadian people. Indeed, "the fate of the former French colony was definitively settled on February 10, 1763" by the signing of a peace treaty (71). Overnight, French Canadians became British subjects, sharing neither the language nor the religion of their new queen (70-72). French Canadians resisted linguistic and religious assimilation. However, the influence of the clergy extended beyond the walls of the church to become anchored in education, literature and politics (among others). This stranglehold that religion had on the people exacerbated and amplified the use of swearing which, "first invoking God", extended to "several elements of religious vocabulary, mainly objects of worship, characters or names of rituals. "Some of these swear words have become sacres," explains Diane Blanchet in her 2017 memoir (5). The decades went by and by the middle of the 20th century, Quebec was on the eve of a revolution. The Quiet Revolution followed the reign of Maurice Duplessis in the province and marked the end of an era commonly called La Grande Noirceur, a decade of censorship and conservatism, both religious and social (Lacoursière 164). The sudden death of Duplessis in 1959 heralded the end of La Grande Noirceur. According to the author and professor of sociolinguistics Diane Vincent, the secularization of the province, which took shape during the sixties, had the effect of "weakening clerical power, decreasing religious practice and trivializing the use of consecrations" (1). Some twenty years later, the first works on the question of consecration appeared. Although the phenomenon had already existed for decades, clerical and state censorship prevented the study and publication of works on the subject. Therefore, when the first studies appeared, as Vincent indicates, consecrating corresponded more to a "social than religious transgression" (1). If, originally, the consecration testifies to a probable desire for rebellion, secularism and subversion in the speaker, the links that unite the consecration to religion weaken over time. According to Blanchet, "[B]lasphemy seems linked to an intention to offend God, unlike the consecration which, for its part, no longer evokes the original and religious meaning of the term" (5). What is a consecration then? In their work entitled l' Empire du sacre québécois , published in 1984, Clément Légaré and André Bougaïeff proceed to define the consecration by listing what it is not: 

The Quebec swear word that emerges from this general background also immediately reveals its significant differences. It participates in the swear word, but it is not in itself an insult. It encroaches on the semantic field of the sacred, but it is not comparable to execration, imprecation or malediction. In the etymological sense of the term, it profanes the sacred, but it is not of the nature of blasphemy. (Légaré and Bougaïeff 17)

By presenting what it is not, Légaré and Bougaïeff offer us a first avenue of analysis and observation. Éric Charette continues the work of definition in his 1999 master's thesis. According to him, the sacre is a "word of the religious register particularly linked to liturgical objects not socially accepted in Quebec and acting as an interjection" (95). Charette goes further and identifies two subcategories of sacres. The first which acts as an interjection, like "Hoste! C'est pas believable!", and the second, which acts as a specifier, noun or adjective, "mon câlice de voisin..." (95). If the swear word is also a word of the religious register according to Charette, it is socially accepted in Quebec, like câline for example. At a time when studies on the sacre were beginning to multiply, Légaré and Bougaïeff noted that "[T]oday, it is true, the swear word sacre is regarded by many people as a canker that disfigures our national physiognomy. It would be, according to them (the purists of the language), a symptom of lexical poverty and, what is worse, of advanced imbecility" (3). However, I suggest that on the contrary, the use of sacres is not a symptom of "lexical poverty" but of creativity and expressiveness, as Diane Blanchet and Éric Charette point out. Although the sacre shares "the field of linguistic taboo with vocabulary of a sexual and scatological nature, it remains a resource favored by Quebecers for the expression of emotions" (Vincent 1). No matter what the purists say, sacres are an integral part of the Quebec variety and, by extension, of Canadian varieties of French. Despite the numerous attempts to eradicate the phenomenon of the coronation by the clergy as well as by language purists, this practice remains present and alive (Blanchet 6). 

DIACHRONIC AND DIASTRATIC EVOLUTION 

Based on the studies that make up the established corpus, I will attempt to highlight the evolutionary trends that are both diachronic (over time) and diastratic (of social strata). Language is, by nature, in perpetual change. The use of swearing is no less so. Since the first works on the subject, Quebec society has seen great changes. The origin of swearing remains a solid starting point for highlighting the diachronic and diastratic evolution of the practice. It would be possible to postulate that blasphemies, several centuries old, are at the origin of swearing. In his thesis, Charette proposes a table that presents the different forms of blasphemy (146). The table designates three forms of blasphemy: old, transitory and new. Before 1800, the practice of blasphemy manifests itself through a lexicon originating from the members and organs of the divine body ( by the wounds of God, by the blood of God, mortdieu, I deny god ) (146). Then, between 1800-1850, the lexicon is rather composed of terms such as baptism , wrong to god , sacredieu (146). Subsequently, Charette designates a transitional period, between 1850-80 during which the lexicon of blasphemies is built around Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary ( Christ , virgin , black virgin , sacred Jesus ) (146). After 1880, a new form is inscribed in the language, the birth of the ancestor of the consecration ( chalice , ciborium , tabarnak , viarge , cursed , calvary ) (146). It is the lexicon of the last period identified by Charette, post-1880, which seems to have largely fueled the vocabulary of the consecrations (146). The nine most common consecrations during the eighties are: " crisse , câlice , tabarnac , osti , ciboire , viarge , sacrament , baptism and maudit» (Laperrière, 227). This list still seems, almost half a century later, representative of the phenomenon. If this list remains similar after so many years, studies on the phenomenon now present the numerous manifestations of the lexicon. The list of common swear words has given rise to a whole range of derivatives, across all classes of words. One of the markers of the diachronic evolution of swear words is therefore the birth of multiple derivatives. According to Légaré and Bougaïeff, the morphological variants of swear words arise from a desire to "modify an original form in such a way as to mask it in order to escape the social censorship that sanctions the use of the original religious term" (30). Indeed, the swear words as defined in Charette's work correspond to what Légaré and Bougaïeff call morphological derivatives such as câline (swear word, socially accepted) from câlice (sacre), tabarnouche (swear word, socially accepted) from tabarnak (sacre) and so on. Following this logic, it is not surprising to learn that, according to a study by ethnologist Jean-Pierre Pichette, "each French Canadian, each Quebecer especially, has an average repertoire of 130 swear words" (quoted in "Atelier 8 Les jurons"). The breadth of this lexicon allows speakers a certain creativity, in addition to signaling, through its use, belonging to a distinct linguistic community. In short, some morphological derivatives were born from the need to express oneself but in a less shocking way. Indeed, the functions of the sacre have evolved over time. In an interview with Radio Canada in 2021, Pichette explains: 

We swore to impress. Swearing was showing that we were independent. Independent of whom? Independent of the religion that told us not to do it, while we used that vocabulary, out of context. It was also in front of our superiors, someone who swore in front of their boss, it was showing them that we didn't care about what they said, same thing in front of their parents of course. So, there was a desire to shock. (Ménard)

In 1984, Légaré and Bougaïeff noted the extent to which the sacre already "exercises its influence on all social groups: students and professors use it shamelessly, workers and professionals resort to it commonly, women now repeat it in the same way as men, etc." (2). Note the word now which suggests a period when women "sacreuses" were rare. Indeed, in a book entitled Pressures and impressions on the sacres in Quebecpublished in 1982, the author postulates that women, especially older ones, for the most part never or rarely swear (Vincent 91). Even before studies were published on the practice, the practice was considered to be specific to men, especially those from the working class. To add to this, Charette also explains that "[F]or the young man, in the 1950s or so, the right to swear was a form of emancipation, like the right to drink alcohol or to smoke" (11). If for men, swearing makes them a "real man", women are perceived, and openly described, as "a worthless girl" who "talks like she walks" and who "thinks she's a man" (Charette 11). Defying patriarchal authority through the subversive use of religious terms was obviously frowned upon for women. If things progressed for women during the 1970s and 1980s, Charette noted in 1999 that women still had to take better care of their language than men: "[T]here is greater tolerance, certainly, but this constraint is still present" (12). Nowadays, swearing seems to be heard in almost every conversation. For the most part, they are no longer considered vulgar or shocking, so integrated have they become in Quebec French. In addition, the action of swearing fulfills an important identity function by communicating belonging to a distinct and minority linguistic community (outside Quebec). In short, the many morphological derivatives constitute one of the many facets of the diachronic evolution of swearing. On the diastratic evolution side, several changes have been observed. The identity of the "sacreur" is no longer exclusively young and masculine. The feminist wave of the 1970s, for example, undoubtedly contributed to deconstructing the mythical image of "woman" (i.e. submissive, gentle and confined to her home) that had long been preserved by the Church and consequently dissolved certain sexist prejudices. All in all, the relative stability of the phenomenon could be explained by the fact that the French-speakers of Quebec and Canada form distinct and minority linguistic communities on a national scale. 

CONCLUSION

In short, I have attempted to highlight the origins of the sacre in Quebec French in order to then exemplify the diachronic and diastratic evolution of linguistic and cultural practice. As experts have been pointing out for about four decades and still do today, the lexicon of sacres and the action of sacrer allow a certain sense of belonging to a linguistic and cultural community, whether in Quebec or elsewhere in Canada. Since the first contribution on the subject, a book by Gilles Charest, published in 1974, studies and works have multiplied (Laperrière 223). The sacre is without a doubt a distinctive element of Quebec French that contributes to the maintenance of a linguistic community through the use of intensives that testify to the expressiveness and creativity of the speakers. Today, the coronation has become a "true mark of identity, it allows French-speaking Quebecers to be recognized as such and to recognize each other" (Vincent 1). 

_{[1] The definition essay, in the first part, focuses on the origins as well as on semantic considerations which, although they may seem fussy, are crucial. It is necessary to understand how swearing is linked (or not) to the sacred, to blasphemies and insults, among others, in order to grasp the use and identity functions granted to it within Quebec society.} 

_{[2] By diastratic and diachronic evolution I mean the evolutionary trends that have passed through the layers of society over time. Similarities and differences will be noted.}