Da Belle Époque aos Anos Loucos: os termos da moda feminina na imprensa francesa entre 1903 e 1930

Abstract

The terminology of fashion is a wide field of study that is intertwined by a number of other subject areas. In the beginning of the 20th century, France was the main reference in the art of dressing, and the fashion press was the one responsible for spreading trends. Publications such as Le Petit Écho de la Mode, Femina, Les Modes, La Femme de France and Le Figaro-Modes hold in their pages a valuable record of what was regarded as beautiful and suitable clothing, as well as the techniques and materials used in the making of clothes, footwear, and accessories. Considering the specialized léxicon present in the fashion columns and articles in such magazines, this dissertation aimed to develop develop a glossary of fashion terms in the French language used between 1903-1930, taking into account linguistic aspects of the selected lexical units and the social, cultural, economic, and political transformations that took place during La Belle Époque (1900- 1914), World War I (1914-1918) and the Roaring Twenties (1919-1929). In order to reach the set goal, this research relied on Terminology, in particular, the studies that guide the Communicative Theory of Terminology (CTT), and Historical Linguistics asthe main theoretical-methodological foundations. In total, 553 terms were cataloged, which are divided into seven terminological fields. After analysis, it was possible to observe the occurrence of linguistic borrowing – mostly from English, but also from other languages such as Spanish, Italian, and Arabic – and phenomena such as synonymy, polysemy, homonymy, and metonymy, which confirms the proposals woven by Finatto and Krieger (2004) and Maria Teresa Cabré (1995; 1999; 2005), in which the terms are not isolated from the language. Thus, I believe this research may contribute to the studies of terms present in past phases of history as well as to the history of fashion and the French language.