Madame Jean-Louis Audet, maestra di pronuncia nella Montréal di metà ‘900

Since its foundation at the beginning of the 20th century, the Conservatoire Lassalle of Montréal has promoted the perfection of the oral language of the French-speaking elites, directing the phonetic norm towards the Parisian model. In the following decades, this evolution is favored by the development of schools of diction, among which we distinguish that of Madame Jean-Louis Audet, a phonetics teacher, animator of radio courses and collaborator of the Société du Bon parler of Montréal. The influence of his teachings on several generations of French-Canadians living in Montréal is confirmed by the numerous re-editions, between 1938 and 1967, of his Monologues du Petit-Monde, a collection of texts used in courses aimed at children, accompanied by methodological comments and critical reflections. Conceived for teachers and parents, the book allows us to reconstruct the corrective method of Madame Audet and to point out, in a perspective of historical sociolinguistics, the traits of French-Canadian pronunciation most stigmatized between the 1930s and the 1960s.