Sociolinguistics

  • Hervé ADAMI (Université de Lorraine)
    Is the English dominance inevitable?
    2018, Vol. XXIII-2, pp. 89-103

    Multilingualism always existed. All over the world at any era many different languages always co-existed. Pre-national and pre-capitalist societies roughly succeeded in maintaining a balance between these different languages. But the emergence in the XIXth century of nation- states and the XXth century economic globalization shattered this balance. Gradually countries having a single language used by the majority of the population (e.g. Britain, USA, France, Germany) extended their domination over their political allied countries and more generally all over the world by means of colonial empires. English is nowadays viewed as the one language prevailing. Hopefully escaping such a supremacy of English is possible: languages are no natural forces, but tools designed to be used by humans able to master them.


  • Hélène BLONDEAU (Floride, Etats-Unis)
    Language practices in Montréal and Brussels: diversity and linguistic duality
    2018, Vol. XXIII-2, pp. 73-87

    This article on the effect of globalization and superdiversity on language practices in Montreal and Brussels focuses on the sociolinguistic making of two francophone metropolises both affected by language contact resulting from historical development and contemporary migrations. After an overview of the changes in the linguistic market dynamics and a presentation of language planning issues, the article provides an analysis for each metropolis. The language practices are approached from three angles: the speakers’ linguistic repertoire, the description of language use and the analysis of linguistic attitudes and representations. An emphasis is put on the contribution of speakers associated with cultural diversity to the local sociolinguistic dynamics.


  • Hélène BLONDEAU (Floride, Etats-Unis)
    No salvation outside THE norm ? The Montreal study of variations in hypothetical si-clauses
    2012, Vol. XVII-1, pp. 55-66

    Through the panel study of twelve Montrealers from 1971 to 1995, this article examines the variation between the conditional and the imperfect morphology in hypothetical si-clauses. The two variants, well in place in the spoken French implicit norms system, are in opposition when given values in the normative debate. The analysis indicates the influence of the distance and the event potentiality. Due to vacillations in usage frequency according to the year, the study cannot confirm the hypothesis of a change in favor of the conditional morphology. This case study documents the individual variation across the lifespan and its connection to community change.


  • Jean-Marc DEWAELE (Londres, Grande-Bretagne)
    Acquisition of sociopragmatic competence in a foreign language
    2002, Vol. VII-2, pp. 129-143

    The present study offers an overview of research on the acquisition of sociopragmatic competence in a foreign language. Our starting point is the "hardware", i.e. the bilingual brain and the storage of different types of pragmatic and linguistic information in it. We then adopt a teacher's perpective by looking at how sociopragmatic aspects of the target language are integrated in language courses and language classes. We go on to consider a number of studies on the teaching, the acquisition and the use of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence in the target language. A number of studies on the teaching, the acquisition and the use of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence in the target language are then considered. Theoretical and didactical implications are presented in the final part of the study.


  • Jacques DURAND (Toulouse)
    Phonology of Contemporary English: usage, varieties and structures
    2012, Vol. XVII-1, pp. 25-37

    The PAC project (The Phonology of Contemporary English: usage, varieties, structure) aims at giving a better picture of spoken English in its unity and its geographical, social and stylistic diversity. Based on Labovian methods, the project seeks to describe both rhotic and non rhotic accents of English, from traditional standards to more recent postcolonial varieties. This large corpus enables researchers to analyse and compare intervarietal features such as rhoticity as well as more specific phenomena such as vocalic length in Australian English or variable rhoticity in New Zealand English. Today LVTI, a collaborative project aiming at an interdisciplinary sociolinguistic survey of great urban centres such as Manchester and Toulouse is being set up following the PAC/PFC classical protocol.


  • Françoise GADET (Paris Ouest)
    A large corpus of spoken French : CIEL-F. Epistemological choices and empirical outcome
    2012, Vol. XVII-1, pp. 39-54

    This article presents the structure of the Corpus International Ecologique de la Langue Française, an extensive corpus of spoken French that will soon be available on the Internet, from both an epistemological and empirical perspective. Explanations are given with regard to the ideas that guided the data collection (ecological approach, comparability of the different areas of the Francophonie and communication situations) and to the choices made ("communicative spaces" and "activity types") with a view to relevant analyses in various research fields (variation, interaction, multimodality, French in contact, oral syntax) and an attempt is made to fill existing gaps in the current corpus. The article further addresses the issue of building up a network of experts, problems that had to be solved during fieldwork in the different areas and questions concerning standardisation, archiving and publication of the collected data (audio and video recordings, transcriptions, metadata), whereupon several examples are presented for comparative analyses.


  • Isabelle LÉGLISE (Tours)
    The risks one takes when linguists intervene
    2000, Vol. V-1, pp. 5-13
  • Lorenza MONDADA (Bâle, Suisse)
    Interaction in the context of work: thorough analysis and practical effect
    2006, Vol. XI-2, pp. 5-16
  • Isabelle PIEROZAK (Aix-en-Provence)
    Sociolinguistic approach of French writing on internet: "ge fé dais fotes si je voeux"
    2000, Vol. V-1, pp. 89-104

    The frequent occurrence of electronic conversations (chats) on channels devoted to this activity highlights the existence of ordinary language uses having the peculiarity of being simultaneously current and written and non confidential. This phenomenon is studied here from the point of view of identity, and according to dual and complementary approaches. These link the variety of the (ortho)graphical practices observed to the sociolinguistic representations which organize them at identity level. It appears that the chatters' discursive practices, in the absence of any other way to do it, become the only way to bring to existence for the interlocutors extralinguistic determinants pertaining to the chat, this process being underlied by linguistic representations.


  • Patrick RENAUD (Paris 3)
    Taking action on languages and language situations: looking at the practice
    2004, Vol. IX-2, pp. 81-94

    Bilingualism can be approached either according to a traditional approach of languages as separately identifiable, describable and usable objects or through the observation of ordinary speech practices, i.e. language in action, analysis viewing languages as socially-constructed, unstable objects, which can be variably categorized according to practical ends in the course of action. This approach has been chosen as the framework of the present paper for the analysis of bilingual interactions. Two kinds of observations are made: far from being merely analyzable in terms of code-switching, bilingual interaction has to be described in finer strata, from linguistic sub-systems to ways of speaking and addressing participants in which discourse is jointly realized through the adjustment of such resources to the on-going action. Thus embodying languages in meaning-making social practices leads to questioning drastically reducing and lethal models for language planning which are founded on academic approaches of bilingualism.


  • Didier ROBILLARD (DE) (Tours)
    Sociolinguistic approach of French writing on internet: "ge fé dais fotes si je voeux"
    2000, Vol. V-1, pp. 105-123

    This article tries to evaluate the place granted to language problems in the area of discourses on social work. A historical approach precedes a survey of more recent articles. Various reasons account for the absence of language problems ; however, as time goes on, this dimension is timidly, but progressively more and more taken into account. The author defends the view that better and more contacts would benefit everybody : people benefitting from the social system, social workers, linguists.


  • Claire SAILLARD (Paris 7)
    The sociolinguistic situation in Taiwan
    1998, Vol. III-1, pp. 87-99

    The languages spoken in Taiwan belong partly to the Austronesian linguistic family, and partly to the Chinese languages. The article deals with the state of standardization of the written languages. Besides, the historical origin and the differential status of the Austronesian and Han ethnic groups in the Taiwanese society are described. Language vitality is linked to the social characteristics of the ethnic groups. Finally, the question is raised whether multilingualism can be officially accepted.


  • Sandrine WACHS (Paris 10)
    The influence of age on the pronunciation of French in Ile de France
    1998, Vol. III-1, pp. 57-66

    Does the way a language is spoken vary with the age of the speakers of that language? In this paper we want to discuss different forms of articulatory relaxation in the Ile-de-France area in relation to the age of the speakers of those forms. The study shows that everybody relaxes his or her pronunciation in informal sttings. Only the reduction of "speach markers", such as 'écoute', 'je ne dis pas', seems to be specific to 18-45 year-old speakers.