Armstrong Nigel. Social and Stylistic Variation in Spoken French: A comparative approach

John Benjamins, 2001. — x, 277 pp. — (Impact: Studies in Language and Society). — ISBN: 90-272-18390 / 1 58811 063 X.Many of the assumptions of Labovian sociolinguistics are based on results drawn from US and UK English, Latin American Spanish and Canadian French. Sociolinguistic variation in the French of France has been rather little studied compared to these languages. This volume is the first examination and exploration of variation in French that studies in a unified way the levels of phonology, grammar and lexis using quantitative methods. One of its aims is to establish whether the patterns of variation that have been reported in French conform to those reported in other languages. A second important theme of this volume is the study of variation across speech styles in French, through a comparison with some of the best-known English results. The book is therefore also the first to examine current theories of social-stylistic variation by using fresh quantitative data. These data throw new light on the influence of methodology on results, on why certain linguistic variables have more stylistic value, and on how the strong normative tradition in France moulds interactions between social and stylistic variation.Aim and scope of the present work
Levelling and standardisation
Variationist sociolinguistics
Social and stylistic functions of sociolinguistic variation
Variation in French and English; and across languages generally
Structure of this book
Patterns of phonological variationPatterns of phonological variation in English
Patterns of phonological variation in French
French speakers’ reactions to a ‘levelled’ accent: An evaluative test
Summary and discussion: Summary of results
Discussion: Phonological variation in French
General conclusions emerging from the perceptual test
Historical factors influencing the levelling of French
The distinctive nature of the French situation
Socio-stylistic variation in French phonologyThe French linguistic variables under discussion
The corpora
The /r/ variable in the Dieuze corpus: Influence of sampling and elicitation methods
Differences in articulation rate across speech styles in the Dieuze data
Influence of phonological factors upon style shift
Lexical input into /r/-deletion in Or: A phono-lexical analysis
Further lexical factors
Discussion
Summary and conclusion
Grammatical variationGrammatical variation in French: The example of negation
Grammatical variation in English
Variable interrogation in French
Intermediate conclusions
Issues of comparability: Variation and change in grammarIntraspeaker variation in grammar
Intraspeaker variation in ne
Conclusion to the intraspeaker analysis of ne
Variable liaisonDefinition of liaison
Liaison categories
Variationist studies of liaison: problems of comparison
Variation and change in liaison
The stability of liaison
Prospects for liaison sans enchaînement
Summary and conclusion
Variation in the French lexiconPrevious studies of variable lexis
Lexical variation in the Dieuze corpus
Structure of the chapter
Identification and analysis of lexical variables in the Dieuze corpus
Lexical variation on the interspeaker dimensions
Semantic equivalence across speech styles
Summary and conclusion
Summary and conclusion
Summary of the issues discussed in this book
Variation in French phonology
Variation in French grammar
Variation in French liaison
Variation in French lexis
Limitations of this study
Directions for future research