Raymond Mougeon

The sociolinguistic competence of immersion students

CH. 1 INTRODUCTION CH. 2 METHODOLOGY CH. 3 FINDINGS OF L1 STUDIES CH. 4 RESULTS CH. 5 THE POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF INCREASED FL1 INPUT IN AN EDUCTIONAL CONTEXT CH. 6 CONCLUSION Appendix A: Semi-directed taped interview schedule-including reading passages Appendix B: Student questionnaire survey Appendix C: Objectives of the Ontario Ministry of Education concerning the development of sociolinguistic competence by secondary school French immersion students Appendix D: Results of the GoldVarb analyses of the sociolinguistic variables focused upon in the current research

Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variants by French Immersion Students: The Case of Restrictive Expressions, and More

This article investigates the learning of sociostylistic variation by students in French immersion programs in Ontario. It is primarily focused on their learning of the 4 expressions of restriction, ne . . . que, seulement, rien que, and juste, all meaning ‘only.’ Compared with Canadian Francophones, we found the students’ range of variants to be narrower. They used only 2 variants, seulement and juste. Also, the frequency of their use of these variants was affected by a number of extralinguistic and linguistic parameters (e.g., amount of extracurricular exposure to native Canadian French usage, languages spoken at home, social background and gender, and syntactic context). We discuss our findings in the broader context of research on the learning of linguistic variation by: (a) Canadian learners of French as a second language (FSL), including our own previous research on these same students; and (b) second language (L2) learners of other languages. Finally, we touch on the sociopolitical and pedagogical implications of our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contact-Induced Linguistic Innovations on the Continuum of Language Use: The Case of French in Ontario.

In this paper we present a methodological approach that can be used to determine the likelihood that innovations observed in a minority language are the result of language contact. We then use this methodological approach to frame a discussion of data concerning eight innovations that can be attributed to transfer from the majority language (English) to the French of Francophones residing in the province of Ontario in Canada. This discussion shows, notably, how systemic and extra-systemic factors play a role in the emergence of these innovations. We also demonstrate that there are interesting differences in the extent to which these innovations are used across speaker groups and communities, and we argue that such differences suggest that there are thresholds of language contact associated with the emergence, or lack thereof, of particular transfer-induced innovations.

Acquisition of the internal and external constraints of variable schwa deletion by French Immersion students

Abstract This article is one among a series of studies on the acquisition of patterns of linguistic variation observable in the speech of native speakers of Canadian French by French immersion (FI) students. The present study is centred on deletion of the central vowel schwa, a widespread feature of casual spoken French. In this study, FI students are compared with same age native speakers of Ontario French. Our study has arrived at the following main findings: (i) FI students delete schwa much less frequently than do the speakers of Ontario French; (ii) FI students observe the same phonetic constraints that influence schwa deletion in native Ontario French; (iii) FI students do not observe the constraint of topic formality which is observable in native Ontario French; and (iv) FI students who have had extracurricular contacts with native speakers of French display higher rates of schwa deletion than the FI students who have not had such contacts.

The social and historical context of minority French language education in Ontario

This paper discusses the development of the minority French‐speaking population in Ontario from its origins in the seventeenth century to the present day, focussing on the changing circumstances affecting minority French‐language education. Political, economic and demographic processes are shown to influence the role French‐language schools have been expected to and have been able to play in contributing to the maintenance of French language and culture. The authors conclude that the schools will not be able to achieve their objectives without a higher level of community and government support and without the further development of strategies adapted to the prevalent sociolinguistic reality.

The role of transfer in language variation and change: Evidence from contact varieties of French

In this Special Issue, the focus is on contact-induced language variation and change in situations of societal bilingualism that involve long-term contact between French and another language. As is well known, when two or more languages are spoken by groups of speakers in the same geographical area, over time, features from one language can be transferred to the other language, especially when the languages in question are unequal in terms of prestige, institutional support and demographic factors. The process that leads to the adoption of such features in the contact languages is generally known as INTERFERENCE or TRANSFER , and these terms are also used to describe the features in question (i.e. the end product of the process of transfer). In this issue we prefer to use the term TRANSFER over the use of the notion INTERFERENCE , as the former has fewer negative connotations than the latter.

The influence of classroom input and community exposure on the learning of variable grammar

As pointed out by Carroll (Carroll), our team has investigated the influence of input on the spoken French competence of older Ontario bilinguals. Our research has examined the learning of invariant and variable aspects of French grammar. We focus here on the learning of variation, since it is an under-researched topic not covered by Carroll. Our research examines adolescent speakers of Ontario French from French-medium schools (e.g., Mougeon & Beniak, 1991), same-age immersion students (e.g., Mougeon, Nadasdi & Rehner, 2010) and advanced learners from a bilingual university (e.g., Mougeon & Rehner, 2015). Two key dimensions of input are teacher classroom speech and frequency of use of French in the community for the Franco-Ontarian students and amount of extra-curricular interactions with Francophones for the FSL students. Having collected corpora from these student groups, we compared the output of learners with primarily classroom-based input with that of learners with broader ranging (extra-) curricular input. The availability of teacher in-class recordings for these learner groups has been crucial in identifying additional factors influencing these students’ output.

Contact-induced linguistic innovations on the continuum of language use: The case of French in Ontario - CORRIGENDUM

In this paper we present a methodological approach that can be used to determine the likelihood that innovations observed in a minority language are the result of language contact. We then use this methodological approach to frame a discussion of data concerning eight innovations that can be attributed to transfer from the majority language (English) to the French of Francophones residing in the province of Ontario in Canada. This discussion shows, notably, how systemic and extra-systemic factors play a role in the emergence of these innovations. We also demonstrate that there are interesting differences in the extent to which these innovations are used across speaker groups and communities, and we argue that such differences suggest that there are thresholds of language contact associated with the emergence, or lack thereof, of particular transfer-induced innovations. The theoretical concept of INTERFERENCE has attracted more than its share of criticism. In our view, the generally ‘bad press’ it has received is not due to a flaw in the theory that languages in contact may influence one another – no serious linguist would deny this fact – but rather to the lack of an adequate methodology (and to some extent also to ideological bias). For instance, in the fields of historical linguistics, minority languages, pidgins and Creoles and second language learning, one can find studies that have hastily and erroneously attributed instances of language change or interlanguage errors to language contact and that have downplayed or ignored alternative internal explanations. As a result, the factor of language contact has come to be held with much suspicion by many linguists and some have even elected to demonstrate that it plays only a marginal role as a source of variation and change in situations of societal bilingualism and language contact. While such a demonstration may be motivated on theoretical grounds, it may also reflect a hidden bias on the part of some linguists, because of the stigma that is attached to contact-induced innovations especially when they are documented in minority speech varieties. In the words of Klein-Andreu (p.c.): “the reason for [neglecting contact] is a kind of covert purism: the results of transfer are considered undesirable or ‘bad’; therefore they are ignored or seriously downplayed, as a kind of courtesy to the population under study”. We believe that there has been an overreaction against the notion of contact phenomena in linguistics and one of the goals of the * We would like to thank the anonymous reviewer of a previous version