Chapter 7 presents the implications of the study on a larger scale. It argues that the study not only shows an interesting gender pattern such that not only females are the agents of change but, rather, everyone but White males are agents of the change. This has implications for the entire gender-in-language-change paradigm. It could mean that the gender patterns developed byLabov misrepresent how gender identification influences language change and that an entirely new model needs to be developed when more social complexity is included in studies of language change. It further addresses the need for larger, more diverse datasets and perception experiments to investigate the possibility of a local social meaning of this widespread variant.

Molière is generally viewed as a comic author who mocks all aspects of society – aristocratic, bourgeois and peasant. However, he was himself part of this tripartite society and adopted points of view that, when we examine them, we see to be those of his caste – one of the people who dined at the King’s table. He was, in fact, at the intersection of two worlds, the court and the town (Paris), and in his works we meet individuals from different milieus, in the plays themselves but also making up the audiences that came to see them. He makes his characters ridiculous through exaggeration, thereby rendering less credible whatever they represent. When presenting different comic situations, Molière never comes down on one side or another. Instead, he offers suggestions, and leaves their appreciation up to the members of the public. They, according to their status or the circumstances in which they see the plays, receive them in one way or another, but always refuse to recognise themselves in any particular character. The focus of this article is, therefore, to determine whether Molière, whose criticism was so acerbic, really was this transgressive and subversive bourgeois author.