Nigel Armstrong

The influence of linguistic and social factors on the recent decline of French ne

In this article we present some results showing the decline in radio speech in the use of the French negative particle ne over the last forty years or so. These results derive from a comparison of two radio corpora: an archival corpus recorded by Agren (1973) in 1960–61. The second, contemporary corpus was recorded and analysed by one of the present authors (Smith) in 1997. Having described the variable in question, we present these corpora in turn and analyse results deriving from them. We then examine some of the linguistic constraints that endorse the progressive decline of ne in some contexts while hindering the process in others. Finally we consider some elements of the social context within which the decline of ne has been occurring.

Social and linguistic change in European French

List of Tables List of Figures Preliminary Remarks: The Links Between Social and Linguistic Change Standardisation and Language Change in France, Belgium and Switzerland Social Levelling: Substantive Transformations, Changing Social Practices and Symbolic Representations Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland The Levelling of Regional Varieties in France Regional Vernacular Varieties and Language Levelling in Belgium and Switzerland Social Factors: Bringing Together Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language References Index

Standardization, Ideology and Linguistics

Preface The Nature of the Standard Grammaticality Prestige Speech Patterns Language Change Social Levelling, or Anti-standardization Away from the Anglo-Saxon Model: The Case of French References

The Sociolinguistic Gender Pattern in French: A Comparison of Two Linguistic Levels.

In this article I examine different rates of development, at the linguistic levels of variable pronunciation and discourse, of a sample of French girls aged 11–12. These girls, in contrast to their older counterparts, show variable linguistic behaviour on the phonological level that aligns with the well attested pattern of the avoidance by female speakers of vernacular forms: the ‘sociolinguistic gender pattern’. At the same time, in discourse one female speaker shows a manipulation of conversational tone, as evidenced by her behaviour across speech styles, that is comparable to adult competence. I argue that the disjunction between the girlss communicative competence on these two levels is due to the different social functions that variation fulfils on each level: while variable phonology may serve to express a speakers location in a social-regional nexus that younger speakers have yet to engage with fully, the discourse level expresses more central aspects of a speakers identity that can plausibly be assumed to develop earlier.

The sociolinguistic situation of ‘contemporary dialects of French’ in France today: an overview of recent contributions on the dialectalisation of Standard French

This article presents a synthesis of the sociolinguistic situation of what the authors refer to as the ‘contemporary dialects’ of French in the France of today. The introduction emphasises the methodological and conceptual problems attending any such definition and evaluation, attempting to clarify the complex situation and to identify the various kinds of ‘dialects’, ‘uses’ and ‘speakers’. We then concentrate on the regional ‘dialects’ of French in continental France, urban and rural, and summarise a series of important recent studies, concentrating on local variation. We also distinguish the sociolinguistic situations of the northern and the southern parts of the country. Even though France is known to be a highly centralised country, whose linguistic policy has been aiming at monolingualism for the past two centuries, the article offers some possibly surprising and nuanced results that show more variation than established opinion would generally admit about contemporary France.

The Pollyanna Principle in French: A study of variable lexis

Abstract This article investigates the different rates at which young speakers of French appear to innovate in the use of adjectives of approval and disapproval. The principal research issues examined here are twofold: (i) the validity of the ‘Pollyanna Principle’, a concept in linguistic pragmatics adapted from the ‘Pollyanna Hypothesis’ of psychology, and designed to account for the preference on the part of speakers for avoiding or mitigating negative terms and expressions. This hypothesis is lent support by evidence adduced by Opie and Opie (1959), that negative terms used by children and adolescents tend to be stable, in contrast to the more rapid turnover of terms of approval. (ii) Against this however, more recent sociolinguistic research in French suggests that variation in the lexis of French has a good deal of socio-stylistic value compared to the pronunciation level, and perhaps also the grammar. If true, this implies that French speakers coin lexical items (both negative and positive) more frequently than speakers of English (the language upon which the Opies based their suggestion). The aim of this article is therefore to examine the cross-linguistic validity of the Pollyanna principle, by analysing reported rates of lexical innovation in French.

Social levelling, or anti-standardization

The previous chapters have been concerned primarily with the relationship between the ideology of standardization and linguistics. Here we consider standardization within the context of a more thoroughgoing analysis of the social conditions and ideological framework that arguably lie behind much current linguistic variation and change. The principal theme of this chapter will be that recent social changes have led to the creation of alternative, ostensibly egalitarian, ideologies that implicitly challenge the hierarchical model built into the conventional standard ideology. The result of this from the linguistic point of view is a degree of convergence in linguistic practice that is perhaps unparalleled in modern history. This seems to go beyond the diachronically well-attested phenomenon whereby standard languages at various points in their histories have absorbed and legitimized previously stigmatized speech patterns. Traditionally, where that has happened, the separateness of the standard vis-a-vis other varieties has continued undisturbed. The contemporary situation appears to present a different model, in which the boundary between standard and non-standard is becoming less well defined, partly, though not exclusively, because categories of speaker who previously might have been expected to be loyal stakeholders in the standard ideology increasingly forswear the elitism that such a stance embodies. We analyse this ‘anti-standardization’ process as a form of levelling, but one that operates primarily in the social rather than the geographical dimension and one that involves the global speech community associated with a given language as opposed to localized communities.

Away from the Anglo-Saxon model: the case of French

So far we have not considered whether what might be referred to as the ‘generalized Western’ social situation, previously described, applies uniformly across different countries. Although it appears plausible on a superficial view that recent social change has proceeded in essentially similar ways in most Western industrialized liberal democracies with standardized languages, the different social and political traditions in the UK and elsewhere make a comparison worthwhile. In this chapter we consider the French case because it is often cited as a highly standardized one. Notable differences in social organization in France are the dirigisme and sense of cultural uniqueness characteristic of the country, reflected quite vividly in the example of 1994 legislation designed to prohibit the use in official documents of Anglicisms by French state employees; and the republican attitude widespread in France that sees democracy in the light of upward rather than downward levelling. Against this, it certainly makes sense to assume that the youth-driven changes discussed previously are at work in France; for example, the ‘events’ of May 1968 are above all associated with their French manifestation.

The nature of the standard

In this chapter we attempt to characterize the essential features of standard languages. In the interests of clear exposition we set out these features below in separate sections, although it will be seen that they overlap. These features of the standard refer to the following attributes: the standard as an ideology, which includes beliefs about its beauty, logical nature and efficiency; the socially dominant variety; the overlay acquired subsequent to the vernacular; the synecdochic variety; that which is regionless. We then look at some examples of folk-linguistic perceptions of the standard, before considering more closely the essential characteristics of ideologies as they concern us here.

Prestige speech patterns

In the previous chapter we were concerned with arbitrary exclusions from the standard corpus. Here we look at the converse phenomenon. By this we mean phonetic patterns or grammatical structures that appear to have become embedded in linguistic practice as a by-product of standardization. Adapting the phrase ‘grammatically deviant prestige constructions’ (Emonds 1986), we refer to such phenomena as ‘prestige speech patterns’. In this formulation, the term ‘prestige’ is a recognition of the fact that the relevant patterns occupy a characteristic position in the ideology of the standard: typically they are emblematic of the standard variety and they require a degree of conscious effort (self-editing) on the part of speakers. Such patterns are also normally associated with late acquisition: prestige grammar, in particular, is usually acquired during schooling. Analogously to other pedagogical outcomes, an individual’s competence in relation to a prestige speech pattern may be ‘imperfect’, in the sense that it fails to attain the highest levels of prescriptive adequacy, often due to a tendency to employ the pattern beyond its agreed domain of use. Fowler and Fowler (1922), for example, talk in this connection of ‘bad blunders’ (p. 61) and ‘gross errors’ (p. 93). Linguists prefer the term ‘hypercorrection’, which for expository purposes we retain here, despite its implicitly normative perspective. Accordingly, the next section relates to hypercorrection in pronunciation, and includes the case study of intrusive liaison in French.