Abstract: Argot and Common Tongue: Lexical Processes and Functions in V. Hugo (Les Misérables) and E. Zola (L'Assommoir) In the nineteenth century, the word “argot”, which originally meant ‘underworld,’ is given the larger definition of “green tongue”. From then, it becomes of interest for novelists like Victor Hugo Émile Zola who wants to give a voice to the people, might they be on the streets or workers. The focus is here on identifying the way of express oneself, the linguistic processes which contribute to create a feeling of authenticity: lexical creation by deviating and post fixing usual words, puns, images, syntactic processes. All these aim at providing popular writing signals and at making the argot a feature of the realist novel.
