Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
This page intentionally left blank
Nigel Armstrong University of Leeds, UK
and
Tim Pooley London Metropolitan University, UK
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
© Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley 2010
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–21950–2 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Armstrong, Nigel. Social and linguistic change in European French / Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–230–21950–2 1. French language—Social aspects—Foreign countries. 2. French language—Social aspects—France. 3. French language—Variation. 4. Sociolinguistics. I. Pooley, Timothy, 1949– II. Title. PC2074.75.A78 2010 447—dc22 2010004047 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
For Sylvia, Katherine and Jonathan; and for Ameus and his wonderful parents, Helen and Owen
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Π αντ ´ α ρ\ ε˜I
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
List of Tables
x
List of Maps
xvii
1 The Links Between Social and Linguistic Change 1.1 The research themes studied in this book 1.2 Levelling 1.3 Structure of the book 2 Standardisation and Language Change in France, Belgium and Switzerland 2.1 Linguistic and social levelling 2.2 The sociolinguistic situations of western Europe 2.3 The dominance of a hypercephalic capital 2.4 Describing the centre 2.5 Language and nation 2.6 Belgium 2.7 Switzerland 2.8 The francophone area in a western European perspective 2.9 Shift and maintenance of minority autochtonous varieties 2.10 The post-industrial and post-diaglossic era 2.11 Historical situations and social changes in the second half of the 20th century 3 Social Levelling: Substantive Transformations, Changing Social Practices and Symbolic Representations 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The emergence of the post-industrial economy 3.3 Changes in occupational structure 3.4 Urbanisation 3.5 Changing gender roles 3.6 Migration 3.7 Internationalisation 3.8 Media and popular culture
1 1 4 7
8 8 8 12 15 20 26 31 35 36 39 40
44 44 46 50 59 70 74 78 80
vii
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Contents
viii
Contents
3.9
4 Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 4.1 Linguistic levelling in the light of social levelling 4.2 The reference pronunciation of France and the ideology of the standard 4.3 Attempting to define Reference French 4.4 Stylistic variation: omission or insertion phenomena? 4.4.1 Variation in the liquid consonants /l/ and /r/ 4.4.2 Variable liaison 4.4.3 Mute-e 4.5 The education system and the acquisition of Standard French in France 4.6 Is there a southern (Provençal) regional standard? 4.7 The emergence of alternative prestigious pronunciations in Francophonie Nord: the example of Quebec 4.8 Prestigious pronunciations in Belgium 4.9 Prestigious pronunciations in Suisse romande 5 The Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 5.1 The problematic nature of identifying regional accents in France 5.2 The relation between regional, social and stylistic variation 5.3 Regional variation in middle-class Oïl usage in the early to mid-20th century 5.4 Marked regional varieties in the early to mid-20th century 5.5 Vernacular Parisian as a regional variety 5.6 Lille and the Nord–Pas-de-Calais 5.7 Brittany and Normandy 5.8 Eastern regions of France 5.9 The northern Oc region and southward spread of supralocal French
84
88 96
100 100 101 105 111 112 114 115 120 123
125 126 138 150 150 153 158 161 165 169 175 180 183
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
(i) Symbolic changes and the late 20th-century zeitgeist: evolving social and national identities 3.9 (ii) Symbolic changes and the late 20th-century zeitgeist: evolving social practices and representations in the everyday 3.10 Concluding remarks
Contents ix
Overview of non-southern French Southern France (i) the traditional situation Southern France (ii) the results of more recent studies Summary of the situation in southern France
6 Regional Vernacular Varieties and Language Levelling in Belgium and Switzerland 6.1 Overview 6.2 Brussels vernacular 6.3 Regional varieties in Wallonia – substrate and perceptions 6.4 Descriptions in the 1970s and 1980s 6.5 Variationist studies 6.6 The Borinage (Thiam, 1995) 6.7 Mons (Moreau and Bauvois, 1998; Bauvois, 2001, 2002a, 2002b) 6.8 Brussels, Gembloux, Liège and Tournai (Hambye, 2005) 6.9 The findings of perceptual studies and summary of the Belgian situation 6.10 The Francoprovençal substrate in Suisse romande 6.11 Regional varieties (Geneva, Neuchâtel, Valais) 6.12 The Vaud: behaviour and perceptions 6.13 More recent perceptions of marked varieties in the Vaud (Singy, 1996) 6.14 Conclusion 7 Social Factors: Bringing Together Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 7.1 Overview of the chapter 7.2 Social class 7.3 Gender 7.4 Historical perspectives on the sociolinguistic consequences of migration 7.5 Urban youth vernaculars 7.6 Concluding remarks
185 186 193 202 205 205 205 211 214 217 218 222 227 235 236 237 240 243 246 249 249 249 253 260 263 273
References
277
Index
297
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13
2.1
Typology of standard dialect constellations in Europe (Auer, 2005) 2.2 Centre-Periphery model (Reynaud, 1981) 2.3 Populations of francophone cities and areas 2.4 Comparative GDP of France, Belgium and Switzerland with purchasing power parity (PPP) in the 21st century 2.5 French and Dutch speakers in 19th-century Brussels 2.6 Population of Belgium 2.7 Two economic indicators in the three regions of Belgium (2005–08) (Eurostat, Brussels) 2.8 Percentage proportions of Brussels residents able to speak various languages well or perfectly (Janssens, 2008: 4) 2.9 French-speaking population in francophone cantons and part-cantons 3.1 Working population in France by sector (1911–2006) 3.2 Working population in Belgium by sector 3.3 Working population in Switzerland (1920–2003) 3.4 Relative prosperity in France, Belgium and Switzerland, with comparisons for USA and European neighbours at the turn of the 21st century 3.5 Gini index for Belgium, France, Switzerland and selected countries 3.6 Socio-professional categories used by Singy (1996: 72–3) 3.7 Comparison of educational categories in the Lille (Lefebvre, 1991) and Mons studies (Bauvois, 2002a) 3.8 Educational achievement in France (percentages) by age and gender in 2007 3.9 Favourability to success at school and parents’ profession 3.10 Urbanites and population density in a number of western European countries at the turn of the 21st century (Johnstone and Mandryk, 2001; Bassand, 2004)
9 13 15 17 19 27 28
30 32 47 47 47
49 53 54 55 55 56
60
x
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
List of Tables
List of Tables xi
68 70 72 75 76
81 91 102 106 109
112
113
114
117 117
119 121
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
3.11 Populations of major urban areas and urban centres in Wallonia 3.12 The major (fully and partly) francophone cities of Switzerland (Schuler, 2003) 3.13 Gender equality in France, Belgium and Switzerland (1= equality) (Haussmann, Tyson and Zahidi, 2008) 3.14 Proportion of foreign residents in selected European countries 3.15 Geographical distribution of foreigners in Belgium in 2006 3.16 Average daily time (in minutes) spent watching television in selected European countries (Poesmens, 2005) 3.17 Religious affiliation by percentage of population in selected countries (Johnstone and Mandryk, 2001) 4.1 List of social groups cited as exemplars of Reference French (Laks, 2002) 4.2 The oral vowel phonemes of the prescriptive norm (PN) Müller, 1985: 83) 4.3 Consonantal phonemes of the prescriptive norm (Müller, 1985; Lyche, forthcoming 2010) 4.4 Total numbers (N) and percentage deletion rates (%) for /l/-deletion in subject clitic pronouns except il + C: group scores (Armstrong, 1993) 4.5 Total numbers, percentage deletion rates and style shift for /r/ in the sequence WFPOLD + V: e.g. in je vais être en cinquième (Armstrong, 1993) 4.6 Variable liaison in 1960–61 and 1995–96 on public-service radio in France (Ågren, 1973; Smith, 1996) 4.7 Total numbers (N) and percentage insertion rates (%) for mute-e in the context: VC_CV, e.g. in la semaine in Dieuze (Armstrong, 1993) 4.8 Mute-e insertion in monosyllabic words in (V)C_C(V) as in: c’est dans le bureau (Hansen, 2000) 4.9 Rate of realisation of pre-pausal schwa after a single consonant in Hansen’s 1989 and 1993 data (Hansen and Mosegaard Hansen, 2003), as in: c’est Pierre-euh, bonjour-euh 4.10 Mise en mots of primary-school pupils in Le Havre regarding French lessons (Caitucoli et al., 2003: 21)
List of Tables
4.11 4.12
‘Regional standard’ in Provence (Taylor, 1996) Perceived comparisons of variety status (Moreau and Brichard, 1999b: 29–30) 4.13 Responses to statement: ‘Le meilleur français, c’est celui que parlent les Français’ (Francard, 1993: 25) 4.14 Countries where (a) the best and (b) the worst French is spoken (Francard, 1993: 27–8) 4.15a Oral vowels in open stressed syllables by middle-class Brussels speaker (born 1950) of francophone background (Walter, 1982: 110) 4.15b Oral vowels in unstressed and closed syllables by middle-class Brussels speaker (born 1950) of francophone background (Walter, 1982: 110) 4.16 Non-supralocal features of ‘unmarked’ Belgian French 4.17 Use of non-supralocal features on RTBF news 4.18 Oral vowels in word-final stressed syllables in varieties used in Suisse romande (Métral, 1977: 168) with points of contrast in Burgundy (Martinet, 1945) in parentheses 4.19 Oral vowels in non-final stressed syllables in varieties used in Suisse romande (Métral, 1977: 168) with points of contrast in Burgundy (Martinet, 1945) in parentheses 4.20 Proportion of claimed merged pronunciations among Swiss secondary-school students in selected lexical items for /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ (Schoch et al., 1980: 10) 4.21 Recognition of short and long vowels by students from Neuchâtel and Paris (Grosjean et al., 2007) 4.22 Use of non-supralocal French features in TSR evening news March-April 2009 5.1 Correlation between rank order of Nancy speakers by perception as working-class and rates of word-final post-obstruent liquid deletion (Armstrong and Boughton, 2009: 14) 5.2a The middle-class non-southern vowel distribution (Martinet, 1945: 206) 5.2b The middle-class non-southern vowel distribution (Martinet, 1945: 206) 5.3 Supralocal French-divergent vocalic features in regional varieties (Walter, 1982; Carton et al., 1983)
124 130 130 131
132
133 133 137
144
144
145 146 147
151 160 160 163
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
xii
List of Tables xiii
5.4
164
167 171 171
172
173 173 174
174 180 183 188 188
191 192
196 197 198
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Supralocal French-divergent consonant features in regional varieties (Walter, 1982; Carton et al., 1983) 5.5 Comparison of Parisian vernacular in the 1970s and 1990s (Carton et al., 1983: 84; Armstrong and Jamin, 2002: 132) 5.6 The ‘dialect mix’ 5.7 Chronological loss of Picard items in Lille (Pooley, 2004: 344) 5.8 The Lillois phonological sub-system. Phonological contrasts ordered according to likelihood of neutralisation (Lefebvre, 1991) 5.9 The Lillois phonetic sub-system. Phonetic differences from the prescriptive norm ordered by vernacular prominence (Lefebvre, 1991) 5.10 Level of education and frequency of use of variants (Lefebvre, 1991) 5.11 Use of [A], [æö] and [O] by level of education (Pooley, 1996) 5.12 Regional features specifically mentioned by informants in two perceptual studies (Landrecies, 2001: 207–8; Eloy et al., 2003: 207) 5.13 Intergenerational changes in Domfront (Girard and Lyche, 2003) 5.14 Distinctive length differences in close and open vowels in Besançon French (based on Rittaud-Hutinet, 2001) 5.15a Claimed middle-class southern oral-vowel distribution in the 1940s (Martinet, 1945: 208) 5.15b Claimed middle-class southern oral-vowel distribution in the 1940s (Martinet, 1945: 2008) 5.16 Use of southern consonantal variants by speakers born 1900–1950 (Brun, 1931; Séguy, 1951; Walter, 1982 (detailed profiles); Carton et al., 1983) 5.17 Use of consonantal variants in Walter (1982): all southern speakers 5.18 Schwa deletion among school students by gender and social class (conversational style) (Armstrong and Unsworth, 1999) 5.19 Nasal vowel realisations in Aix-en-Provence (Taylor, 1996: 88) 5.20 Realisations of /e/-/E/ in Aix-en-Provence (Taylor, 1996: 105–11)
xiv List of Tables
199 206
208
208
208 215 218
220
221 222 224
225 225 228 228
229
230
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
5.21 Realisations of /o/-/O/ in aube, robe in Aix-en-Provence (Taylor, 1996: 76) 6.1 Sociolinguistic profile of Belgian nationals in Brussels in the mid-20th century 6.2 Realisation of vowels in stressed position among working-class Brussels bilinguals in the 1960s (Baetens-Beardsmore, 1971: 76) 6.3 Oral vowels in open stressed syllables by working-class Brussels speaker (born 1896) of Flemish background (Walter, 1982) 6.4 Oral vowels in unstressed and closed syllables by working-class Brussels speaker (born 1896) of Flemish background (Walter, 1982) 6.5 Features of marked accents in five locations in Wallonia (based on Walter, 1982; Francard, 1989a) 6.6 The locations of recent sociolinguistic studies in Belgium 6.7 Proportion of sample using alveolar [r] and uvular [ö] or both variants [ö±] in the Borinage, by education and age (Thiam, 1995: 83) 6.8 Proportion of sample using alveolar [r] and uvular [ö] or both variants [ö±] in the Borinage, by education, age and gender (Thiam, 1995: 84) 6.9 Four-point scale of levels of educational achievement used in Mons studies (Bauvois, 2002a, 2002b) 6.10 Variables selected for study in Bauvois (2002a, 2002b) 6.11 Overall percentage frequencies of occurrence in Mons study (Bauvois 2002a, 2002b) for Definition (D), Reading (R) and Conversation (C) tasks for seven variables 6.12 Frequencies of use of two variables across three styles by gender and social class (Bauvois, 2002a) 6.13 Social profile of speakers 6.14 Location and variables studied by Hambye (2005) 6.15 Overall rates of WFCD in Conversation in Gembloux and Tournai by age and level of education (Hambye, 2005: 151) 6.16 Overall rates of WFCD in Conversation in Gembloux and Tournai by gender and social mobility (Hambye, 2005: 151)
List of Tables xv
232 233 233
234
235 239
240
240 241
242
242
243 244 250 255 265
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
6.17 Most frequently occurring variants of /r/ by percentage for Reading Tasks for 47 speakers from Brussels, Gembloux, Liège and Tournai 6.18 Percentage use of SAVs in Reading Task and Conversation for 47 speakers, by age and education 6.19 Percentage frequency of SAVs by speakers from four locations, by age (Hambye, 2005: 237) 6.20 Frequency of use of schwa in combined conversational styles for four contexts by speakers from Gembloux, Liège and Tournai, by age and level of education (Hambye, 2005: 320–3) 6.21 Geographical and age distribution of overall schwa realisation in conversation style (Hambye, 2005: 325) 6.22 Comparison of Walter’s Valaisain informants with regard to key Swiss features 6.23 Percentage proportions of claimed mergers among Swiss secondary-school pupils in selected lexical items for /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/(Schoch et al., 1980: 10) 6.24 Percentage proportions of Swiss secondary-school pupils accepting douze-douce and vide-vite as acceptable rhymes (Schoch et al., 1980: 14) 6.25 Profiles of informants interviewed by Andreassen (2006: 116) 6.26 Comparison of Vaud speaker (Walter, 1982: 195) with PFC data (Andreassen and Lyche, 2003; Andreassen, 2004, 2006) for oral vowels in open syllables 6.27 Comparison of Vaud speaker (Walter, 1982) with PFC data (Andreassen and Lyche, 2003; Andreassen, 2004, 2006) for oral vowels in checked syllables 6.28 Comparison of Vaud speaker (Walter, 1982) with PFC data (Andreassen and Lyche, 2003; Andreassen, 2004, 2006) for nasal vowels 6.29 Towns and districts of the Vaud studied in Singy (1996) listed by zones 7.1 Upward drift of educational attainment in Mons region (Thiam, 1995; Bauvois, 2002a) 7.2 Degrees of /o/ fronting based on formant frequency analysis (Armstrong and Low, 2008: 448) 7.3 Divergent phonological features in La Courneuve (Armstrong and Jamin, 2002: 132)
xvi List of Tables
7.5 7.6 7.7
Affrication of dental and velar stops in two styles in La Courneuve (Jamin, 2005: 43) Affrication by style, age and gender in La Courneuve (Armstrong and Jamin, 2002: 133) Style shift in use of back /a/ and open /o/ (Marcq-en-Barœul, 1995; Lille-Sud, 2005) Use of back /a/ and open /o/ by gender and ethnicity (Group Conversation) (Marcq-en-Barœul, 1995; Lille-Sud, 2005)
266 267 271
271
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
7.4
2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 6.1 6.2
The linguistic and territorial divisions of Belgium The linguistic and territorial divisions of Switzerland The major urban areas of Francophone Europe The Île-de-France region Commuting to and from Lille in the Nord–Pas-de-Calais in the 1990s The urban areas of Wallonia The major urban areas of Switzerland The métropole lémanique The supralocal French area as defined by Armstrong (2001) Bilingualism in the autochtonous languages of France (Pottier, 1968) The so-called pays des Chtimis Documented spread of supralocal French in France Southern France showing localities investigated in a sociolinguistic perspective The traditional dialect regions of Wallonia (Rossillon, 1995: 57; Lechanteur, 1997: 85) Mons-Borinage
29 33 62 63 65 67 68 69 154 157 170 186 187 212 219
xvii
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
List of Maps
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
This page intentionally left blank
The Links Between Social and Linguistic Change
1.1 The research themes studied in this book The principal research theme examined in this book is variation, and to some extent change, in the pronunciation of contemporary European French, considered from the viewpoint of how language change has reflected and continues to reflect social changes in the principal Frenchspeaking countries of Europe. It is of course axiomatic that variation can indicate change, and the study of language variation and change implies consideration of accounts of past linguistic behaviour and the sociolinguistic functions that speakers exercise in their present variable pronunciation. This further connected theme has therefore to do with differences between the processes of social change that have occurred in these countries. We leave detailed consideration of this issue until Chapter 3, but briefly, this latter purpose focusses on whether we can legitimately talk of an ‘exception culturelle’ that sets the francophone countries apart in their linguistic behaviour from the rather notable increase of informality observable in most Western liberal countries, manifested in what is sometimes referred to as social levelling. For the most part we will examine here quantitative evidence of sociolinguistic functioning of the kind that derives from the variationist or Labovian method, summarised below. We adopt a comparative approach by looking at the sociolinguistic situations in France, Belgium and Switzerland, including the Dutch- and German-speaking areas. We glance at English too, partly because results are copious and examples will be familiar to many readers, and partly because the way in which social levelling is working out in the UK contrasts interestingly with the continental European situations. 1
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
1
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
We recognise that any cross-linguistic or cross-cultural comparison is to a large extent arbitrary. As Kerswill and Williams remark (2002: 81): ‘Because of the uniqueness of every case of language change and the problem of finding controls, it is extremely difficult to predict, for a particular constellation of factors, exactly what the outcome will be.’ Certainly no benchmark language is available, since no language can be taken as the default with regard to language change or indeed in any other perspective, but although it appears plausible on a superficial view that recent social change has proceeded in essentially similar ways in Western post-industrial liberal democracies having standard languages, the different social, cultural and political traditions in these countries seem to make comparisons worthwhile. Indeed, against the contention of Kerswill and Williams may be cited Auer (2005: 7), who suggests that ‘on a sufficient level of generalisation there is a systematicity behind the superficial heterogeneity [of standard–dialect situations in European languages] which unfolds from a historical perspective’. A comparison of the French, Belgian and Swiss situations is therefore motivated in that they have in common a standard language, however that term applies to the various other languages spoken within their borders and however their dialects differ in relation to it. Thus the essential similarities between the countries mean that a comparison is more motivated than would be a study comparing two languages having very different structures, as well as being situated within markedly different cultural and socio-economic modes of organisation. As stated above, the Labovian programme is central to the present work, because its main concern is to understand how linguistic change is actuated and diffused by studying patterns of, and interactions between, synchronic linguistic variation along the social and stylistic dimensions of language use. The Labovian emphasis on the mechanisms rather than the social motivations of language change reflects the agenda set by Labov in the early 1960s. Although a few early studies foreshadowed his pioneering work on linguistic variation, Labov was the first to show the structured nature of linguistic variation and change, and to bring to light systematic correlations between speakers’ demographic attributes (principally social class, age, sex and ethnicity) and their orientation to the standard language. He did this by developing a methodology that enabled him to study linguistic change and how it penetrates linguistic contexts, as well as spreading socially. The present work is concerned similarly with the examination of these patterns of variation, and has as its principal aim the relation between variation and change; but we claim a fresh approach because we reflect
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
2
on the way in which patterns of language variation and change track, or are otherwise related to, social change, this latter considered in greater detail than hitherto. In variationist sociolinguistics, the emphasis so far mostly has been on how changes work through certain linguistic contexts, and by the agency of certain social groups. By contrast, there has been relatively little investigation, at least on a large social scale, into the ways in which language change mirrors social change, apart from a few micro-studies that have had this emphasis. If it is accepted that social change drives linguistic change (an axiom of sociolinguistics) then it must be that large-scale processes of language change like levelling are similarly motivated, as the great French historical linguist Meillet (1921: 17–18) suggested in general terms some time ago: The only variable element to which one can turn to explain linguistic change is social change [. . .] and it is changes in the structure of society which alone can modify the conditions of existence of a language. We need to determine which social structure corresponds to a given linguistic structure and how, in general, changes in social structure translate into changes in linguistic structure. This then is the concern of the present book. We do indeed accept that social change drives linguistic change, while recognising that internal pressures can also prompt language change. But we recognise too the imprecision of the formulation that ‘social change drives linguistic change’ and adopt here the approach that stresses the link between variable pronunciation and social identity, such that speakers are capable of adopting phonological adjustments in order to gain social advantage by alignment to the desired ‘reference group’. Many if not most speakers of a language are capable of imitating varieties other than their own. Imitation or mimicry, which by definition take place over the short term, are however very different from long-term accommodation to a reference group, with all the psychosocial investment that implies. The reference group was defined by Merton (1957: 287) as: ‘any of the groups of which one is a member, and these are comparatively few, as well as groups of which one is not a member, and these are, of course, legion, [which] can become reference points for shaping one’s attitudes, evaluations and behavior’. The position then is essentially that speakers may adopt new linguistic forms, the property of a given reference group, because they seek thereby to gain social advantage or avoid disadvantage. As Labov points out (2001: 191), this view is similar to that articulated by Le Page and Tabouret-Keller (1985), who expressed their
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
The Links Between Social and Linguistic Change 3
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
perspective on the adoption of linguistic forms with this purpose in the well-known phrase ‘acts of identity’. The concept of social identity, central to the study of the relations between society and language as well as many other social practices, is useful in attempting to explore the relationships between opposites like group and individual, status and solidarity, in-group and out-group. Individual social identity, a psychosocial continuity which is at the same time susceptible to development, is difficult to theorise or even describe with much rigour, because it is multi-faceted and dynamic and perhaps most obviously experienced subjectively. It is perhaps rarely the object of conscious reflection, and is composed of elements which are in any event recalcitrant to precise measurement or even definition: class, gender, age, region and ethnicity are the most frequently evoked. Even if some of these categories are more discrete, or less abstract, than others, they are all ‘moving targets’ in the sense of being capable of ongoing development or construction, both in the short and long term. Social identity is of course a concept, however difficult of application, but is based on psychological reality. It is central to the present enterprise, but we approach it in the customary, rough-and-ready way through the social components mentioned above: class, age, gender, etc.
1.2 Levelling The social concept we investigate here is a kind of symbolic social levelling: the nexus of attitudes that tend to erode hierarchical structures, emphasise the worth of the individual, promote the values of youth and accelerate the decline of deference. This symbolic social levelling is of course driven by real change: political, economic, demographic and other. We present here a good deal of detail that goes some way to explaining the process, while recognising that the zeitgeist, the cultural climate that shapes much of contemporary social practice, partakes of a large element of the imponderable. A descriptive-analytical literature on levelling seems to be lacking, although some French scholars have approached the subject in a committed way, either criticising the phenomenon (Finkielkraut, 1987) or applauding it (Maffesoli, 1988). A paper by Wouters (1986) refers to the process as ‘informalisation’, but this term, though intuitive, is unfortunate as it is current in economics in a quite different sense relating to the parallel economy. Also relevant to this issue is the set of concepts associated with the post-modernist enterprise which lays stress on the blurring between high culture and low culture, among many other social and intellectual phenomena.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
4
What lends interest to the French situation is the ‘republican elitism’ that promotes, at least in intention, an upward rather than downward levelling. This is reflected in a resistance to linguistic variation and change that is institutionalised in France in ways that are far to seek in comparable countries. The obvious linguistic corollary of social change in the direction of symbolic convergence is the attenuation of ‘prestige’ forms and the promotion of ‘change from below’: the adoption by middle-class speakers of working-class language features. This latter is a phenomenon attested, in English and other European languages, by a considerable number of quantitative results, and while French data are increasingly available, the phenomenon seems rarer, at least in pronunciation. Dialect levelling is currently a prominent focus of interest in sociolinguistics, understandably so in view of the processes of social and geographical mobility currently weakening a social fabric that has hitherto been fairly cohesive. Foulkes and Docherty (1999: 13) have the following definition that is widely cited: Levelling differs from standardisation (or dedialectalisation) in that speakers do not automatically abandon their local forms in preference for the standard. Rather, there appears to be a tension between speakers’ desire to continue signalling loyalty to their local community by using local speech norms, and a concurrent urge to appear outward-looking or more cosmopolitan. This definition, while it might correspond to the UK situation and others, contrasts sharply with what was suggested above concerning French. One of the substantial findings of quantitative sociolinguistics is nevertheless that most language change proceeds from below. The major difference between France and a number of other comparable countries is that the social-regional stereotypes underlying urban vernaculars seem to be exploited in these latter countries in opposition to traditionally prestigious language varieties, and hence of course to the social values they represent. This picture does not sit comfortably with the overarching description of linguistic variation that Chambers and Trudgill saw fit to retain in the second edition of their much cited textbook. The authors make claims for their generalisations that can be read as universal (1998: 70): One plausible explanation for linguistic variability focusses on the fact that whenever there is class differentiation in a linguistic
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
The Links Between Social and Linguistic Change 5
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
variable, it is the variant used by the higher classes that is ascribed more prestige than the other variants. As a result, in situations in which attention is directed towards speech, speakers of all classes will tend to increase their use of the higher-status variants. Stylistic variation, by this explanation, is a direct result of social-class variation. Differences in social class give rise to the assigning of value judgements to particular linguistic variants, and formal situations lead to a greater use of the highly valued pronunciations. In short, a social hierarchy is reflected directly in a linguistic hierarchy, and by derivation in a stylistic hierarchy. That fact of a variable being involved in change calls for another sort of account, since most change proceeds ‘from below’, i.e. from the adoption by middle-class speakers of hitherto working-class variants. In Chambers and Trudgill’s logic, this would entail either a mutation of the social hierarchy, or what may be the same thing, the reassignment to the adopted variant of a prestige previously denied it; that is, a kind of legitimating of the variant by the standard language, or by certain of its speakers. Mutations of this type are the subject of the present work. Since the initiation of the Labovian programme in the early 1960s, which is also the time when the social changes we examine began to gather momentum, they appear to be close to universal, and yet they remain under-investigated. While in the UK and other countries sociolinguistic phenomena seem broadly to track the zeitgeist which encourages informalisation, as witnessed by the decline of Received Pronunciation, what is happening in European French calls for description and theorisation that seem less intuitive, since despite the presence of similar (but not identical) macro-social factors the linguistic tracking is harder to fit into patterns or sub-patterns attested both in the UK and in other parts of Europe. This seems to be because the social-regional dialect pattern in France has been levelled to a large extent already, where the term ‘levelling’ is used in the contrary sense of the erosion of low-value dialect features in favour of the standard. In contrast to what is happening elsewhere, we appear to be witnessing, in French pronunciation, particularly in France, a process of modified change from above and below that sees the standard, or more neutrally, the supralocal variety, supplanting most of the others, to the point where the social patterning manifested elsewhere in variable pronunciation appears to be shifting to the grammar and lexicon. The term ‘supralocal’ seems preferable since it does not necessarily connote the prestige that inevitably attaches to the standard.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
6
The Links Between Social and Linguistic Change 7
This book is organised as follows. Chapter 2 considers firstly the typology of standardisation and language change proposed by Auer (2005), in relation to France, Belgium and Switzerland, before discussing the demographic and geographical conditions that have shaped the various standardisation patterns. Chapter 3 considers the changing social practices that, as stated above, have come about partly as a result of the economic and demographic shifts of recent times. We present these at the level of detail necessary to provide an adequate backdrop for the description of linguistic variation and change presented in subsequent chapters. In Chapter 4 we discuss the various linguistic descriptions of the prestige standard or supralocal varieties of francophone Europe, and describe some of the non-regional changes observable in recent times. Chapters 5 and 6, by contrast, focus in detail on the spread of supralocal French at the expense of localised varieties, in France (Chapter 5) and in Belgium and Switzerland (Chapter 6). In Chapter 7 we consider the effects of social class, gender and ethnicity, as specifically manifested in the three countries selected for study.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
1.3 Structure of the book
Standardisation and Language Change in France, Belgium and Switzerland
2.1 Linguistic and social levelling In the following chapter we give an account of the social changes that have occurred in western European countries from the 1960s, an epoch generally accepted as a key turning-point. The changes, whether substantive like the rise in the numbers of people entering post-compulsory education, the decline in those working in industry and agriculture; or attitudinal like the decline of deference and the corresponding increase of informality, describable as the zeitgeist, appear to have affected western countries in analogous ways in many areas of social practice. It is however undeniable that these changes have occurred in societies possessing very different linguistic traditions.
2.2 The sociolinguistic situations of western Europe While periods of social upheaval are reflected in linguistic behaviour, language change follows social transformation in ways that are difficult to generalise meaningfully across linguistic communities. Perhaps the most authoritative transnational overview of language change in recent decades in various parts of Europe is that of Auer, Hinskens and Kerswill (2005), who coordinated a collection of articles covering the convergence and divergence of dialects in Europe in eleven European countries. In its geographical coverage, Fandrych and Salverda’s (2007) volume on Germanic languages is complementary and overlapping. One of the major gaps in these two volumes is the lack of detailed reference to the francophone areas, the issue we address here. We shall argue that the rather extreme situation of France in particular, sometimes referred to in political, social, cultural and other terms as the exception française, 8
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
2
can add a valuable additional element to the picture, set in comparison with the constellation of highly differentiated situations sketched in broad outline below, particularly when one adopts a sufficiently long time frame is adopted, as Auer does (2005). Indeed Auer argues, speculatively but with much coherence, for a high degree of commonality of historico-sociolinguistic situations over a range of European countries. Historically, the key fact was the undoing of diglossia between Latin and a national variety which led (in some cases not immediately) between the 16th and 19th centuries to the abandonment of Latin as the H form and the promotion of a vernacular in most but not all cases as a national standard. The diglossic situation as between Latin and a number of autochtonous varieties is classed as Type 0, and Auer outlines four other cases based on a limited number of key notions, summarised in Table 2.1. For France, the unravelling of the Latin–vernacular diglossia of the Middle Ages in favour of an emerging standard variety by the 17th century has been throroughly documented by Lodge (1993) using Haugen’s well-known model (1966). This depicts standardisation as a series of partly successive, partly concurrent processes: (a) selection, (b) acceptance, (c) elaboration of function, (d) codification and (e) maintenance, and it accords with Auer’s attenuated version characterising the written standard as the H variety in a diglossic situation and bearing at least some marks of codification and elaboration (Auer, 2005: 8). According Table 2.1 Typology of standard dialect constellations in Europe (Auer, 2005) Type
Description
Examples
0
Diglossia with exoglossic H variety
Latin in Middle Ages; French in royal or imperial courts in German-speaking areas in 18th century
A
Medial diglossia with endoglossic standard mostly confined to writing
16th-century Paris; German-speaking Switzerland
B
To Type A is added Spoken diglossia, i.e. standard variety adopted in the speech of educated urbanites with regional variation
Austria; Flanders
C
Diaglossia. Spoken standard with regional standards and regional vernaculars
United Kingdom; Italy
D
Post diglossia and post diaglossia
Northern France; Denmark
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 9
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
to Auer’s model, the emergence of Standard French occurred early, and from his broad transnational perspective, in a relatively straightforward manner. This should not be construed as suggesting that the transition from Type 0 to Type A was not the result of a prolonged period of competition, for this lasted from the appearance of the earliest written texts considered as French, dating from the 9th century, up to the 17th century, by which time French had been codified and had replaced Latin in all but a few domains of writing and formal speech (theology, for instance). This phase is characterised by medial diglossia, where, in Lodge’s account, competing standard varieties were used in various parts of the Langue d’Oïl area, although this conflicts with the dominant orthodoxy among French-based scholars of a common composite written form, or what Carton (1992) calls the ‘compromis inter-régional d’Oïl’. The vernacular variety in the situation of spoken diglossia (Type B) has been described for Paris by Lodge (2004) on the basis of a reconstruction using various written characterisations of the vernacular, and for Lille by Pooley (2004) complemented by Hornsby’s study (2006b) of Avion, a mining town in the Pas-de-Calais with a closely related base dialect, using spoken data gathered both in a variationist perspective and by classic dialectological methods. These characteristics of dialect shift are a crucial part of the levelling process which, by its highly advanced character, seems to mark out the francophone area in relation to most of the rest of Europe (Armstrong, 2001). This levelling is sometimes referred to as convergence, although these terms imply a two-way exchange. The term Advergenz has been proposed by Mattheier (1996: 34) to describe a situation where the exchanges are predominantly one-way. Advergence typically reflects the resolution of a historically diglossic situation, the adoption of the spoken variety of the capital as the basis of a national standard (Ferguson, 1959). We adopt the term here. For our present purposes Type C and D situations are of crucial import, as they characterise the relationship of the standard to dialects in an era of post-spoken diglossia. One of the key questions is whether any parts of France, Belgium and Switzerland show marks of diaglossia and if so, which. Put another way, does it make sense to talk of regional standards in relation to francophone Europe, as it does in many others parts of the continent, such as Denmark (Pedersen, 2005), Sweden (Thelander, 1982) and the German-speaking regions (Durrell, 2007)? Moreover, are regional vernaculars used in a continuum, with base dialects still generally part of the active linguistic repertoire of the majority of the indigenous population, and still transmitted to children as the language of
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
10
first socialisation? In the areas where non-Romance vernaculars are or were used, the Dunkerquois, Brittany, Alsace-Lorraine and the Basque Country, does genuine diglossia persist and do local or regional varieties bear any imprint of an exoglossic substrate? The latter consideration also applies to bilingual cities such as Brussels and Biel-Bienne. Auer argues that a situation can be characterised as diaglossic even if the base dialects and traditional (exoglossic) ancestral vernaculars have fallen into disuse, provided that regional dialects enjoy vitality, with these defined as vernacular varieties of the national mainstream language. If by this definition Auer (2005: 24) can reasonably claim that many parts of England are diaglossic, then much of the literature on regional varieties of French, particularly Walter (1982) and Carton, Rossi, Autesserre and Léon (1983) would lead us to characterise France in a similar way, although the notion of regional standard would appear to apply only to the south, as indeed we claim in Chapter 4 in relation particularly to Provence. It appears at least plausible that francophone Belgium and Suisse romande, forming parts of independent nations, should have distinct national varieties, both prestige and vernacular, as is the case in the German-speaking (Durrell, 2007) and Dutch-speaking countries (Willemyns, 2007), as well as in the component nations of the UK where distinctive, readily recognisable prestige and vernacular national varieties of English are used. In contrast to England and to France, base dialects in the German-speaking countries show much greater vitality, particularly in Austria and Switzerland, where they are still the first language of a significant proportion of the population, if not its entirety in the case of Switzerland. Both Belgium and Switzerland are of course federal states where French speakers share the territory with fellow citizens who live in diglossic situations (German- and Italian-speaking Swiss and Flemish Belgians). Some of their fellow-citizens live in a situation characterised by Auer as Überschichtung or overlayering, such that their standard variety is overlaid by an exoglossic standard. This is clearly the case for the Romanche-speaking Swiss, who are bilingual or bidialectal in their L1 and German, either standard or dialectal. Italian-speaking Swiss and German-speaking Belgians are socialised into a diglossic situation in their first language but would find it difficult to manage in their homeland without knowing French, or for the former, French or German. In the case of Belgian germanophones, their territory is part of the region of Wallonia, and therefore German (used in a diglossic situation of High German and Frankish dialects) is in their communities institutionally overlaid by French. While the non-francophone parts of
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 11
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Belgium and Switzerland may be characterised as diglossic or diaglossic (Rash, 1998), this is not obviously the case in Wallonia and Suisse romande. In these two regions, the base dialects, which are all typologically close to Standard French (Oïl or Francoprovençal), have, with a few notable exceptions, been largely desocialised, in some cases, particularly in the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, more radically than in the provincial Oïl areas of France. Whether French-speaking Belgium and Suisse romande can be claimed to be diaglossic is a matter of considerable debate in the sociolinguistic literature, and one which we shall address in more detail in Chapter 6. It will be useful to bear in mind that the question is generally framed in rather different terms. While Belgian scholars (in particular Francard, 1999a and Moreau, 1997) disagree on whether there is a prestige Belgian pronunciation, and Swiss scholars (particularly Thibault, 1998) take a very different approach to the concept of a national prestige norm of pronunciation (or regional within the continuous francophone space), there is general agreement (in particular by Francard, 1999 and Singy, 1996) on the greater overt prestige of the extraterritorial norm centred in France and particularly Paris, which can be said in Auer’s perspective to overlie any Belgian or Swiss norms. The centrality of Paris is a key factor both to the understanding of francophone Europe and to any argument for an exception française.
2.3 The dominance of a hypercephalic capital In this section we present two complementary models of the centrality of Paris used in the sociolinguistic literature: firstly Lodge (2004) who uses Hohenberg and Lees’ (1985) model of the history of urban Europe; and secondly the Centre-Periphery model (Reynaud, 1981) applied by Singy (1996) to the canton of Vaud in Switzerland and by Pooley (2004) to Lille. Lodge periodises his account of the development of Parisian speech into three stages: the pre-industrial phase from the 11th to the 14th centuries; the proto-industrial age from 15th to the 18th; and the industrial age in the 19th and 20th centuries. Hohenberg and Lees contrast two major types of urban system: the Network System and the Central-Place System. The Network System is particularly characteristic of the cities of northern Italy, Flanders and the Hansa in the Middle Ages. Cities evolving primarily through the Network System constitute a node in a network of urban areas linked by trade, operating as a gateway for the towns in its regional hinterland and linked to the larger network by its foreland. The growth of the city is a function of its attractive powers in commerce and exchange. In such cases – Amsterdam and Venice are cited as examples – the city is seen as creating the region,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
12
rather than the opposite, stimulating production of agricultural surpluses in its surrounding areas. Within the Network System, there is neither readily definable symmetry nor shape, nor indeed constraints on linear distance. Its usefulness is tied in with trade routes, such as the river system of medieval Flanders dominated by the Meuse and the Scheldt (Escaut), which together with tributaries such as the Scarpe and the Lys link Cambrai, Tournai, Courtrai, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Rotterdam. Paris, on the other hand, is a clear example of the Central-Place System, although the two systems are not mutually exclusive, since the French capital was able to develop in large measure because of its position on important trade routes and its proximity to productive agricultural areas capable of providing food for an increasing population. Hohenberg and Lees (1985: 690) describe the Central-Place system as a neat geometric mosaic of graduated centres structuring the commercial, administrative and cultural needs of a region and eventually integrating regions into a unified nation. The major central place is supported by a number of secondary central ones. Such places tend not to be random in size but to locate at even distances from one another and thus to range relatively regularly in an urban hierarchy: national capitals, provincial or regional capitals and market towns. This model, largely based on economic and demographic factors, would be expected to predict that there will be a number of major urban centres dominating their regions and acting as norm-setters in a wide range of respects including, crucially from our perspective, speech norms, whereas in reality Paris dominates virtually all aspects of national life. A greater range of factors than the notion of the Central-Place System is captured by the Centre-Periphery model devised by Reynaud (1981), the principal elements of which are shown in Table 2.2. The successful application of the model to regions in France (Lille-Métropole; Pooley, 2004) and Switzerland (Vaud; Singy, 1996) suggests strongly that it would work as fruitfully in other parts of the European francophone space. Table 2.2 Centre-Periphery model (Reynaud, 1981) (1) demographic weight (2) relatively high standard of living and production capacity (3) concentration of financial, economic, administrative, military and decision-making powers (4) infrastructure underpinning its central position (5) its visibility which favours external contacts and relations (6) cultural reach
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 13
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
The Centre-Periphery model is articulated on the obvious, and for the most part incontrovertible fact of inequality among divisions of geographical space at any level, be they district, town, region, country or transnational entity. These inequalities are not fundamentally spatial but economic, and thus social and human. Building on this observation of disparities among social–spatial divisions, geographers and urban historians (e.g. Braudel, 1979; Reynaud, 1981) have sought to locate what one might term the centres of inequality, or the leading economic areas, at various historical periods. Economically central places, (‘heartlands’; Hohenberg and Lees, 1995) distinguish themselves from other areas which are to varying degrees peripheral. There is considerable agreement among scholars on which areas constitute the centre. Hohenberg and Lees (1995) trace the shift of economic dominance in Europe from the Mediterranean area, mainly northern Italy in the Middle Ages, to north-western Europe in later centuries, while Braudel locates the economic centre successively in specific cities: Venice, Genoa, Antwerp, Amsterdam, London and New York. Reynaud (1981) argues that the centre may be quite diffuse, to include an area as large as the north-eastern United States comprising New York, Boston and Washington (around 400,000 km2 ). As with any French-speaking city in Europe, regional centrality must be evaluated in relation to the overridingly dominant position of Paris within the francophone heartland, since this has been cogently demonstrated by a number of sociolinguists, whether historically (Lodge, 1993) or in terms of the ‘linguistic imaginary’ for Belgium (Francard, 1993; Moreau, Brichard and Dupal, 1999) and Switzerland (Singy, 1996). The work of Singy (1996) specifically shows how a non-central or peripheral area outside French national territory, the Vaud, a canton of Frenchspeaking Switzerland, can be investigated using the Centre-Periphery model, demonstrating firstly the dominance of France and particularly Paris, and secondly, the regional dominance of the large cities, particularly Geneva within francophone Switzerland and Lausanne within the Vaud. This model is more problematic with regard to francophone Belgium, divided as it is between Brussels and Wallonia. Brussels undoubtedly enjoys a degree of prestige (Pohl, 1962) and middle-class Bruxellois appear to enjoy relative linguistic security (Garsou, 1991). The traditional vernaculars of the capital, however, with their obvious Flemish influence, never constituted a target variety for other francophones as did the Parisian vernacular. Historically, no urban area in Wallonia seemed to diffuse either overt or covert prestige beyond regional limits.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
14
Standardisation and Language Change 15
While the centre can be characterised in terms of the factors summarised in Table 2.2, the periphery is depicted by its lack of sources of power, capable of varying in degrees linked to the balance of the volume of exchanges between the centre and periphery. At one extreme, there may be no or very few such exchanges, in which case Reynaud (1981) evokes the notion of ‘isolate’, a term reserved only for the most remote areas like Amazonia. With regard to francophone Europe, the terms of ‘trade’ may at the other extreme be highly asymmetrical in favour of the centre, or more or less even or symmetrical, with every intermediate degree imaginable. The term ‘centre’ is not intended to be read in purely geometrical terms since, to take two perhaps obvious examples, Paris and London are clearly positionally off-centre in relation to the whole of their respective countries. By taking account of the diachronic dimension, the model becomes dynamic and capable of accounting for the changing fortunes of centres and their peripheries, the emergence of new centres and the decline of older ones. As the list of properties of the centres suggests, all kinds of flows are potentially relevant, whether of trade, capital, people, goods or information. The demographic dominance of Paris in French life is difficult to exaggerate (see Table 2.3). Since its prodigious growth in the Middle Ages, it Table 2.3 Populations of francophone cities and areas City
Population
Paris Brussels (Hal-Vilvorde) Lyon Marseille–Aix-en-Provence Lille Brussels (19 communes) Toulouse Bordeaux Nantes Liège Strasbourg Rennes Rouen Montpellier Geneva Charleroi
10,562,000 2,500,000 1,598,000 1,398,000 1,108,000 1,031,000 917,000 882,000 674,000 594,000 557,000 483,000 470,000 446,000 470,000 422,000
Source: INSEE, 2000: 7; Office fédéral de la Statistique, 2000.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
2.4 Describing the centre
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
has remained one of the three most populous cities in Europe and demographically is by far the largest francophone city. Figures cited (Chandler and Fox, 1974: 11–20) show it to have been more than two-and-a-half times bigger than any other European city in 1400 (275,000 inhabitants) and with four times more residents than the second French city, Rouen. Even after decades of decentralisation, the Paris region is home to around 18% of the total population of France and even conservative estimates of the population of the region, compared to geographically broad-based calculations of those of other larger urban regions, show that it is the equivalent of the ten next biggest French cities (Damette, 1997: 168). According to the demarcational criteria used in the 1999 census, Paris still had 17% of the population and the total demographic weight of the next 17 biggest cities in France. The combined population of francophone Belgium (4.5m) and Suisse romande (1.2m) just about exceeds half the population of the Paris region. While the population of a putative ‘Greater Brussels’ (corresponding to the electoral area of Bruxelles-Hal-Vilvorde) has a population of 2.5m, this entity is the result of the much resented spread of francophones from BruxellesCapitale encroaching on the surrounding areas of Flanders. Far from being a unified francophone space, it is one of the prime flashpoints in the political crisis that erupted in 2007 and continued throughout 2008. As for Suisse romande, although its total population barely exceeds that of Lille, significantly, 65% live in two urban areas: Geneva (470,000) and Lausanne (309,000); see Table 3.12. In addition to this demographic dominance, the economic power of France in GDP dwarfs that of Belgium and Switzerland overall, although not if measured on a per-capita basis (Table 2.4). Given the dominance of Paris over the national economy of France (about a quarter of total output; INSEE, 2000: 29), the productive capacity of Paris is not far short of the combined GDPs of Belgium and Switzerland, and far outstrips the contribution of the francophone regions of those countries. Within France the dominance of Paris in productivity is even greater than its demographic dominance would suggest, providing nearly a quarter of all jobs. It is not only the leading industrial city, with around 26% of national capacity, but also the leading service-sector employer with a clear lead in higher-value tertiary posts (sometimes called quartenary; Paris and Stevens, 2000: 94). Average salaries are at least 15% higher than any other city in France and unemployment among under-25s is among the lowest (INSEE, 2000: 29).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
16
Standardisation and Language Change 17
France
Belgium
Switzerland
Population 2000 GDP Per head
58.7 million $1,464.9 bn $24,956
10.2 million $262.8 bn $25,670
7.26 million $262.6 bn $36,166
Population 2004 GDP Per head
60.4 million $1,911 bn $31,640
10.3 million $317 bn $30,810
7.3 million $323 bn $43,930
Population 2008 GDP
61.4 million $2.68trn (PPP: $2.17 trn)
10.4 million $465bn (PPP; $394 bn)
7.6 million $424bn (PPP: $306 bn)
Per head
$43,640 (PPP: $35,430)
$44,730 (PPP: $37,890)
$55,780 (PPP: $40,260)
Source: The Economist, 1999, 2003, 2007.
The historical domination by Paris of the French financial, political and administrative systems is sufficiently well known for phrases such as Paris-Province to evoke it in the minds of most French citizens. For Hohenberg and Lees (1995) it is a primate city, sucking in the wealth and talent of the whole country and causing what Gravier (1957) called ‘desertification’, so one-sided are the flows between centre and periphery. It is arguable that even the attempts over recent decades to remedy this situation through the promotion of provincial centres not only depended but still depends on the decision-making role of Paris, notably in the creation of new towns and métropoles d’équilibre. To take the example of Lille, the decision was taken centrally to develop a métropole by creating Villeneuve d’Ascq, a new town to the east of the city centre. It also coincided with the decline of the traditional industries of the region (textiles, mining and steel), which weakened the position of the next two largest towns of the region, Roubaix and Tourcoing, now considered for a number of purposes as part of Lille. The way in which the traditional domestic infrastructure of the road and rail systems reinforced the pivotal role of Paris has long and often been quoted as a classic exemplar of centralisation. It has now admittedly been attentuated in some measure by new motorways and high-speed train links allowing travel between many provincial centres without the traditional route through the national capital. The prestige of Paris as an international destination is unarguably greater than that
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 2.4 Comparative GDP of France, Belgium and Switzerland with purchasing power parity (PPP) in the 21st century
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
of any other part of the country. The city’s cultural reach traditionally made extended sojourns an unavoidable stage in the career of any aspiring scientist or artist, not to mention many civil servants and business executives. Its role in the modern audiovisual media and film industry is again dominant. The French capital has 50% of all jobs in the culture and leisure sectors (INSEE, 2000: 16). This dominance, as Singy argues (1996: 30), has far-reaching linguistic consequences, for the ‘centrality’ of Paris confers upon it a virtual monopoly on linguistic innovation, not merely in France, but in the whole of francophone Europe. Two manifestations of this cultural prestige which may be cited as particularly telling are serious literature and television programmes. On the latter point, the direction of ‘traffic’ in the number of programmes produced in France shown on Belgian and Swiss channels, compared to those produced in Belgium and Switzerland and shown in France, is an archetypal example of the disparity of flow between centre and periphery, since during the 1990s almost two-thirds of French-language programmes shown in Suisse romande were ‘imported’ (cf. Section 3.9). The demonstration of their national or regional loyalties by Belgian and Swiss authors has proved difficult to reconcile with reaching a wider audience (Gorceix, 1997). Almost inevitably, the attempt means acceptance by a Parisian publishing house. Cultural and linguistic success comes at the price either of allowing oneself to be subsumed into the canon of French literature (for the most distinguished) or aiming at a form of universalism wider than francophone. Aspirations to universalism inevitably erase characteristic local lexis and syntax, without necessarily attaining something greater than the francocentric. In the words of Robert Frickx (1997), Belgium and Switzerland are ‘provinces culturelles françaises’. The study by Jérôme Meizoz (1996), rather provocatively entitled ‘Le droit de “mal écrire”’, argues that francophone writers, whether Swiss, Belgian, Quebecker, African or Caribbean, need to fight to assert their linguistic identity and authentic means of self-expression in French in a literary world traditionally tilted towards Paris. Attempts to ‘mal écrire’, or to write according to distinctive Swiss (or Belgian) norms, generally lead to two possible results: assimilation or marginalisation. An example of the former is Corinna Bille (1912–1979), winner of the 1975 Prix Goncourt, who was reported to have been discreetly taken aside to have her ‘suissismes’ corrected. The alternative is to go the way of Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz (1878–1947), who spent twelve years in Paris, but characterised Vaudois speech in literary dialogues, although significantly not in narrative, where he was scrupulous in his use of Standard French. Comparable remarks may be
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
18
made about perhaps the most famous of all Swiss writers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), who used the epistolary genre to evoke to some degree local (Genevan) usage in La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761). Although Rousseau thought of himself as ‘Suisse de nation’ (Jost, 1962: 14), he generally referred to himself as a citizen of Geneva, spoke all his life with a Genevan accent and could by no criterion be said to have wished to promote norms alternative to a Parisian model. Likewise, francophone Belgian writers are assimilated or marginalised, this latter aspect reflected in their prominence in genre fiction like short stories, comic strips and thrillers. While Brussels is clearly a centre of international exchange on many cultural levels, its local identity has shifted significantly over the course of the existence of the Belgian state. Between 1830 and the eve of World War I, the balance of ethnolinguistic affiliation shifted from a strong Flemish-speaking majority (70%–30%) to a francophone majority (Table 2.5). By the turn of the 21st century (Janssens, 2008: 4), 95% of Brussels residents were able to speak French well or perfectly, compared to 28% for Dutch, which by 2006 had been overtaken by English according to the criteria chosen (see Table 2.8). In the national context, it is difficult to argue the existence of a unified francophone Belgian identity, since Bruxellois tend to see themselves as different from both their Walloon and Flemish compatriots. A telling example is seen in voting patterns, as Bruxellois, Flemings and Walloons have consistently voted for different political parties, which are in any case set up along rigid regional lines that are, to say the least, surprising in a modern democratic state. Even the expression of a common Walloon identity is problematical as regards ‘high culture’, although there is an undeniable vitality of folkloristic manifestations; one can argue that cultural products like these have a wide appeal for an audience highly aware of the continuing desocialisation of traditional vernaculars. Table 2.5 French and Dutch speakers in 19th-century Brussels French-speaking
Dutch-speaking
30% 39% 50+%
70% 57% <50%
1830 1880 1910 Source: Lemaire, 2009.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 19
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Indeed, as is suggested by the French title of Bernhard Pöll’s (2001) general introduction to the sociolinguistics of francophone countries other than France, Francophonies périphériques, Belgium and Switzerland are seen as peripheral within the French-speaking European space. Their status as cultural and linguistic outposts is shared by a number of other countries. The most obvious translation of the German title Französisch auβer Frankreich (French outside France) was admittedly precluded by the existence of Valdman’s (1979) volume Le français hors de France, but it is indicative of the overwhelming and perhaps unhealthy dominance of the French of France that this grouping of all varieties of French spoken outside France into the peripheral category should go largely unchallenged in the public domain. This dominance is referred to by Gadet (1996) as the monocentric norm, in contrast to the pluricentric norms of English, German or Spanish, say. If the pluricentricity of norms finds a ready parallel in the plurality of different nation-states that use these languages, one may ask why the French-speaking areas should be different.
2.5 Language and nation Discussing the German-speaking areas, Durrell (2007) makes use of a threefold concept of nationhood, Staatsnation, Sprachnation, Kulturnation or nation-state, linguistic nation and cultural nation. The pertinence of these concepts is undeniable given that the three nation-states of the European francophone zone share territory with parts of the German linguistic nation. In France the autochtonous languages of AlsaceLorraine are Germanic varieties which manifest the greatest degree of vitality of any regional languages in metropolitan France. This relative vitality is to a large extent attributable to the fact of the region’s being wrested from French rule and thus from the particularly severe application of the one-nation-one-language ideology from the time of the German victory in the Franco-Prussian war (1871) to the defeat of 1918 and again during World War II between 1940 and 1944. The period between 1871 and 1918 was crucial in that it was during this time that the policy of compulsory universal primary education in French was implemented. That it took the better part of a century to implement policies laid out by the Revolutionary regime in the 1790s was more a matter of a lack of resources than political will. Although the Revolution marked a hugely significant turning point, the ideological principles enshrined in the political discourse in the
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
20
years following 1789 built upon a centralist tradition of state intervention in linguistic matters that dates back at least to the Ordinances of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539, which required French to be used in law-courts and the administration of justice throughout the territories under the rule of the King. While the immediate aim of this legislation was to abolish the use of Latin, it effectively made French the official language of the state and brought about, apparently as a largely unforeseen and unintended consequence, the relegation of local and regional languages from most formal situations. This coincided with the shift among the urban elites to the use of French as their language of informal communication throughout French-speaking Europe. While the Ancien Régime was content to allow a situation of diglossia to persist, with French-speaking and partly bilingual elites dominating the uneducated and largely rural majority who continued to use a ‘wealth of tongues’ (Weber, 1979: Ch. 6), the government of the National Convention considered the universalisation of the use of French as a crucial factor in creating a secular national unity. Among the measures which contributed to this newly created unity were the introduction of a uniform system of weights and measures and the reorganisation of the geographical and administrative divisions of the country by a law dated January 1790 (Schultz, 1982). These changes abolished the Ancien Régime provinces, many of whose names had traditional ethnolinguistic resonances, and replaced them with départements which were mostly named after natural features such as rivers and mountains. In short, these measures were intended to obliterate any related ethnolinguistic identity based on territoriality. It certainly had the effect of reducing, if not eradicating, any sense of regional consciousness that might have been created by koinés or by status-enhancing names of greater geographical spread than le patois d’ici. Moreover, under the Third Republic, the teaching of history was based on a manual by Lavisse in the 19th century, followed by those of Mallet and Issac in the 20th. These textbooks played a leading role in inculcating the myth of the so-called Hexagon, according to which the frontiers of metropolitan France enclosed a natural space and that the history of the country was merely the narrative of how a natural evolution came about. The Revolution was presented as the turning point of history, liberating the country from the oppression of the monarchy and the clergy, heralding in a new era of enlightenment, equality and Citizens’ Rights, giving France a unique place – hence the notion of the exception française – among the nations of the world as the first modern country.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 21
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
This obliteration of traditional toponyms has only been partially attentuated by the clustering of départements into regions following the Deferre Law of 1982. Although some of the regions created correspond roughly to a language area, like Alsace, Normandy, Poitou, Burgundy and Corsica, the aim was to create administrative entities both large enough compared to the commune and département, and small enough compared to the country as a whole, to deal efficiently with important sub-national and supralocal matters. The grouping of départements into regions has created a number of anomalies with regard to the regional languages, although insofar as a number of traditional names have been restored the labels might be thought of as capable of restoring a sense of regional identity having linguistic expression, despite the disregard for this factor in their constitution. Thus the region of Brittany evokes Breton but obscures Gallo. Modern Picardie includes areas in the Aisne and Oise (including Villers-Cotterêts) that were traditionally part of Île-de-France and excludes the Picardophone parts of the Nord– Pas-de-Calais. While the considerable size of the Occitan area makes finding a single suitable name impossible, it would not in any case meet with the approval of all activists (see Blanchet, 1998), who think rather in terms of Auvergnat (Auvergne), Provençal (Provence, Alpes, Côte d’Azur) and Langue d’Oc (Languedoc-Roussillon). Several languages are occulted by the regional toponyms: Flemish, Catalan, Basque and Gascon. While other measures intended to transform public life, such as the Revolutionary calendar or the worship of the goddess Reason, did not endure, the measures intended to revolutionise language, or at least the ideology underlying them, have left their imprint firmly embedded in the national psyche. The two documents which enshrine these principles are Barère’s (1755–1841) report to the Committee of Public Safety and Abbé Grégoire’s (1750–1831) report Sur la nécessité d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française (both 1794). The reports underscore the necessity for every French citizen to acquire French. The current dominant narrative of social history (e.g. Chanet, 1996) suggests that the intention was to have a common language in the public domain, while allowing freedom of communication in the private sphere, but this does not appear to withstand scrutiny. Barère’s report underscored the strategic necessity of breaking the stranglehold of the non-Romance languages, Breton, Basque, German (i.e. Alsatian and Frankish) and Corsican in the nine départements where they were spoken, since it was feared that these languages might serve as tools of communication for those of seditious intent. Elsewhere in France Barère
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
22
judged that French was sufficiently established to make possible communication in that language. Grégoire’s report was based on a survey conducted by 49 reporters from different parts of France and revealed a much greater degree of ignorance of French than had been thought. From the 49 responses received, Grégoire concluded that of a population of 28 million people, barely 3 million used French as their everyday spoken language. Twice that number knew no French at all (mostly southern peasants) and another 6 million knew very little. By 1863, according to the Duruy report, ignorance of French had receded to about a quarter of all communes. Commonality of language was considered to be not only essential for fostering a shared identity and indeed patriotism among fellow citizens, but also a practical means of communication. The multiplicity of local terms was deplored but the adoption into French of useful lexis from local dialects was recommended. Corpus-planning considerations led the Revolutionaries to advocate abandoning the policy of translation pursued until 1794 and opt for education in French so that every citizen could understand the decisions of the national government at first hand. Knowledge of a common language favoured mobility and discouraged federalism, this latter believed to be promoted by local languages not understood by the agents of central government. Revolutionary ideology wished not only to deliver a largely illiterate populace from ignorance; it denounced too the social dialects and speech styles of the elite (castes privilégiées), which were seen as effete markers of social distinction and sources of corruption. The adoption of French by the most privileged groups in areas such as the German-speaking states, Russia and Sweden was also unreservedly deplored, both for the upper-class variety of French that spread to royal and imperial courts and for the poignant contrast of the ignorance of French in many parts of France and indeed of Switzerland and what is now Belgium. While Grégoire foresaw the disappearance of local vernaculars within a short space of time, he considered that accents would resist for longer, but took the view that ‘l’accent n’est pas plus irréformable que les mots’. Whether that was the intention is to some degree debatable, but what is clear is that in France, the notion of ‘standard’ includes pronunciation, indicated by the semantically anomalous character of ‘Sébastien parle le français standard avec un accent régional’ compared to the perfectly acceptable ‘Gilbert speaks Standard English with a regional accent’. Although the concept of ‘linguistic nation’ (Haarmann, 1999) is not unique to France, it was in France that a ‘one-language-one-nation’ ideology was developed and most clearly formulated and applied with
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 23
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
‘unusual intolerance’ (Grenoble and Whaley, 1998). Moreover, it was to a considerable degree through the medium of French that these ideas spread to other parts of Europe (e.g. Kok-Escalle and Melka, 2001). Although part of the motivation for the ideology was to make known the Declaration of Human Rights, it can be construed retrospectively as flouting the linguistic rights of the citizens it was intended to enlighten. That conceded, the ideas caught the wind of public opinion and many shifted to or acquired French well before the Ferry Laws of 1881–86 introducing free compulsory state primary education were enacted. In the words of Chanet (1996: 12): il suffit de constater que le temps travaille pour les zélotes de la francisation, qui ont tout juste à attendre; car ce n’est pas l’école seule qu’ils ont dans leur camp, mais les lumières de la ville, les rêves des parents, la culture de la réussite, la religion de l’utilité. Prior to the 1880s schooling was unevenly available, with Paris and certain urbanised areas more highly favoured. Schooling was nevertheless sufficiently available to promote widespread acquisition of and shift to the national language, even if imperfectly or in a regionally marked form. While education was a key factor in the francisation of France, the policy was not necessarily implemented in a ruthlessly linguicidal fashion. By and large, school teachers showed greater forbearance in the Romance-speaking regions than in the non-Romance. Individual teachers varied in their tolerance of local languages, with some using them as the medium of teaching or at least as a last resort, while others would not deviate from the ‘Carré’ direct method (Chanet, 1996: 217), nor allow a word of the local vernacular to pass unpunished in school. It seems however that the use of the notorious symbole was rare and generally disapproved: an object which a linguistic offender was forced to hold or wear, then pass on to the next victim until the end of the day, when the last miscreant was punished. Recorded testimonies of attitudes towards survival and eradication were divided. In Flanders in the 1850s, for instance, some believed that it would be impossible for the people to stop speaking Flemish (Trénard, 1972), while towards the end of the century, others like the schools inspector of the Nord believed that Flemish had had its day and that encouraging pupils to shift to French would be doing them a great favour (Chanet, 1996). While the ancestral vernaculars of the lower classes, both urban and rural, were eradicated at least from from the public domain, the
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
24
upper-class accent disappeared too, since the aristocracy was quite severely depleted by the ravages of the Revolution and its survivors obliged to acknowledge the sacred principle of equality. As Bourdieu and Passeron (1970) cogently argued, however, the classes possessing inherited wealth and privilege have found more surreptitious ways of social reproduction, compared to obvious manifestations like the English public-school system. The system of grandes écoles is a bastion of privilege, but based on access which is in principle meritocratic, since regulated by performance in the public education system. Unlike their English counterparts, in particular, the haute bourgeoisie had fewer elements of pronunciation remaing to them to display their social identity, the main feature being the older [wε] compared to [wa] in orthographic
sequences. Although their speech has been analysed in fairly recent times, e.g. by Malécot (1977), the haute bourgeoisie parisienne is both numerically marginal and their accent is largely portrayed by stereotypical perceptions, notably in Carton et al. (1983) where the accent was actually imitated by an actress. The notion of the one and indivisible republic implies obviously the non-recognition of other community allegiances, whether regional, religious or ethnic. The controversy which erupted in 1999 over the signing of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages brought to the fore debates about the rights of groups as opposed to the individual citizen. The then Prime Minister Lionel Jospin used the phrase le peuple corse on national television, raising protests from ‘republicans’ who saw this as the first concession to a movement that might ultimately threaten hard-won national unity. Although Corsica has the greatest degree of autonomy of any French region in Europe, it is considerably weaker than that enjoyed by regions in neighbouring countries such as Italy, Spain and the UK. The ‘naturalness’ of the Hexagon overlooks the fact that the two major peripheral francophone areas of Europe, French-speaking Belgium and Suisse romande, were coveted and annexed by France in the 1790s and early 1800s. The borders of France are in any event largely arbitrary, and the connection between fluid land-borders and a heightened or even hypertrophied sense of national identity, as manifested in centralism, has often been pointed out. In the following sections we present overviews of the sociolinguistically pertinent historical and political factors that shed light on why speakers pronounce French as they do in those francophone regions which, although outside France, are clearly part of the French cultural-linguistic ambit. We begin with Belgium.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 25
26
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
The territory of modern Belgium had been in the hands of foreign powers from Roman times until the declaration of independence in 1830: successively the Franks, the French (in the 14th century), Burgundy (1384–1482), Spain (1482–1713), Austria (1713–1792), France (1792–1815) and finally the Netherlands (1815–1830). Under Napoleon most of present-day Belgium was annexed into an enlarged France which, as in France itself, abolished the old territorial divisions in favour of départements and communes and imposed a forceful policy of francisation, which proved successful among the Flemish elites and middle ranks but failed to touch the more numerous lower classes. French control ended after Waterloo (1815) and France was obliged to accept the borders of 1792, under Dutch rule. In 1830 a revolt was led by a French-speaking alliance (consisting of Catholic and Liberal L1 francophone elites and French-educated Flemings), who disapproved of William of Orange’s imposition of Dutch as the language of the state but still more of his attempts to impose Protestantism. Following France’s example, Belgium adopted a centralist francophone regime, initially de facto and later officially (1839), when a small Brussels-based francophone elite held power. Within the first few years of the country’s existence, Flemish voices began to be raised against the inequity of this situation and demanded that Flemish should be recognised as a co-official language and used for H functions in Flanders. Although wide-ranging language-planning measures were introduced to roll back this situation of diglossia – the Netherlands standard was adopted for spelling in the 1850s, Netherlandic was allowed in courtrooms from 1873 (1889 in Brussels) and introduced as a medium of education in schools in Flanders (1878) and later in Brussels (1883) – French remained nevertheless the language of upward mobility for most Flemings, including the considerable number that sought work in northern France (Pooley, 2006a). Throughout the 19th century the Flemish were claiming parity within the unified Belgian state, but attitudes changed during World War I and in its immediate aftermath, partly because of the often appalling treatment meted out to Flemish-speaking soldiers by francophone officers. From the 1920s, the hardening of attitudes meant that parity in a centralised state was no longer sufficient and demands for independence began to be voiced. After World War I, the first of a succession of language-related laws was introduced which began to create a more federalised form of government. The introduction of universal suffrage opened the way
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
2.6 Belgium
Standardisation and Language Change 27 Table 2.6 Population of Belgium Total
Flemish
Walloons
Germanophones
Non-Belgian origin
1846 1890 1990 1995 2000 2004
4,298,000 6,000,000 9,938,000 9,980,000 10,161,164 10.3 m
57.5% 58.3% 54.7%
32.3%
0.65%
12%
54.7% 57.6%
32.3% 32.4%
0.7% 0.69%
10%
for the demographic weight of the Flemish to tell in electoral terms (Table 2.6). A law introduced in 1921 officially recognised the three regions of Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels, and unilingual regimes in the regions and a bilingual one in the capital were made official by a law of 1932. This law provided for facilités for sufficiently large (30%) francophone minorities in Flanders and Flemish minorities in Wallonia to receive local-government services in their chosen language, with the possibility of linguistic regime change if future censuses showed a shift in the demographic balance. As the figures of the 1947 census would have meant several Flemish-speaking communes becoming francophone, they were published only after a long delay, amid accusations of irregularities on both sides. The differences were however settled, and the linguistic border fixed according to the recommendations of the Harmel report of 1958, which were approved in law in 1962. As a result, 49 communes changed official language and linguistic assimilation was foreseen for Walloons moving to Flanders and Flemings moving to Wallonia. Nonetheless, 27 communes in the post-1978 divisions (eight of which bordered on the German-speaking areas) required a special linguistic regime ‘à facilités’. There have been highly acrimonious disputes in the crucial areas around Brussels, particularly over their linguistic status. The Flemings view these tolerances as medium-term measures to allow francophones to assimilate. Francophones have sought to use their growing minorities and sometimes emerging majorities to raise the issue of extending the bilingual area. By the eve of World War I the francophones had become a majority in Brussels following the arrival of political exiles from France and other parts of Europe. While it is possible to observe signs of a parallel emergence of a Walloon consciousness, it is more realistic to say that in a remarkably prosperous country (second largest industrial and
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Year
28
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Region Flanders Wallonia Brussels
GDP (2008, bn euros)
Unemployment (2005)
171.17 70.38 56.82
6% 17% 20.5%
fourth largest commercial power in 1900) francophone domination was hardly threatened, given the industrial dynamism of Wallonia and francophone hegemony in government. Since the 1970s the balance of economic power has shifted from the south to the north. As the population figures show (Table 2.6), Dutch speakers have consistently been a majority. Flanders is now in economic terms too the most prosperous region (Table 2.7). The decentralisation of the state was confirmed by the federal constitution of 1993, where the territorial principle was applied in Flanders and Wallonia and the personality principle in Brussels. Belgium is thus a federal state divided into three regions (Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels), three communities (Flemish, French and German-speaking) and four linguistic regions (French, Flemish, German and the bilingual region of Brussels). In 1980 the Flanders region merged with the Flemish community to form the Flemish Council (Vlaamse Raad; see Map 2.1). This complex federation consisting of regions and communities can be described as a cluster of six non-sovereign states consisting of: (1) Federal Parliament, (2) Flemish Council (region and community merged), (3) Walloon Parliament (capital Namur), (4) Parliament of Bruxelles-Capitale region, (5) Parliament of the francophone community, (6) Parliament of the germanophone community. Regions are responsible for such matters as land use, conservation, housing, energy, employment, public works and public transport (apart from the national train service), while communities are responsible for language use, cultural matters, education, external relations, scientific research, finance, health, family affairs, disability and youth-related issues. As for language selection, theoretically a matter of free choice for the individual citizen, federal laws effectively forbid the use of one or other of the two national languages in the public sphere over the whole of the country except Brussels, where thoroughgoing bilingualism is the legislated norm, except for specifically authorised monolingual institutions. The German-speaking community has jurisdiction only over education and its location within the Walloon region makes bilingualism a necessity.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 2.7 Two economic indicators in the three regions of Belgium (2005–08) (Eurostat, Brussels)
Map 2.1 The linguistic and territorial divisions of Belgium
The Belgian state has shifted therefore from a highly centralised, francophone-dominated regime to the current federal arrangements. In 1999 the Flemish parliament voted a series of resolutions which effectively proposed a loosening of the current federal arrangement, whereby Flanders and Wallonia would become separate entities, with special status for Brussels and the German-speaking areas. The crisis was precipitated by the election in June 2007 of a Flemish majority whose leader was committed to this programme, since no francophone politicians were willing to assemble the cross-community coalition required to form a government. The crisis was exacerbated by a number of more localised incidents, particularly the Flemish proposal in November 2007 to split the voting area known as BHV (Bruxelles-Hal-Vilvorde) which includes several communes benefitting from the facilités; this would have deprived French speakers of the opportunity to vote for francophone candidates in legislative elections.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 29
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Given these recent political developments, one might expect the Belgian francophone community to react like one under threat. It is true that francophones voice a certain sense of rejection, expressed as ‘on ne veut pas de nous’, for instance at the height of the political crisis in July 2008. The contrasting allegiances are cogently illustrated by the ways in which the Flemish and Belgian National Days were celebrated in July 2008. On 11 July the Flemish National Day was celebrated with great enthusiasm in Flanders, while on 21 July there was relative indifference towards the Belgian National Day. This latter occasion was much more meaningful for francophones, who overwhelmingly wish the current federal arrangements, and thus the unity of the Belgian state, to be maintained, as the uneasy peace achieved in late 2008 allows. As Map 2.1 suggests, the loss of Brussels would represent a significant excision from Flemish territory. During the dispute, the francophones sought to mount a region-based alliance (Brussels-Wallonia), which was regarded and resented by the Flemish as a political manoeuvre. On the other hand, the community-based platform insisted on by the Flemings does not correspond to a common francophone identity since Bruxellois and Walloons show differences of attitude in many ways, notably in their voting patterns. Their shared Francophonie cannot be said to be manifested in a clearly recognisable shared way of speaking French. Brussels is, moreover, an increasingly international city that covers a multilingual reality extending well beyond the official bilingualism (Janssens, 2008; Table 2.8). Table 2.8 Percentage proportions of Brussels residents able to speak various languages well or perfectly (Janssens, 2008: 4) 2000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
French Dutch English Arabic German Spanish Italian Turkish Berber Portuguese Greek Russian Lingala
2006 95.52 33.29 33.25 9.99 7.61 6.9 4.68 3.33 3.09 1.43 1.19 0.48 0.39
French English Dutch Spanish Arabic Italian German Portuguese Turkish Lingala Greek Russian Berber
95.55 35.4 28.23 7.39 6.36 5.72 5.56 1.67 1.47 0.99 0.91 0.64 0.36
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
30
The Bruxellois generally see themselves as different from both the Flemings and the Walloons, and take much pride in their bilingualism and indeed multilingualism. As Janssens oberves, many middle-class francophones choose to send their children to Dutch-speaking schools, motivated principally by the national and regional status (in European terms) of Dutch. Perhaps more surprisingly, there seems to be little consciousness of a common Walloon identity, but rather a number of more localised regional identities (Francard, 1998, 1999a). The current constitutional difficulties provide an opportunity for those who advocate that Wallonia should become part of the French political nation, the so-called rattachistes, who form a minority far too tiny to be taken seriously in political terms.
2.7 Switzerland While Belgium was founded as a centralised state that has since adopted federal arrangements, the Swiss nation-state, whose origins go back to 1291, but whose emergence as a modern nation close to its current form dates from the Constitution of 1848 (Martin, 1980: 263ff.; Luck, 1985: 387ff.), has never been other than federal, except for the brief period of French occupation when a unitarian constitution was imposed. The French regime was highly exploitative and not surprisingly provoked armed rebellion, leading to a return to self-determination by 1805 and to federal arrangements by 1814. The main linguistic legacy of this period, however, was the fact that Switzerland was recognised as a multilingual state with three official languages. Apart from the brief hiatus of annexation, Switzerland was formed by the slow accretion of ministates craving self-determination and independence from powerful and terroritorially acquisitive neighbours, particularly Austria, but also Burgundy, Savoy and France. Not surprisingly, as Grin argues (1998: 3), Swiss francophones do not regard themselves socially and politically as descendants of the French, as the Quebecois might, nor are there any rattachistes as there are in Wallonia, however marginalized. The main linguistic legacy of this period, however,was the fact that Switzerland was recognised as a multilingual state with three official languages (Table 2.9; Map 2.2). The cellular bottom-up character of the Swiss administration (Steinberg, 1996: 4), traditionally buttressed by political and economic equality that created a kind of balance of power and prosperity, especially among the two main linguistic groups, was thrown out of equilibrium in the 1990s to the perceived if not actual detriment of the
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 31
32
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Canton
French-speaking population
% L1 French
% Foreigners
Officially fully French-speaking Genève 313,485 (413,673) Jura 61,376 (68,224) Neuchâtel 143,191 (167,949) Vaud 524,324 (640,657)
75.8 90.0 85.3 81.8
37.6 11.9 22.3 25.9
Officially part francophone, part germanophone French-speaking population Berne 72,646 (957,197) Fribourg 152,766 (241,706) Valais 171,129 (272,399)
7.6 63.2 62.8
11.3 13.7 16.8
Officially German-speaking 41,215 (3,136,851) Italian-speaking Tessin 5,024 (306,846) Romanche-German 961 (187,058) bilingual Grisons Total francophones 1,485,056 Total Switzerland 7,288,010
1.3 1.6 0.5 20.4 6.1% (446,539) have non-Swiss languages as L1
Source: Office fédéral de la Statistique, 2000.
francophones. Zürich has increasingly become the economic powerhouse of the country and helped shift the centres of decision-making towards the German-speaking communities. While the whole country experienced relatively high levels of unemployment in the period, Suisse romande was more severely affected, and particularly Geneva – 8% as opposed to 2% in Appenzell and some 5% in Zürich (Grin, 1998: 7). Moreover, data correlating earnings and language show significant differences between German- and Italian-speakers, with francophones in a perceived intermediate position, although statistically they could not be differentiated from their germanophone compatriots (Grin and Sfreddo, 1998). Historically, the apparent unity of francophone Switzerland is in part a perception of outsiders, particularly of its more powerful neighbours, the German Swiss and the French, and insofar as it exists at all can be defined partly in opposition to them. Suisse romande was however historically a highly differentiated area, with the various micro-identities
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 2.9 French-speaking population in francophone cantons and partcantons
Map 2.2 The linguistic and territorial divisions of Switzerland
constituting no overall pattern and making it the most federalist region of the whole of Switzerland (Steinberg, 1996: 154). This historical differentiation has been greatly attenuated by late 20th-century developments. The elongated urban developments along Lakes Léman and Neuchâtel (Section 3.4) can be argued to have created economic centres, linked by road and rail connections which compensated for the divergent directions of river flows. While the education systems remain cantonally based, decisions are increasingly made following pan-Suisse romande consultation. Another crucial identifying characteristic of many francophone Swiss, if not the majority, was Protestantism, at least since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). With it was associated a work ethic which stressed virtues such as sobriety, frugality, industriousness, thrift and the fear of God, as well as the ‘Germanic’ qualities of orderliness, precision and cleanliness (De Rougement, cited in Gorceix, 1997, evokes an osmosis with the Germanic world). While religious practice has
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 33
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
declined throughout francophone Europe, it has done so much less in Switzerland, and the virtues which it traditionally fostered, perhaps in part mythical, undoubtedly contribute to the Swiss perceiving themselves as different from the French in a positive way. By encouraging the reading of the Bible, Protestantism promoted the need among a greater part of the population to acquire at least a reading knowledge of Standard French and, incidentally, to abandon dialect. As Voillat (1971: 235) remarked, this early abandonment of dialect led to a greater use of regionalisms, presumably at all linguistic levels, while later shifts tended to result in the adoption of more levelled forms of French. Paradoxically, the demographic and economic dominance of the traditionally Protestant cantons and perhaps in recent times the urban sprawl along Lac Léman may well have contributed to the preservation of a relatively distinctive variety of French, or set of varieties. Over the course of the 20th century, migration contributed to an evening-up of the demographic weight of the two Christian traditions. For instance, in 1900 2% of the population of the Vaud were Catholics, compared to 45.4% in 2000, when Catholics outnumbered Protestants who made up around 40% of the population (http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/axl/EtatsNsouverains/vaud.htm). This reflects a degree of in-migration conducive to levelling. Moreover, while traditional Christian observance has declined, the practice of other religions has increased. The weakening of this strand of identity has been shown among francophone Quebeckers to have led to a redefining of traditional identities, whereby language assumes a more central role. A number of authors, e.g. Charnley (2002: 192) and Manno (2003: 333), remark on a rather timidly emerging common Swiss-French identity. The sense of difference was certainly heightened by the crisis of the 1990s, which was both economic, as already noted (Grin, 1998: 7), and cultural (Mazzoleni, 2008). Culturally, in the 1990s the Swiss were going through a crisis over bank secrecy and the treatment of Jews in Germany during World War II. In plain terms, Swiss banks accepted money from Jews resident in Germany and Austria (as well as the wealth of leading Nazis), but the Swiss authorities refused them asylum. The francophone Swiss perceived this as a German problem, from which they tended to dissociate themselves (Altwegg, 2006). The crisis ran deep enough to dampen the celebration of the 700th anniversary of the founding of the confederation in 1991, and even the 150th anniversary of the modern constitution in 1998. Subsquently, the success of the radicalised mainstream political party Union Démocratique du Centre (Schweizerische Volkspartei), largely under the inspiration of Christoph Blocher, gained
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
34
electoral favour firstly in the German-speaking cantons, and promoted a populist discourse stressing the specificity of Swiss identity. By 2002 the party’s success had spread to the francophone areas, which unlike the Tessin had produced no charismatic populists of their own. Another point of division, prospective membership of the EU favoured by francophones but roundly rejected by the Swiss Germans, was overcome through an astute series of bilateral agreements according Switzerland most of the possible economic benefits while maintaining the political kudos on home soil of the Sonderfall suisse. While arguably the differentiating aspects of Romand identity (being neither French nor German Swiss) have proved traditionally most important, as in Canada the commonality of language is becoming a greater unifying factor as traditional values decline. A public-service television station (TSR) informs all Swiss francophones about the whole of Suisse romande. Policy issues, as for example, in education, are usually discussed on a community-wide basis. In electoral terms francophones are increasingly presented as a distinct group, although their voting patterns are by no means homogeneous. The increased use of the term Romandie also encapsulates a certain measure of unity. Nevertheless this emerging common identity overlies, at least according to Steinberg (1996: 154), the historic particularisms of the most federally minded part of the confederation.
2.8 The francophone area in a western European perspective In this section we characterise the sociolinguistic situation of the three major francophone areas in the light of a wider European perspective, focussing particularly on the three major language areas that share the territory of the nation-states where French has official status. We compare the sociolinguistic situations in France, the francophone regions of Belgium and Suisse romande with the German-speaking areas which are also shared by all three states and the Dutch-speaking area shared by Belgium and France, as well as the Italian-speaking space shared by Switzerland. Other neighbouring countries such as Spain, UK and Denmark, Norway and Sweden are considered where they contribute useful comparisons. Taking up again Auer’s (2005) models of diglossia and diaglossia, combined with Durrell’s notion of the political, cultural and linguistic nation, we introduce the further notions of destandardisation proposed by Willemyns (2007) and the supradialectal norm (Hinskens, 2007) in
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 35
36
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
people are gradually restricting their choices of possible varieties to just one single variety, modified slightly according to different communicative situations. (Willemyns, 2007: 271). Willemyns goes on to argue that this situation has hitherto been the property of a relatively small number of speakers having the standard as their language of socialisation and everyday communication. Among the areas cited as examples are the Île-de-France and northern and western Germany. In the Île-de-France, this seems plausible at a very general level for middle- and upper-class speakers from the Paris region, but neglects the role of Parisian vernacular in the spread of supralocal French. In areas where traditional dialects (and presumably distinctive vernaculars) were used, these have been replaced by an equally informal intermediate French variety, which ‘creates the illusion that this particular variety might function in formal situations as well’. In cases where varieties are regionally marked and deviate from a ‘national standard’, Hinskens (2007: 297) speaks of supradialectal or supralocal varieties. This tendency to levelling from above and below is favoured by the fact that, as J. Milroy (2000: 20–4) has argued, stigma carries greater weight than positive prestige. Speakers wish often to identify neither with the highest nor the lowest status groups, and to frame the matter in UK terms, to avoid sounding too ‘posh’ or too ‘common’, steering a compromise course between popular stereotypes like Bertie Wooster and Tim Nice-but-Dim and the extreme Cockney associated in popular perception with characters in soap operas like Eastenders, but perhaps most starkly embodied in the stereotyped Cockney, Alf Garnett.
2.9 Shift and maintenance of minority autochtonous varieties While vast tracts of the French-speaking area of Europe were once diglossic, most had undergone language shift by the 1980s and 1990s, apart from a few peripheral or remote areas. Behaviour-based studies undertaken in these areas show that the varieties used still manifested a large degree of ‘socialisation’ or active use in the community.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
the Dutch-speaking areas. Willemyns suggests that both in the Dutchspeaking areas and in other parts of western Europe, what may be decribed as a two-tier levelling process is occurring. Both regiolectal features, particularly those most marked for locality, and stylistically marked features are being levelled:
These include the mining town of Avion in the Pas-de-Calais (Hornsby, 2006b), the southern Poitou (Auzanneau, 1998), the island of Noirmoutier (Léonard, 1991, 1998) and Evolène (Pannatier, 1995) in the most mountainous part of the Valais. There is a paucity of properly documented cases of language selection and switching, like that of Gardner-Chloros in Strasbourg (1991). Although Alsatian shows greater vitality than any other ancestral language of metropolitan France, intergenerational transmission receded considerably in the latter decades of the 20th century (Kloss, McConnell and Verdoodt, 1989; Héran, Filhon and Deprez, 2002). While France is certainly not alone in wishing to exclude minority varieties from the national and public domain, the French government is remarkable in having never retracted its historical position, or ‘made reparation’ in Poignant’s phrase (1998). The symbolic violence (Bourdieu, 1982) exercised by successive French governments of various political persuasions was certainly no more severe than the very concrete action taken to eradicate the Celtic-fringe languages by various UK governments (exemplified in the Highland clearances), and appears anodyne when compared to the attempted suppression of regional languages in Franquist Spain. But later actions were not the same. In recent decades, Spain and the UK have made amends for past injustices by pursuing language policies favouring the socialisation of Welsh, Catalan and Basque into what were previously H domains and the exclusive preserve of English and Spanish. Other languages, which were under more serious threat, either because of the loss of speakers, such as Scots Gaelic (Robertson, 2001), or because of convergence, like Galician (Beswick, 2007), have been given support which has at least made resocialisation possible. Indeed, in Spain, even varieties which were considered dialects of the national language Castillian, in particular, Asturian, (Morán, 2004) can aspire to resocialisation and language status through the promotion of bilingualism, rather than mere survival in the form of regional varieties in a diaglossic situation. Of the three European francophone countries, only Switzerland has signed and ratified the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, recognising Italian and Romansch only, and certainly no variety historically regarded as a Gallo-Romance dialect. Having signed the Charter in 1999, France remains at the time of writing in a political stalemate where it appears impossible to choose from the long shortlist of 75 languages drawn up by Cerquiglini in 1999 prior to the expected ratification (Pooley, 2005, 2006c). For a nation so adversely affected by ethnolinguistic conflict, it is understandable that Belgium has not
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 37
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
signed the Charter. Nonetheless, both France and Belgium have introduced measures which accord some recognition to regional languages. Since 2001 France has recognised the languages of the Cerquiglini list as ‘langues de France’ principally through the Délégation Générale à la Langue Française (DGLF) which was renamed the Délégation Générale à la Langue Française et aux langues de France (DGLFLF). Paradoxically, perversely even, the recognition as languages of varieties like Norman and Picard, historically regarded as dialects, may well accelerate the final stages of desocialisation, since it promotes artificial ‘normalised’ varieties, used largely by a few writers and public performers who tend to speak a variety far removed from the mixed and local varieties that are still heard in spontaneous use. In Wallonia two decrees in favour of the endogenous languages have been published, in 1983 the Décret relatif au recours à un dialecte de Wallonie dans l’enseignement primaire et secondaire, and the second in 1990 giving official recognition to this cultural heritage of the francophone community, which has the duty to preserve them. Since they are not named, these are presumably Walloon, Picard, Lorraine and Champenois, plus the two varieties of Frankish used in eastern Wallonia (Map 2.1). In contrast, neither the Flemish community in Belgium, nor the Netherlands have introduced comparable measures either to recognise or promote dialects (cf. Germany’s signing of the Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in 1999). In some areas, dialects still enjoy a degree of socialisation and vitality, albeit in a diglossic situation, sufficient to render such measures superfluous. That said, dedialectalisation is most advanced in what might be termed the ‘mother countries’, Germany and the Netherlands on the one hand, compared on the other to Austria, Switzerland and Flanders. Dialects remain strongest as forms of social practice in Switzerland and the provinces of East and West Flanders and Limburg. All Swiss Germans regardless of social class have their particular form of Schwyzerdütsch and use it in general informal conversation. Standard German (Hochdeutsch) is confined to writing and more formal speech, and numerous observers confirm that most Swiss Germans feel awkward using it among themselves and lack spontaneity in their communication with Germans and Austrians. Remarkably, there are no calls for standardisation of dialects, and relatively little levelling of the standard. These local varieties fit well with the confederate structure of Switzerland and the key role of diglossia in the identity of German Swiss. The extent to which the L variety is used makes this region an atypical case of diglossia, for which two formative periods seem crucial: firstly,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
38
the 19th century, when there appears to have been a community consensus to speak ‘good dialect’ by refusing advergence to Hochdeutsch; and secondly, since World War II the so-called Mundartwelle or dialect wave to underscore distinctiveness from Germany (Schläpfer, 1985). In Germany and Austria, it seems more accurate to speak of diaglossia than diglossia, with dialects not being transmitted but with readily recognisable regional varieties in use by the majority of the population, and a distinct prestige variety emerging in Austria (Scheuringer, 1997). Recent work on Germany has noted a considerable degree of levelling. Spiekermann (2005) observes that undergraduate students even from Saxony and Germany are showing marked convergence and that educated young people of various geographical origins are becoming indistinguishable in their usage, particularly pronunciation. In the Dutch-speaking area, the Netherlands bears some similarities with Greater Paris if one considers Randstad, a kind of urban conurbation comprising Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague, home to around 43% of the population (7.5m out of 16m). This concentration of economic and demographic power developed however over the 20th century, much later than in France, and the constituent parts maintain their distinctive identities. Nonetheless, the development of Randstad has contributed both to the spread of the standard (ABN – algemeen beschaafd nederlands – or General Cultivated Netherlandic) and to the hollandisation of the greater part of the population, with only remote areas like Limburg and Frisia maintaining a situation of diglossia, particularly in rural areas. In the Dutch-speaking areas of Belgium, ABN was adopted as the basis of the written standard in the 1850s and a national standard variety with a concomitant prestige pronunciation has emerged. Following the economic and demographic development of Flanders over the second half of the 20th century, some areas of the Flemish region (Flanders and Limburg) have remained diglossic while in Brabant the traditional dialects have receded rapidly (Willemyns, 2007), with the result that it might be more accurate to describe the situation there as diaglossic.
2.10 The post-industrial and post-diaglossic era Since the most widely spoken regiolectal varieties generally developed from urban vernaculars which emerged out of industrialisation, the question arises whether the shrinking proportion of industrial activities makes anachronistsic any discussion of post-diaglossic situations. These are characterised by destandardisation and the spread of supradialectal
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 39
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
varieties, which are related but sometimes distinct phenomena, as the work of Willemyns and Hinskens suggests. In areas like south-east England and Randstad, dominated respectively by London and the four major Dutch cities, varieties have emerged which can be distinguished from the prestige RP and ABN by a number of socially and stylistically salient features, hitherto classed as ‘workingclass’ or ‘informal’. These varieties have acquired the non-technical labels of Estuary English and Poldersnederlands. In Flanders a comparable variety has been variously termed Verkavelingsvlaams, Schoon Vlaams or Tussentaal (Willemyns, 2007). In the north of England, there is clear evidence of convergence towards generalised northern supra-dialectal or supralocal forms (Foulkes and Docherty, 1999), divergence from more localised forms and convergence to national non-standard features. Destandardisation towards supra-dialectal or supralocal forms covers a range of practices, not least at the stylistic level, partly captured by the notion of RP paralects proposed by Honey (1991) to refer to near-standard speech with regionally recognisable pronunciation features, such as a middle-class Lancastrian might use, as against Estuary English. Other terms are Alltagssprache (generalised colloquial standard), Umgangsprache (generalised vernacular; Elspaβ, 2007), français courant (stylistically neutral usage), français familier (the informal styles of standard speakers) and français populaire (generalised vernacular, but Parisian in origin). All these terms refer to shifting realities which the variationist approach has helped to clarify, as shown by a number of studies which we discuss in Chapter 4.
2.11 Historical situations and social changes in the second half of the 20th century In the next chapter we discuss the social transformations, both substantive and symbolic, that have affected western European countries in similar ways. To anticipate, these two broad groups of factors promote destandardisation but have developed in the context of widely differing types of national unification, political organisation, industrial and economic development, geographical distribution of population and geographical balance of economic and political power. France is one of a relatively small number of highly centralised states, and by far the largest of the type in western Europe. As in the Netherlands (Hinskens, 2007) and Denmark (Pedersen, 2005), the capital (or in the case of Randstad, the nexus of capitals) dominates national life in economics, politics and culture, counterweighed by very few
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
40
urban centres, and this has favoured the spread of generalised norms over a wide area, leaving only a few usually remote regions, like Limburg or Jutland, with a much different sociolinguistic profile. Haseler (1996) has claimed that by the mid-1990s the UK had an even more centralised regime than France, which by that time had introduced some far-reaching decentralisation measures. The UK is nevertheless composed of four nations having each a number of culturally distinctive features, and many of the English, Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish identify with these, perhaps mostly notably in sport, which has powerful symbolic significance. Prestige and localised forms of English very different from RP and its paralects are well established in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and arguably in England. In general, both autochtonous and distinctive regional norms enjoy greater vitality in countries organised politically on a federal or quasi-federal basis, as in Spain and Germany, and since devolution in 1999, in the UK. Regional standards and regiolectal vernacular varieties tend to emerge from provincial centres, which, as in the case of Manchester, Birmingham and the West Midlands, Liverpool, Leeds-Bradford and Tyneside provide significant regional counterweights to the dominance of London, or in the case of Barcelona and the Basque Country outweigh in economic and demographic terms the political capital Madrid. Pedersen (2005: 174) suggests that what is crucial is the comparative timing of standardisation and industrialisation. Early industrialisation in the UK created the conditions for urban class-based vernaculars to develop. Industrialisation and urbanisation occurred later in France and in any case centred on Paris, with working-class vernaculars emerging in the industrial suburbs.1 The development of heavy industries in northern France and Wallonia gave rise to urban spread, with workers in many urbanised areas using modified forms of dialect or patois ouvriers, at least until World War I. In Switzerland, industry developed more slowly, producing hardly any slums, nor the numerous urban proletariats associated with them. In Germany, later industrialisation produced similar effects to those noted for Britain but in attenuated form, partly because in the leading industrial area, the Ruhr, many small and medium-sized towns had urban vernaculars more akin to patois ouvriers than vernacular forms of German. In Spain, industrialisation was relatively late (later 19th century) but did not follow on from or result in the abandonment of autochtonous languages by the higher social classes in Catalonia or the Basque Country. The continued transmission of Catalan in particular made it the focus of a sense of regional linguistic identity. Generally speaking, industrialisation and urbanisation created a social divide,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 41
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
although there are exceptions, Denmark in particular where the development of agrarian capitalism and hence an agrarian bourgeoisie was coupled with the early introduction of compulsory education (1814) whose efforts were complemented by the Folk High Schools of the Pietist movement. The result was a more homogeneous mentality between town and rural dwellers and the absence of strong class-consciousness (Pedersen, 2005: 188–9). Like Germany, Italy has a number of regional centres and despite their current size, neither Berlin nor Rome have been the traditional norm-setting centres. In historical terms, both countries were unified relatively late (in the 1860s), and Germany was divided for several decades of the 20th century. Nonetheless, recent studies such as those of Spiekermann (2005) and Elspaβ (2007) point to signs that regional variation is starting to reduce, either with variants being shared by several Länder or else regionally neutral forms emerging. In Italy on the other hand, the vitality of traditional dialects, several of which were regional languages with strong literary traditions, is of a completely different order (Berruto, 1997). Many Italians can be considered bilingual in Romance varieties which may manifest greater differences from Standard Italian than from Spanish. Berruto claims further that in the late 1980s more than 60% of Italians were bilingual or bidialectal. According to the Doxa survey of 1996 (Parry, 2002: 50) 33.9% of the population claimed to make exclusive use of a dialect at home, whereas the ISTAT survey of 2000 estimated the proportion at 19.3% with 15.3% using both dialect and Standard Italian at home. Berruto (2005) refers to the emergence of regional vernacular varieties of Italian (italiano popolari (regional)). The majority of Italians of all social classes show their regional origins through their pronunciation. While political independence has favoured the emergence of prestige national norms of a shared language in Austria and Flemish Belgium and a highly distinctive sociolinguistic situation in Switzerland, a potentially similar situation in (mainland) Scandinavia was resolved by the development of separate national languages, and these retain a good level of intercomprehensibility, although there are some indications that this is weakening (Gooskens, 2005), in particular following the increasing recourse to English in inter-Scandinavian communication among young adults. Similar observations have been made regarding German and French speakers in Switzerland, citing largely practical reasons, notably the linguistic distance between any spoken variety of German and the High German taught in schools in Suisse romande. In Belgium the two major linguistic groups have chosen to live with a
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
42
high level of separation and use one another’s language only under sufferance. Nonetheless, the power of what Clyne (1995) labelled ‘cultural cringe’ or subservience to extraterritorial norms, outweighs factors of national identity favoured by political independence. Part of the exception française in Europe is a monocentric norm spanning more than one nation-state, where English, German, Spanish (if Latin America is included) and Dutch speakers in different nations share a common standard with pluricentric norms. The transnational perspective sketched so far helps us to formulate a number of questions, the possible responses to which are appreciably different from those considered authoritative even a few decades ago. Firstly, if the francophone space can be characterised as diaglossic rather than diglossic, how distinctive are regiolectal varieties and what degree of vitality do they enjoy? Secondly, does it make sense to speak of regional standards within France or indeed any part of the French-speaking area? Thirdly, is it justifiable to speak of national prestige pronunciations in francophone Belgium and Suisse romande, as seems possible for Quebec, Austria and Flanders?
Note 1. Pedersen (2005) has a very similar account of Copenhagen. In Paris some working-class intra muros areas were destroyed expressly to prevent insurrections such as occurred in the Commune of 1871 (Lodge, 1997).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Standardisation and Language Change 43
Social Levelling: Substantive Transformations, Changing Social Practices and Symbolic Representations
3.1 Introduction In the previous chapter we attempted to characterise the three major French-speaking areas of Europe in a wider sociolinguistic perspective, while at the same time focussing on various aspects of their different histories that seem to contribute significantly to their national identity and its linguistic manifestations. The historical diversity discussed in Chapter 2 contrasts sharply with the relative uniformity of transnational trends that have affected western societies in comparable, but not identical, ways since the 1950s. This chapter, as the sub-title implies, will evoke these trends on three levels, according to a model used by Bassand (2004) to examine the development of large and often somewhat inchoate urban areas as follows: (1) substantive (morphological) transformations (2) changes in social practices (3) changes in symbolic representations. Given the interlocking nature of the three aspects, it is hardly feasible to separate them. For instance, the world-wide phenomenon of increasing urbanisation, while from a global perspective characterised by differences indicative of what can for convenience be called a ‘north-south’ divide, show broadly similar patterns across more technologically advanced societies, and these are exemplified quite typically in France, Belgium and Switzerland. The late 20th century was marked by increased metropolisation, the progressive expansion of towns and 44
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
3
cities into the surrounding areas, beyond the older suburbs. This new type of urbanisation implies substantive changes affecting the building of houses, roads and places of business, and widespread car ownership (or less frequently, the development of adequate public-transport connections). These morphological changes both reflect and influence changes in lifestyle and outlook. Many people who grew up in towns are now prepared to drive considerable distances into a nearby urban centre for work and recreation so as to be able to enjoy a ‘rural’ environment on their doorstep. This composite lifestyle, aiming to enjoy the best of town and country, might preclude, for instance, going home for lunch and even a shared family meal in the evening. A long drive increases the potential audiences of radio stations and bolsters the market for CDs, and more recently MP3s. Both the lifestyle (social practices) and outlook (symbolic representations) of such persons are generally more characteristic of the urban than the rural (Section 3.4). We have chosen to focus on seven aspects of society (Sections 3.2 to 3.8) using this threefold perspective, before analysing a selected number of social practices which are particularly telling in regard to changes in symbolic representations, and which seem to illustrate both patterns of diffusion and the nexus of attitudes and influences contributing to the zeitgeist of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Sociologists and linguists have long recognised that changes in linguistic behaviour (even if examined as system-internal changes) reflect social changes and also, at least by implication, that these changes do not occur in isolation from mutations in other social practices and representations. Yet few studies have attempted in any detail to relate substantive macro-level changes to linguistic mutations. It is of course not possible to relate specific linguistic changes to precise social causes at a national, regional or usually even community level, although most speakers in a given location will be influenced by them, at least to some degree. Our approach is intended therefore to complement rather than to impugn any locally based correlations reported by other scholars as significant in the light of local factors. Labov’s study of Martha’s Vineyard is the classic case of the latter type, but these are rare in relating social practice directly to language variation and change. What we attempt to do here is to present the macro-environment in sufficient detail to provide a backdrop which explains as coherently as possible, however probabilistically, the synthesis of variationist and dialectological studies which follows in subsequent chapters. Section 3.2 discusses the emergence of the post-industrial economy, where the tertiary sector now provides more than two-thirds of all
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 45
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
employment. Section 3.3 presents the consequent changes in occupational structures, reviewing the social-class models used by sociolinguists for francophone Europe. In 3.4 we examine the phenomenon of urbanisation as sketched above as an example of the general approach we adopt here. The theme of Section 3.5 is gender, particularly the far greater degree of parity now enjoyed by women compared to the mid-20th century. This same period also witnessed almost unprecedented increases in levels of migration, bringing in their wake wholesale changes in the demographic composition of the populations of interest and provoking much language-related discussion, particularly in certain communities (Section 3.6). While the themes of internationalisation and globalisation examined in Section 3.7 pervade discussions of all other sections, they are approached here from the viewpoint of their potential sociolinguistic consequences. The diminishing importance of French as an international language has given rise to defensive reactions on the part of the French authorities and some self-appointed pressure groups. At the same time, European francophones have eagerly adopted many aspects of Anglo-American lifestyles and exhibit a keen appetite for their cultural products, distributed largely through the broadcast media. This nonetheless does not preclude, compared to a number of western European neighbours, the maintenance of a vibrant array of national cultural forms (Section 3.8). In the final section of this chapter (3.9) we consider a selection of social practices which illustrate channels of cultural diffusion capable of throwing light on the spread of linguistic changes, whether parallel or contrasting. We examine too the nexus of representations which contribute to the characterisation of the zeitgeist: the rejection of traditional forms of authority, taking the examples of dress and religious observances. Lastly, we look at two linguistic illustrations: the changing use of tu and vous and the increasing use of first names.
3.2 The emergence of the post-industrial economy Tables 3.1 to 3.3 show that in the early years of the 21st century, relatively similar proportions of the population worked in the primary (agricultural), secondary (industrial) and tertiary (service) sectors in the three countries of interest. In particular, the marginalisation is noticeable, at least in numerical terms, of workers in the agricultural sector, as well as the growth of the service sector, which now constitutes around 75% of the French and Belgian economies, while Switzerland
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
46
Social Levelling 47 Working population in France by sector (1911–2006) 1911 %
1946 %
1980 %
1997 %
2006 %
45 27 28
38 28 34
8.8 35.9 55.3
4.6 25.4 70
2.2 20.6 77.2
Agriculture Industry Services
Sources: INSEE, 2000a; OECD, 2007.
Table 3.2 Working population in Belgium by sector 2004 % Agriculture Industry Services
1.3 24.5 74.2
Source: OECD, 2007.
Table 3.3
Working population in Switzerland (1920–2003)
Agriculture Industry Services
1920 %
1940 %
1947 %
1960 %
1970 %
2003 %
37.5
25 40 35
20
13.2
6.4 49.5 44.1
4.1 23.9 72
Sources: Martin, 1980: 340; OECD, 2007.
has maintained until recently a larger industrial sector, although the current trend is for the tertiary to expand at the expense of the others. While many of the early successes of Belgian and French industry were due in large part to the availability of natural resources at home and in their colonies, Swiss industries prospered despite a relative lack of natural resources, abstention from colonial adventures and historically difficult internal transport conditions. It is a common exegetical convenience to divide the period 1945 to 2005 into two roughly equal periods of thirty years: 1945–75, now routinely referred to, at least in French, by Jean Fourastié’s expression the ‘Trente Glorieuses’, in contrast to what Louis Chauvel (2005: 48) terms the ‘Trente Piteuses’. For all three countries, the three decades following
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 3.1
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
World War II were particularly prosperous, with France recording constant annual growth of around 5%. With the fifth largest economy in the world, it may seem surprising that France underwent industrialisation relatively late. Prior to the Industrial Revolution the dominance of France was due to its greater demographic weight, an advantage which was lost in the 19th century as the population in the UK caught up with, and in Germany overtook, that of France. Apart from Paris and a few regions, such as the Nord, where mass-production industries had developed from the early 19th century, industrialisation increased rapidly only from the 1860s onwards, turning France into a leading industrial nation by the 1880s. To say that the three decades following the oil shocks of 1973–74 were ‘pitiful’ is of course an exaggeration, but growth rates, even in periods of prosperity, were more modest than between 1945 and 1975, and generally proved unsustainable at previous levels. Belgium and Switzerland also enjoyed an uninterrupted period of economic growth from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s, when, as in France, there was more or less full employment (in Switzerland, unemployment was officially 0%). These countries suffered comparable inconsistencies of performance in the decades that followed, albeit with very different consequences. In France, the public sector was expanded to levels difficult to maintain in a downturn, while unsustainable levels of quality were created in public services and security of employment, which as Chauvel (2005) and Mermet (2006) argue, have greatly influenced the national mood regarding the quite real prospect for many of downward mobility and frustration at the inability of the state to achieve for recent generations what it did for the baby-boomers. In Wallonia, as in certain French regions, the post-World War II decades provided temporary relief for decaying industries (steel, coal, textiles) for which modernisation was overdue and where prices were undercut by emerging economies. The period also marked a shift of economic power within Belgium from Wallonia to Flanders, encouraged by policies favourable to foreign investors. As well as possessing the huge asset of the port of Antwerp, now clearly the second city of Belgium after Brussels, Flanders developed more modern and prosperous industries such as chemicals and pharmaceuticals. This unequal distribution of economic prosperity (a reversal of the historical situation) is currently being used as a pretext to drive deeper the wedge between the Flemish and francophone communities, as the former call for greater autonomy and the latter cling tenaciously to a ‘united’ Belgium. Indeed a poll conducted in late 2008, reported on RTBF in early 2009, suggested that
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
48
even in the middle of an economic crisis, the splitting up of Belgium was a fear that ran a close second to unemployment among francophones, although the settlement of the constitutional problem shortly afterwards lowered the immediacy of such concerns.1 Switzerland, in contrast, fared far better. Being neither hampered by the loss of access to cheap raw materials after decolonisation, nor restricted by membership of the then European Economic Community, Switzerland dealt with the job losses sustained as a result of the economic downturn of the mid-1970s simply by sending large numbers of foreign workers back to their country of origin (mostly Italian; cf. Section 3.6). Since that time, Switzerland has signed international agreements that would preclude taking such action again. It remains nonetheless a highly successful economy, although the Romands perceive, to a large extent mistakenly to outside observers, their German-speaking compatriots as increasing their economic and political domination. These perceptions have the potential to spark a social crisis, but the situation is anodyne compared to Belgium and even France. Table 3.4 shows that both the Belgians and the Swiss are more prosperous than the French in terms of per capita income (PCI), the latter considerably so, although the apparently large gap separating Switzerland would be reduced if considered in terms of purchasing power parity rather than exchange rates (Schwok, 2006: 114). Although since 1974 unemployment has become a fact of life exacerbated by crises in the 1980s, 1990s and the early 2000s, it has remained considerably
Table 3.4 Relative prosperity in France, Belgium and Switzerland, with comparisons for USA and European neighbours at the turn of the 21st century
France Belgium Switzerland USA UK Germany Italy Netherlands Sweden
HDI
HDI position (174 states)
PCI (US dollars)
PCI % of USA
Public debt as % of GDP
0.918 0.923 0.914 0.927 0.918 0.906 0.900 0.921 0.923
11 5 12 3 10 14 19 8 6
26,270 26,730 43,060 31,380 20,870 28,280 20,170 25,940 26,210
92 95 137 100 67 90 64 82 83
42 97 36 66 33 33 125 54 32
Sources: Johnstone and Mandryk, 2001; OECD, 2007. Key: HDI – Health and Development Index; PCI – per-capita income.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 49
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
lower in Switzerland (2.5% in 2007 compared to 8.4% in Belgium and 7.2% in metropolitan France). Table 3.4 also suggests that the health and development index (HDI) hovers around similar levels for all the countries listed, despite Belgium’s being several places higher in this world league. Of the three economies, the indicators already mentioned plus the relatively low levels of public debt suggest the Swiss are best equipped in the medium term. France remains nevertheless a leading world economy – fifth in GDP terms in 2008 – and three times greater than the whole of Belgium and Switzerland combined, leaving aside the contributions of the francophone minorities. The linguistic implications of the foregoing can be summarised in broad terms as follows. It is somewhat of a commonplace that increased prosperity has the effect of dissolving cohesive social networks of the kind that promote localised norms. Lesley Milroy (1987: 82) cites Frankenberg (1969: 232) to this effect: ‘the less the personal respect received in small group relationships, the greater is the striving for the kind of impersonal respect embodied in a status judgment’. Impersonal respect of this kind can of course refer to status expressed through many social attributes, e.g. educational achievement or level and type of spending, but the paradoxical consequence of increased prosperity is greater individualism, since prosperity decreases economic interdependence, with the conformity that can entail. Milroy’s descriptions of the sometimes oppressive capacity to enforce norms inherent in a very cohesive community are too well known to need recitation here. The obverse of the paradox is that the dissolution of local norms exposes the individual to pressures exerted on a wider scale, most notably no doubt in the present cases through education. The consequences for the promotion of the standard language are obvious.
3.3 Changes in occupational structure The shift from an industrial to a service-based economy has altered the occupational structure in a number of well-documented ways, the sociolinguistic significance of which is undeniable and yet underinvestigated. The link between occupation and social class, while complex, has traditionally been used in aggregating individuals into groups differentiated by interdependent factors like income, educational level and type of residence. Class is a conceptual organisation of the reality of inequality (Cannadine, 1998: 188), although like many concepts it undergoes widespread reification, ‘moulding our perceptions of the unequal social
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
50
world’. Industrial societies are commonly categorised according to what Cannadine calls the triadic division of upper, middle and working class, corresponding in francophone contexts to haute bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie and classe ouvrière. Chambers (2003: 42) suggests that the fundamental dichotomy lies between manual and non-manual workers. The social transformations of recent decades have reflected the crossover between the proportion of employés outnumbering that of ouvriers for the first time in France, shown in the greater number of jobs (whether or not requiring high-level qualifications) in the service sector, as compared to the industrial. It is questionable whether the occupation-based manual/non-manual split, undoubtedly crucial in the 19th century, remains fundamental, as against social status marked by consumption rather than occupation (see Sections 5.1, 7.2). The latter half of the 20th century saw firstly an upward drift in social status and aspiration: more professional and middle-ranking jobs, indicative of moyennisation or professionalisation, reflected in ‘professional’ attributes and requirements like monthly salary, paid holidays, pension provision and higher entry qualifications; and secondly, a greater proportion of salaried workers compared to the self-employed. Along with this has gone a general rise in prosperity, driven by technological advances and (until recently) cheap imports, from which almost all have benefitted. This has had the effect of attenuating gross social differences. Against this, neoliberal economics has brought about frequent changes of regime and internal reorganisation, as well as high rates of job insecurity in certain sectors, such that company loyalty means less, and potential benefits, like internal promotion, are less likely. The traditional protection of paper qualifications has given way, at least in the private sector, to relative insecurity, giving rise in turn to the need for individuals to take responsibility for acquiring updatable skills. As Chauvel (2005: 17ff.) cogently argues, any sub-categorisation of the new middle ranks reflects only partially their perceived overall expansion, as they are not in the public perception clearly differentiated, but are the target of imitation by the numerically more marginal groups, whether by aspiration in the case of the least well-off, or out of discretion on the part of the economic and social elite. In terms of self-identification, the French seem to be relatively at ease with the notion of belonging to the classes moyennes; a TNS-SOFRES survey published in 2005 found that 75% of French people ‘avaient le sentiment d’appartenir aux classes moyennes’. In Britain by contrast, in 2000 a comparable survey conducted by MORI found that 58% of respondents
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 51
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
(N = 603) answered ‘working class’ to the question: ‘Most people say they belong either to the middle class or to the working class. If you had to make a choice, would you call yourself middle class or working class?’. The result evokes the populist or anti-elitist resonance of the term ‘middle class’ in English, compared to classes moyennes which suggests the ‘middle-of-the-social-pile’ perception with which respondents appear to be more comfortable. While these ‘median’ classes have also become numerically dominant in Belgium and Switzerland, a certain egalitarianism means that social elites in all three countries tend to be discreet, and traditionally avoid flaunting their wealth, if only for fiscal purposes (that at least is the cliché). On the other hand, there are some indications that workingclass values in certain communities are surviving the demise of staple industries; cf. the former mining area of the Borinage (Thiam, 1995, a study discussed more fully in Section 6.4). Similarly, the persistence of Liège accents is sometimes attributed to the survival of the culture of the prosperous industrial period. It is plausible then in broad terms that Belgian francophone communities, particularly those with industrial traditions, should cling to the values and social practices of that period which put them in a dominant position within the nation, now that they are faced with the increasing ascendancy of Flanders. While Swiss francophones may also perceive a degree of threat from their German-speaking compatriots, the proletarian values of the industrial working classes were never so prevalent as in France or Belgium. Manual occupations, which traditionally produced high-value, highquality goods, have long been held in greater esteem relative to whitecollar ones than in the other countries. This might be due, as Singy’s classification suggests (see Table 3.6 on page 54), to the relative numerical importance of self-employed skilled manual workers and the absence of traditional large-scale, labour-intensive industries that existed in Wallonia and certain French regions. Moreover, some traditional industries (watch-making in Neuchâtel is a clear example) continue to prosper as major elements in the economy, despite periods of downturn. The professionalisation of society, as well as the factors mentioned above, has been matched by increased equality of wealth distribution. According to Chauvel (2005: 55) the ratio of inequality between the best- and worst-off deciles of the French population fell from 8.5:1 in 1955 to around 3:1 in 2000, which puts France marginally ahead of Switzerland, but well behind Belgium on the Gini equality index, as reported in a UN study of 2005 (Table 3.5). A result closer to zero on the index shows greater equality.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
52
Social Levelling 53 Table 3.5 Gini index for Belgium, France, Switzerland and selected countries Gini index
World equality rating (124 countries)
Belgium France Switzerland Denmark Finland Germany Italy Netherlands Spain Sweden UK
.25 .327 .331 .247 .269 .283 .36 .309 .325 .25 .36
4 34 37 1 10 14 52 24 31 3 51
Outside Europe Japan USA Brazil
.249 .408 .593
2 74 117
Source: ONU, 2005.
The francophone communities are also, as suggested above, pervaded by an egalitarian ethos, which along with fast-rising prosperity and the likely prospect of upward mobility in the post-World War II decades attenuated longstanding antagonisms. These latter have however found expression in xenophobic reactions in all three countries as high levels of unemployment and perceived insecurity have had a wide influence. When it emerged as a sub-discipline in the 1960s, variationist sociolinguistics considered urban communities in contrast to the largely rural sites studied in traditional dialectology. Early sociolinguistic work in the USA (Wolfram, 1969; Labov, 1966) classified informants into social classes using a four-way division based on occupation, education, and family income. For the first major sociolinguistic study in the UK, Trudgill (1974) added area of residence and type of housing (e.g. owner-occupier or council tenant) and introduced an element of social mobility by basing the index for occupation on both the informant’s job and their father’s to produce a five-layer classification consisting of Middle and Lower Middle Class and Upper, Middle and Lower Working Class (Labov used only two sub-divisions of the working classes). These and other studies showed the particular propensity of the lower-middle classes to (claim to) use the (presumed) highest-status
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Country
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
speech forms. This was interpreted as an indication of their desire for upward mobility, which in turn was a realistic possibility for many in the so-called three glorious decades. This suggests that despite the ‘unreality’ of social class discussed above, sociolinguists have been successful in mapping on to linguistic behaviour the perceived social reality of class in the communities with which they are familiar. A construct like class can clearly possess psychological reality, and as such exert social influence. In studies of francophone Europe, social models have been used with similar success. For the Vaud canton, Singy (1996) reduced the nine major categories having a total of 24 sub-categories used by the Swiss Office fédéral de la Statistique, or the 13 categories used by the Geneva canton, to four, as shown in Table 3.6. This four-way division again yielded convincing results, showing the ‘new middle class’ to display perceptions (Singy’s study is perceptual) which correspond to the behaviour and attitudes manifested by the lower-middle classes in New York and Norwich. The work of Bauvois (2001, 2002a, 2002b) and of Moreau and Bauvois (1998) on Mons in Wallonia not only analyses the speech behaviour of people from all strata of society, but breaks new ground in attempting to go beyond the linear perspective of classical variationist studies to reflect the French sociological tradition, as represented in the work of Bourdieu and Boltanski (1975), which sees individuals in a multi-dimensional social space. These Belgian studies take into account the increasing premium placed on job security and worker autonomy, to the relative detriment of paper qualifications, although level of remuneration remains Table 3.6 Socio-professional categories used by Singy (1996: 72–3) Social class
Examples
Couche sociale dite supérieure ‘upper-middle class’
higher managerial grades; professions; CEOs of large companies
Couche sociale dite moyenne nouvelle ‘new middle class’
qualified non-manual ; lower and middle managerial
Couche sociale dite moyenne traditionelle ‘traditional median class’
self-employed manual; self-employed non-manual; farmers
Couche sociale dite inférieure ‘lower or working class’
unskilled and semi-skilled manual; skilled manual, foremen, workshop or site supervisors; junior clerical
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
54
Social Levelling 55
Lille (1970s)
Mons (2000)
5. Higher Education
4. Diplôme universitaire 3. Diplôme de l’enseignement supérieur de temps court
4. Baccalauréat
2. Diplôme de l’enseignement secondaire ou technique
3. CAP (passed ‘certificat d’aptitude professionnelle’) 2. GCEP (passed ‘certificat d’études primaires’)
1. Diplôme primaire ou professionnel ou moins
1. Primary education only
a key factor in judging status (Section 6.6). Compared for instance to Lefebvre’s (1991) study of Lille, the scale of educational achievement had to be adjusted upwards (Table 3.7) to reflect the undeniable fact that more people now than a few decades ago spend longer in full-time education and go on to higher education, and conversely the less need for sub-categorisation of less well qualified people, bearing in mind that many of Lefebvre’s informants (born between 1895 and 1963) finished their schooling before the leaving age was raised to 16. Table 3.8 shows how the level of education has risen in France for citizens born since 1943. Since 1995, over 60% of the generation has Table 3.8 Educational achievement in France (percentages) by age and gender in 2007 Qualification
Year of Birth 1988 F
CEP or lower BEPC CAP, BEP BAC or BP BAC + 2 (HE) Graduate BAC or higher
69.9
1973–82
1963–72
1953–62
1943–52
M
F
M
F
M
F
M
F
M
58.9
10.6 4.9 15.4 23.0 21.4 24.8 69.1
12.3 6.0 21.7 23.3 16.5 20.3 60.0
17.7 7.9 25.8 17.2 15.5 15.8 48.5
18.8 6.3 33.2 14.5 15.0 15.0 41.7
27.5 11.9 24.2 16.1 9.0 9.0 36.4
24.9 8.7 34.2 12.2 11.6 11.6 33.2
40.8 9.8 21.7 12.1 7.9 7.7 27.7
34.4 7.5 29.2 11.2 5.7 11.9 28.9
Source: INSEE, 2007.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 3.7 Comparison of educational categories in the Lille (Lefebvre, 1991) and Mons studies (Bauvois, 2002a)
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
passed one of the Baccalauréat pathways, with a peak of 64.3% in 2006, still some way short of the declared government target of 80%. This rise in the level of education of the general population corresponds to considerable increases in the proportion of the classes moyennes, but it also includes pupils who have obtained the Baccalauréat professionnel leading to a skilled manual profession corresponding to upper-workingclass status, although not, as Singy’s classification rightly implies, if it also means self-employed status. There has naturally been much talk of the ‘dumbing down’ of standards, but even so, from a sociolinguistic perspective the time spent in full-time education and hence exposure to standardised language is an important factor in social levelling, as is the still normative character of French teaching. Moreover, despite high drop-out levels, the participation rate in higher education of around 40% for those born between 1973 and 1982 is suggestive of the relative expansion of the median classes. The proportion of graduates in the workforce as a whole is somewhat lower, around 30% (Mermet, 2006), compared to 37% in Belgium (OECD, 2008) but only 19% in Switzerland (Perellon, 2003). A further social categorisation used in a sociolinguistic study by Pooley (2004: 245) is the French Education Ministry’s scale for prediction of academic success according to parents’ profession, reproduced in Table 3.9. The linear and stratified presentation of Table 3.9 is based on Bourdieu’s conception of the different forms of capital, where
Table 3.9 Favourability to success at school and parents’ profession (1) highly favourable
professions; managerial, public or private sectors; teaching (all levels); IT, arts, entertainment; administrative and commercial executives; engineers; heads of companies with 10+ employees
(2) favourable
health care and social work ; middle managers in public service and commerce; clergy; technicians; supervisory; retired middle management
(3) average favourability
farmers; independent tradespeople; lower-ranking public service; police; military; clerical; service personnel dealing directly with the public; retired heads of small companies
(4) unfavourable
semi- and unskilled workers; agricultural labourers; retired manual; unemployed having never worked; stay-at-home parents
Source: http.www.education.gouv.fr/ival.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
56
relative status is shown as being achieved by different routes, one where economic and another where educational resources dominate. This two-way division uses two of the four forms of ‘capital’ proposed by Bourdieu: economic and cultural. In terms of cultural capital, it is noticeable that teachers and other public-service professionals score well in status terms because of their high level of cultural capital, despite relatively low salaries. Modest remuneration, compared to executives in the private sector, is further compensated for by a better quality of life, often strengthened by clearly defined working hours and security of employment. Bourdieu (1979) identified two further forms of capital: social and symbolic. The notion of social capital refers particularly to the social networks which develop a sense of mutual obligation and trust. The networks reflect social inequalities in wider society, since the institutions and mechanisms that accumulate this capital are biased in favour of those who are already in a relatively privileged position. Obvious examples are products of the UK public schools and ‘elite’ universities, or in the French context certain exclusive grandes écoles. Perkins (2002: 398) suggests that ‘the rise of the professional society’ has led to the emergence of ‘a congeries of parallel career hierarchies’. It is understandable that busy professionals engaged in high levels of specialisation in their own field should find it difficult to ‘bridge’ with others in different professions. Apart from the obvious matter of specialist terminology, the sociolinguistic consequences of such compartmentalisation are unclear, although an overarching by cultural capital seems plausible. A specific example of bridging, the parental profile of informants in Pooley’s (2004) study of 172 school students in Lille suggests that non-homogamic relationships (Dubar, 2000) among parents are rare. Indeed, the categorisation of spouses according to the occupational criteria in Table 3.9 showed that all couples in the sample were of the same or immediately contiguous categories. While there are undeniably successful relationships that bridge disparities in social, economic and cultural capital, these are rare, for perceived comparable levels of capital contribute significantly to the creation and maintenance of the social nexuses in which individuals are involved. Economic, cultural and social capital all feed into symbolic capital, which is crucial in defining and reflecting the zeitgeist. Despite the social transformations described above, the terms used by ordinary speakers to categorise speech varieties still reflect to a large extent categories deriving from the industrial era, such as ‘bourgeois’ or ‘populaire’. This time-lag is of importance, given the preponderance in
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 57
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
the literature of perceptual studies, where informants might use apparently obsolescent categories in need of reinterpretation in the light of recent social changes. Many scholars, e.g. Armstrong and Boughton (1998; 2009) have settled, however, for a two-term class split, middle class against working class, which characterises the fundamental distinction between non-manual and manual workers (Chambers, 2003: 42), giving robust findings in both behavioural and perceptual perspectives (Section 5.1). If, as Labov (1972) has argued, the range of possible sociolinguistic differences within a given community is less than other forms of social differentiation, such as dietary tastes or religious preferences, then the simplification of social categorisation compared to a full set of INSEE categories appears justified, given the generally confirmatory character of the results obtained. There is also considerable evidence to suggest that a sub-division of ‘working-class’ of the kind suggested by Chauvel is useful, given the results of studies by Pooley (1996) and Armstrong and Jamin (2002). Identification of what is sometimes called the underclass or ‘groupe d’exclusion’, whether defined by educational level as in Roubaix (Pooley) or by area of residence and lifestyle in the Paris suburbs (Jamin) has yielded interesting results on the socially marginal use of vernacular variants. A form of social categorisation derived from Bourdieu’s work (Bourdieu and Boltanski, 1975) known as the marché linguistique was devised by Sankoff and Sankoff (1973) in their study of Montreal. The neo-Marxist notion of the linguistic marketplace, which sees language as a form of tradable capital, is based on the commonsense observation that some speakers like teachers or lawyers have a greater stake in the ‘legitimised’ variety and hence are likely to use variants closer to it than other professionals such as engineers or doctors. At a lower occupational level, secretaries have a higher stake than technicians or mechanics, since in each case public interaction increases the importance of using the legitimised variety. Sankoff and Laberge’s (1978) ‘linguistic market index’ was predicated on the judgements of a panel of informants on the need by a wide range of speakers to use the legitimised language. The linguistic market characterises the system of linguistic exchanges whereby the standard language has greater social capital, used in a sense close to that of overt prestige, whereas in social circles free of such constraints, vernacular or covert prestige norms take on high value as sub-cultural capital, or perhaps in a parallel market. This binary and conflictual schema is in contrast to the consensual, scalar model used by most scholars following Labov. From a transnational perspective, as will be discussed in detail in subsequent chapters, a number of perceptual
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
58
studies suggest a pan-francophone linguistic market dominated by France, with more localised, but not necessarily pan-community markets in Belgium and Switzerland. Within France, a sort of standardisation obtains in the form of a widely diffused legitimate linguistic market, propelled by some of the factors discussed in this section, perhaps most notably the high value placed on education and a form of egalitarianism (‘élitisme républicain’) that aims upwards, in sharp contrast to Anglo-American populism (cf. Hofstadter, 1962).
3.4 Urbanisation Broadly speaking, urbanisation in Europe can be divided into three types or historical stages. Firstly, the medieval city, which may in some cases date back to Roman times and emerged from agrarian (market town) and proto-industrial activities; secondly, the industrial town, which developed either from a small village or proto-industrial urban centre; thirdly, the post-industrial metropolisation that has characterised post-World War II development. The first two types of urban centre tend to correspond more or less closely with a close-knit or organic ‘commune’, often surrounded by immediately adjoining suburbs, whereas the urbanisation that developed with the dominance of the service sector may be based not so much on contiguity as on accessibility (Bassand, 2004: 52). In France, this expansion was in part centrally planned, for instance through the regional development agency DATAR,2 which promoted the creation of a number of ‘counterweight metropolises’ (métropoles d’équilibre)3 as a solution to the problem famously described by Gravier (1957) as ‘Paris et le désert français’. The cities chosen had all functioned historically as cultural, educational and administrative centres, and were well placed to become regional economic centres in a tertiary age (see Hohenberg and Lees, 1995). In Belgium and in Switzerland the development of urban agglomerations was more anarchic. That is not to say that in all three countries, as elsewhere, urbanisation may not often be chaotic and unsightly. The growth of such agglomerations transcends both internal administrative boundaries and may in some cases, such as Geneva-Annemasse and Lille-Courtrai-Tournai, cross national and linguistic frontiers. As centres of economic activity, these urban areas also tend to achieve greater importance if they enjoy efficient internal and international transport links. By and large, political structures have not adapted to new social and political realities, save in the case of the French métropoles d’équilibre that formed already a communauté urbaine (Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon; Roncayolo, 2001: 128). In Belgium as a whole,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 59
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
and in piecemeal fashion in Switzerland, the issue was partly dealt with by enlarging communes and thus reducing their number. This post-industrial urban expansion extending well beyond the enlarged city-centre communes has been modelled archetypically by Bassand (2004) in terms of a series of four concentric circles: (1) urban centre, (2) suburbs, (3) periurban areas, (4) rural (or ‘rurban’) areas. This model is far from an invariable fit to actual cities, particularly in cases where historically sizeable towns developed in close proximity, as in the case of Lille, Roubaix and Tourcoing (Pooley, 2004), and because development between urban centres is largely predicated on transport links. As with all other western European countries, the urban populations of France, Belgium and Switzerland have far outnumbered the rural, since the late 19th century in Wallonia and since the interwar years in France and Suisse romande. In western European terms, however, both France and Switzerland have relatively low levels of urbanisation and population density, although in the case of Switzerland, the sparsely populated mountainous proportion of national territory (26%) means that it is more realistic to consider only the populated areas, which gives densities comparable to those of Germany and the UK. Belgium, along with the neighbouring Netherlands, stands out among the most urbanised and densely populated areas (Table 3.10). From a sociolinguistic perspective, as noted in Section 3.1, the proportion of urban dwellers may be less important than the pervasiveness of urban lifestyles and mindsets, including in the rural or ‘rurban’ areas. Table 3.10 Urbanites and population density in a number of western European countries at the turn of the 21st century (Johnstone and Mandryk, 2001; Bassand, 2004) Country
France Belgium Switzerland Denmark Germany Italy Netherlands Spain Sweden UK
Proportion of ‘urbanites’ (%)
Population density per km2
73 97 73 85 82 67 91 78 84 90
109 333 179 123 230 190 378 79 20 241
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
60
It is quite common for people, often higher earners, to settle in such places, enjoying the countryside on their doorstep while benefitting from the economic activities and cultural facilities of the city within easy reach. Agriculture, for long the economic underpinning of communities where traditional languages were spoken, is no longer the majority occupation of so-called rural communes. Even in areas selected for sociolinguistic investigation because of their rurality in the 1990s, as in Auzanneau’s (1998) study of the southern Poitou, only a small minority (under 10%) still earned their livelihoods through agriculture. Moreover, the mechanisation of agriculture and the need for business skills in running a farm have long since transformed the nature of farming. The composite lifestyle of farmers (Pedersen, 1994) is often reinforced by family members working or attending school in a nearby town. With the high number of secondary residences in France as well as new housing, many village populations now have a majority of urbanised incomers. Bassand (2004: 76–7) suggests that although people of all social classes may reside in all four categories of area, certain trends can be observed linking social categories and areas of residence. Manual workers will be concentrated in certain districts of urban centres and suburban areas, and will tend to live in smaller dwellings, often in flats of the socialhousing type. White-collar workers of modest status (employés) live in broadly the same areas, but enjoy better-quality housing. The selfemployed tend to favour rurban and periurban areas, which they share with professionals at the middle and upper end of the income scale. The latter also choose often to reside in pleasanter central areas of cities, where it is possible to live, work and shop within a fairly small compass. Crucially from a sociolinguistic perspective, the working-class central areas of cities no longer tend to be places of solidarity, as was the case in the inner-city industrial areas of Belfast (Milroy, 1987) or the courées of Roubaix (Pooley, 1996) but of isolation. Many post-war blocks of flats were badly designed, with the consequence that noises can be heard between apartments, creating considerable potential for animosity. The areas often lack adequate amenities and house a disproportionate number of migrants. Residents are thus both the least happy and the least neighbourly. Despite clear differences in size and quality of housing, members of all other social groups tend to be far more satisfied with their homes and the better-off, whether residing in a central neighbourhood or rurban village, are as Bassand (2004) argues, much more likely to develop local networks. In the following paragraphs we discuss the major urban areas of francophone Europe, beginning with France. As Map 3.1 suggests, France
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 61
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Map 3.1
The major urban areas of francophone Europe
Sources: INSEE Profils 2000, 61: 5; Bassand, 2004: 32.
has a considerable number of urban areas, which now cover more than double the surface area built up in the mid-20th century (expanding from 7% to 14% of the national territory between 1945 and 1975). As only a few of these areas have been the focus of sociolinguistic studies, we have elected to illustrate the main developments by discussing two of the most studied cities, Paris and Lille. Paris developed much earlier and far more extensively than any other francophone city, and corresponds reasonably well to the
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
62
Map 3.2 The Île-de-France region Source: IAURIF.
concentric-circle model proposed by Bassand. Indeed its structure is often characterised in comparable terms (Map 3.2). The historical central area of the Seine département, the city of Paris, is surrounded by a ring road and two belts or couronnes, the petite couronne consisting of the départements of the Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis and the Valde-Marne and the grande couronne of the départements of the Yvelines, Val d’Oise, Seine-et-Marne and Essonne. Traditionally, social disparities were reflected in geographical distribution, with for instance middleclass areas (the 8e and 16e arrondissements of Paris) situated in the west and working-class areas to the north and east (the 12e and 20e arrondissements). This pattern was extended in the suburban expansion of the 19th century, with the so-called banlieues aisées of the Hauts-de-Seine contrasting starkly with the industrial suburbs of SeineSaint-Denis. These were partly inhabited by those displaced from the historical core working-class central areas following the remodelling of Paris by Haussmann, who as préfet of the Seine département from 1853 to 1870 instigated and oversaw the physical transformation of around
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 63
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
60% of the twenty arrondissements of the city, destroying thereby many of the traditional working-class areas (Lodge, 1997, 2004). In the early part of the 20th century, many people of intermediate social standing opted for a suburban lifestyle in the form of modest individual houses (pavillons), which offered greater comfort than ageing inner-city flats or low-quality social housing. Under centrally directed regional planning carried out through agencies like the DATAR, ‘new’ towns such as Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Cergy-Pontoise, Marne-la-Vallée, Évry and Melun-Sénart were developed, precisely to distribute the overspill over a wider region rather than allow it to accumulate in the suburbs of the petite couronne. The grande couronne includes a number of historic towns with a distinctive identity, such as Versailles and Saint-Germainen-Laye, which provide a pleasant urban environment, surrounded by developments of a periurban character interspersed by substantial areas of woodland and countryside. The Île-de-France contains around 40% of all banlieues in France, with the highest migrant populations in the country. In structural terms the banlieues cover a range of housing as wide as the full spectrum of society, and transport links, including reasonably priced and efficient public transport, alongside a well developed if overcrowded road system, make possible commuting into or across Paris from parts of the grande couronne, and hence a number of lifestyle choices. The term banlieue has however since the 1980s taken on the connotations (Boyer, 2000) of the ‘social-problem area’, reflected in the Pasqua Law of 1993 officially designating them as ZUS (zones urbaines sensibles); similar euphemisms like quartier défavorisé and quartier en difficulté are also widely used. Many of these areas are the result of urban developments of the 1960s called ZUPs (zone à urbaniser en priorité). Given that there were over a hundred shantytowns around Paris in the mid-1960s (Armstrong and Jamin, 2002: 117) the ZUP appeared at the time to be a suitable response to urgent housing needs. The housing estates (often so-called grands ensembles) provided the basic housing but not the amenities vital to local communities. The blocks were mostly built using standardised industrially produced components, which meant that they functioned like sound boxes, amplifying sounds in stairwells and landings, while thin walls limited privacy and multiplied occasions for annoyance. This was exacerbated by a lack of shared public space, creating an impression of entrapment and alienation. These areas are often perceived as sharing a number of common characteristics: high levels of unemployment due to the loss of local low-skill industrial jobs, high crime rates and the prevalence of a parallel economy that includes drug dealing, and an
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
64
above-average migrant population. The ZUS are not confined to socialhousing estates in out-of-centre deprived areas. The social ills of high unemployment and high crime rates are shared by older industrial areas, as in certain parts of Lille (Lille-Sud) or Roubaix (Alma-Gare). One of the most studied francophone cities from a sociolinguistic perspective, Lille is in some ways atypical of the French context as a whole, and at the time of its greatest industrial development, it was the largest but not the dominant city within the scattered industrial conurbations of the Nord–Pas-de-Calais, the second most productive industrial area in France in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The centrality of Lille in the Nord–Pas-de-Calais is a post-industrial phenomenon, a consequence of a historical advantage in tertiary activities and opting for métropole status. The establishment of Lille-Métropole as a centre for high-level tertiary activities was helped by the creation of the new town of Villeneuve d’Ascq. Although at its inception it was referred to as a ‘polynuclear’ conurbation, the urban core of the region, in economic terms at least, now includes the historically rival towns of Roubaix and Tourcoing, which have become national leaders in the low-level tertiary activity of mail-order. An indication of the centrality of Lille within the region is shown by the concentration of commuter journeys to and from the city within Nord–Pas-de-Calais in the 1990s (Map 3.3).
Map 3.3 Commuting to and from Lille in the Nord–Pas-de-Calais in the 1990s Source: INSEE, 2001.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 65
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
The centrality of Lille to the Nord–Pas-de-Calais region as an economic, educational and cultural centre is borne out by numerous statistics. The city houses nearly 30% of the population of the region in an area covering around 7% of the territory. At the turn of the 21st century, in its total area it provided 36% of all employment (INSEE, 2000: 7) including a higher proportion of tertiary jobs (38.4%) than the regional average. More significantly, it is also the only city to provide a wide range of service-sector employment, including a large proportion of jobs requiring high qualifications: 83% of research and development, 50% of health care including the advanced research institutes (Paris and Stevens, 2000: 132). Around 66% of students in higher education in Nord–Pas-de-Calais in the mid 1990s were studying in Lille (SDDU, 1998: 59). Lille is also the foremost cultural centre of the region (best-stocked Fine Arts Museum outside Paris and an acclaimed national orchestra; Marchand, 1999: 355). As well as leading in high culture, Lille is also the principal regional centre for more popular forms of theatre and music, as well as for shopping (Paris and Stevens, 2000: 211). The unhealthy dominance of Paris deplored by Gravier has then in recent times been countered to some extent. The national leaders in various prestigious fields are now outside the capital: the leading European burns unit and WHO-sponsored cancer-research institute in Lyon, the foremost school of librarianship in Toulouse and the principal electronics institute (Institut supérieur d’électronique) in Lille (Roncayolo, 2001: 201). These developments are too recent for their linguistic effects to be evaluated, but there are strong grounds for predicting that, as with the physical extension of urban areas, they will promote advergence. The dominance of a service economy in France has invariably contributed both to the de-dialectalisation of traditional vernaculars and the de-regionalisation of local accents. In francophone Belgium, the development of urban areas around the major conurbations is also noticeable. The expansion of Brussels is however limited to the nineteen communes of Bruxelles-Capitale with a population of around one million inhabitants, and were it permitted to expand naturally, it would include a population over twice that size (see Table 2.3). This impinging of the capital on Flemish-speaking areas, however constrained, with its large and varied foreign population, who choose mostly to learn French, causes acute political controversy. This increasing migrant population has no doubt contributed to considerable changes in the sociolinguistic situation that pertained in the mid-20th century, described by Baetens-Beardsmore (1971, 1979) and summarised in Section 6.2.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
66
Map 3.4 The urban areas of Wallonia
The urban areas of Wallonia stretch across the breadth of the region and are strung out in an east-west direction such that one is never beyond the zone of attraction of the major centres (Map 3.4), save in the south-east. Map 3.4 would suggest, in terms of shapes and connectivity, two major centres, Liège and Charleroi-La Louvière-Mons, with Namur and Tournai as secondary centres. The current communes were set up by a law of 1977, which made Charleroi and Liège centres of population with around 200,000 people in urban areas of about 400,000 to 600,000 (Table 3.11). This morphologically based analysis does not however match perceptions. Mons and Charleroi are capitals of different provinces with different traditional vernaculars (Walloon and Picard). Namur is both the capital of the eponymous province and of the region of Wallonia. While as an urban centre Liège has a reach beyond the national to Luxembourg, Aachen and Maastricht, it has a specific identity related to the pre-industrial and industrial period, and this includes regionally accented speech. In their historical identity, similar remarks may be made of Charleroi, Mons and Namur. In the Borinage region, now administratively part of the Mons urban area, local identities based on the industrial era and specifically differentiated from
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 67
68
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Liège Charleroi Mons Tournai Namur Verviers La Louvière
Urban centre
Conurbation
190, 000 202, 000 91, 000 68, 000 108, 000 80, 000 77, 000
592,000 422,000 250,000 142,000 296,000 269,000 179,000
Mons, perceived as a bourgeois and ‘fransquillon’4 city, seem to have outlived the staple industry, coal (Thiam, 1995). Tournai has become part of a cross-frontier and cross-linguistic urban area, which includes Lille and (Flemish-speaking) Courtrai, adopting speech forms closest to the supralocal variety. In Switzerland, there are five extended urban areas (see Map 3.5): the métropole lémanique (Geneva, Lausanne, Vevey-Montreux; see Map 3.6);
Map 3.5
The major urban areas of Switzerland
Source: Bassand, 2004: 32–3.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 3.11 Populations of major urban areas and urban centres in Wallonia
Map 3.6 The métropole lémanique Source: Bassand, 2004: 51.
the métropole bernoise (Berne, Neuchâtel, la Chaux-de-Fonds, Fribourg, Biel-Bienne); Zürich; Basel (a trans-frontier centre linked with Mulhouse and Freiburg-im-Breisgau) and the métropole tessinoise (Lugano, Locarno, Bellinzona). While Bassand’s analysis of the urban fabric of Switzerland is plausible regarding its physical structure and transport links, particularly between Geneva and Lausanne, he was also able to highlight the continuance of distinctive perceived identities (Bassand, 2004: 120). The major factors invoked by his subjects were history, geography and the character of local people, such that the Genevans perceive themselves to be cosmopolitan, open and tolerant. They also perceive Lausanne
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 69
70
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
City Geneva-Annemasse Berne Lausanne Fribourg Biel-Bienne Vevey-Montreux Neuchâtel La Chaux-de-Fonds
Population in 2000
Outside Switzerland
637, 000 346, 000 309, 000 95, 000 89, 000 81, 500 78, 000 37, 500
26%
as provincial and thus any conceivable alliance as something of a mismatch. The Lausannois, on the other hand, could see that an administrative linkage with Geneva would make good sense in socioeconomic terms, but would oppose it as they were convinced that the Genevois saw themselves as more cosmopolitan and generally superior. Were a similar study to be carried out in the Berne urban area, one would expect the populations of towns like Neuchâtel and La Chaux-de-Fonds to affirm their local identities ( see Map 3.5 and Table 3.12). Some of the questions posed by Singy (1996) seem to imply that he saw Geneva, Lausanne and Neuchâtel as possible centres of linguistic focussing. While this seems likely, it has to be recognised that urban development and inter-cantonal mobility have increased since the mid-1990s, allowing one to hypothesise the clearer emergence of certain linguistic changes and possibly the erosion of traditional civic identities, though the former are by no means confirmed by the work of Andreassen in Nyon (Vaud) (Section 6.10).
3.5 Changing gender roles Since the 1940s, much legislation has been passed to promote the equality of women, notably the right to vote (France in 1944, Belgium in 1948, Switzerland in 1971); the change in marriage laws (suppression de la tutelle maritale: France in 1965, Belgium in 1958, Switzerland in 1981); divorce by consent; liberalisation of contraception (from 1975 in France;5 1973 in Belgium) and the legalisation of abortion (from 1975 in France; 1990 in Belgium; 2002 in Switzerland).6 In France, a law designed to put an end to gender discrimination in the workplace and in political life came into force in 1999. In Switzerland, a similar law covering the workplace was enacted almost two decades earlier (1981).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 3.12 The major (fully and partly) francophone cities of Switzerland (Schuler, 2003)
All this legislation can be construed as correcting laws dating back to the Code Napoléon (1804) whereby married women had a status equivalent to that of minors (Michielsens, 2005: 23). These far-reaching legal changes were driven by radically altered perceptions of the role of women in the public sphere. In the 19th century, the work of women, whether middle-class or working-class, was largely an extension of their domestic role (governess, teacher, nurse for the bourgeoises; domestic service for those of more modest origin; Dubar, 2000: 60). Working-class women who took employment in industry did so mostly from financial necessity, having to accept lower rates of pay and the dominant socio-political consensus that women were wives, caregivers and homemakers (Michielsens, 2005: 32). Indeed, after World War I, the domestic vocation and identity of women was reaffirmed and it was not until the 1960s that the situation started to change because of well-documented factors made possible by effective contraception, greater educational opportunities and the possibility of achieving financial independence through paid work. All of this took place against a backdrop of changing attitudes, indicated by the contrast between the relatively hostile reception given to Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe in the late 1940s and the more favourable response to the claims of the Women’s Liberation Movement from the late 1960s (Dubar, 2000). The sexual and financial emancipation of women has radically changed the character of family life. Birth rates in France dropped from 2.75 in 1965 to 1.70 in 1995. Many new forms of domestic arrangement have become commonplace. While the traditional family unit remains the most frequent pattern, it no longer implies traditional marriage. Indeed, with increasing divorce rates, it often implies so-called ‘recomposed’ families, giving rise to a multiplicity of step-relations where traditional parental authority cannot be assumed. As a result of the much greater frequency of separation and divorce, the number of single-parent families (mostly mothers) has increased dramatically. Many people, particularly younger people, choose to live alone, while being involved in a committed sexual relationship. As in a number of other areas, the social revolution of the 1960s led to widespread changes in social practices (in this case the numerous forms of domestic arrangement) which were tempered by a partial return to more traditional forms only in the latter years of the century (Dubar, 2000: 66). All this can be seen as contributing to the loosening of more traditional social networks. Education is an area where historical inequalities of opportunity have been reversed, to the extent that in most western countries girls
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 71
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
now routinely out-perform boys academically at school (in France at Baccalauréat level since 1971) and women make up the majority of university students (in France since 1975). In France and Belgium, more women than men (ratios 1.27% (France) and 1.25% (Belgium)) are enrolled on higher-education courses (Haussmann, Tyson and Zahidi, 2008). While Switzerland seems to be lagging behind in this respect, the 2008 ratio of 0.90% is much higher than at the turn of the century, when around 30% of women in the 25–34 age range had undertaken post-compulsory education. As Table 3.13 shows, More than 80% of women are working in all three francophone countries, putting them in a cluster with neighbouring countries such as Germany, Netherlands and the UK, clearly behind the leading trio of Finland, Norway and Sweden while easily ahead of Italy and Spain. What is most significant chronologically is the considerable increase in the proportion of women in gainful employment over the second half of the 20th century. France has more than twice the proportion of women in paid work compared to the 1960s (41.5% in 1962). This has resulted in high levels of feminisation of certain professions, notably primary and secondary education (Table 3.13). This Table 3.13 Gender equality in France, Belgium and Switzerland (1 = equality). (Haussmann, Tyson and Zahidi, 2008) France
Belgium
Switzerland
Economic participation and opportunity Women in workforce Pay equality Legislators, senior officials, managers Professional and Technical professions Index of enterprise leadership (Scale 1 to 7)
.85 .50 .59
.80 .60 .46
.87 .61 .42
.89
.96
.82
4.07
4.56
4.74
.55 .30 0.0
.40 .75 .04
Political empowerment Women in national parliament Women ministers Women heads of state (last 50 years)
.22 .88 .02
Feminisation of the teaching profession Primary teachers Secondary teachers Tertiary teachers
82% 58% 39%
79% 57% 41%
79% 47% 31%
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
72
might be viewed in part as a modern manifestation of the extended domestic role, but studies in Belgium (e.g. Bauvois, 2001; see also Section 7.3) have shown this to be sociolinguistically significant in a quite unexpected way. These social changes have indisputably had linguistic consequences, the most visible of which are the changes in professional titles. All the major countries of the so-called Francophonie Nord, France, Belgium, Quebec and Switzerland, have felt the need to address the issue, on which it can now be claimed that there is a widespread if not universal consensus regarding the desirability of the feminisation of such terms. Within Francophonie Nord, Quebec took the lead following the publication in 1979 of the first recommendations in the Gazette officielle du Québec (Conrick, 2002). In Europe it was, as might be expected, France that proposed the first measures under the Mitterrand government of 1981–86, through the Minister of Women’s Rights, Yvette Roudy, who set up a Commission de Terminologie in 1984. Although the Commission’s recommended guidelines for the drafting of documents emanating from public bodies met with the approval of the government and were published in the Journal Officiel in 1986, they were not implemented, principally because of the opposition of the French Academy. It was more than a decade later that the seven women ministers appointed in Lionel Jospin’s government (1997–2002) insisted on being referred to as ‘la Ministre’. The issue of the feminisation of job titles received much attention in the media, and with the Prime Minister’s strong support, feminisation has become usual in the print and audiovisual media, despite further vociferous opposition from the Academy. One of the consequences of this decade or more of delay was that Switzerland and Belgium following the Roudy initiatives, carried through reforms sooner than France. It would not have been surprising if Switzerland, as a non-member of the EU and consequently a non-signatory to the clauses on equality in the Treaty of Rome, had lagged behind France and Belgium on this, as on some other social issues. Switzerland’s long history of conflict resolution and local democracy often means, however, that such matters cause less controversy. As regards the adaptation of linguistic usage to contemporary reality, Suisse romande made unobtrusive progress, possibly in part as a result of germanophone influence, publishing the first recommendations in 1991 (Formulation non sexiste des actes législatifs et administratifs at federal level) and a dictionary of professional titles (for the cantons of Jura and Geneva) without provoking a polemical debate (Di Pietro and Béguelin, 1999).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 73
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
In Belgium, the publication in 1994 of a list of recommended terms by the Service de la langue française and the Conseil supérieur de la langue française aroused great controversy. Many Belgian francophones seriously questioned whether their community should indulge in this kind of corpus planning, deemed by some to be the sole prerogative of France (Moreau, 1999: 68). The untenable conservatism of the French Academy caused the president of the Académie royale de langue et littéraire françaises (de Belgique), Jean Tordeur, to ignore the advice of his French counterpart, Maurice Druon, asserting quite justifiably that ‘la France n’est pas la francophonie’ and that Belgium was not lacking in able linguists. Studies reported by Moreau (1999: 73, 75) show that a widely read newspaper Le Soir and the French-speaking public broadcasting channel (RTBF), as well as major political parties, have largely adopted the practice of feminisation. From a different perspective, one can ask whether this is one of the more striking cases of Quebec, Belgium and Switzerland throwing off their linguistic insecurities (Conrick, 2002) vis-à-vis France and asserting ownership of the language, by setting norms differing (albeit slightly) from those of France. Can this assertion of ownership be extended to other areas of linguistic usage, in particular pronunciation? Clearly, this is not a matter for legislation, but the example of the feminisation of job titles might set a precedent for linguistic self-determination in other areas. While Quebec has largely liberated itself from French norms, the issue remains problematic in Suisse romande and the Belgian francophone community, although arousing far greater controversy in the latter. While the memory of France as the acknowledged norm-setter still influences the self-representations of francophones from other countries, causing considerable linguistic insecurity, this can no longer be assumed automatically (Sections 4.7–4.9).
3.6 Migration Table 3.14 permits comparison of the proportion of foreign residents in France, Belgium and Switzerland with thirteen other western European countries. In France the proportion of non-nationals (around 6%) is relatively high for a demographically ‘large’ country (in the European context), while that of Belgian (9%) is at the higher end for EU members. Even these relatively high proportions are dwarfed by the 25.1% of Switzerland. The industrial success of all three countries depended on high levels of migration by low-skill manual workers. In the early and middle
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
74
Social Levelling 75
Country France Belgium Switzerland Austria Czech Republic Denmark Finland Germany Ireland Italy Netherlands Portugal Slovakia Spain Sweden UK
1993
2003
6.3 (1990) 9.1 22 (1999) 8.6 0.8 3.6 1.1 8.5 2.7 1.7 5.1 1.3 0.2 1.1 5.8 3.5
5.6 (1999) 8.9 25.1 (2000) 8.3 2.4 9.4 2.0 8.6 5.6 3.8 4.3 4.2 0.5 3.9 5.1 4.8
decades of the 19th century, Flanders was an area of high emigration, either to Wallonia or the Nord–Pas-de-Calais. By the end of the century, the Italians had become the most numerous migrant group in all three countries (they still are in Belgium and Switzerland). Since World War II, the countries of origin have shown much diversity. In the immediate post-war period large numbers of Poles (400,000, i.e. 24% of migrants) were living in France (Gastaut, 1999), whereas the proportion in the other countries was much lower. People came to France from the Iberian peninsular during the same period, but not before bilateral agreements were signed did the Spanish (from the 1960s) and the Portuguese (1980s) migrate to Switzerland in large numbers (235,000, i.e. 15% in 2000; Johnstone and Mandryk, 2001). In Belgium the Iberian presence is barely a third of that in Switzerland. Switzerland has by far the greatest proportion of migrants from the former Yugoslavia (350,000, i.e. 21% in 2000) but has relatively few Maghrebians, whose presence in France is considerable (1.6m, i.e. 31% in 2004; OECD, 2008). In France, Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians each constitute a considerable presence, whereas in Belgium Moroccans are eight times more numerous than the other North Africans. In all three countries, the number of Turks began to increase (around 4%–5%) in the latter decades of the 20th century. The number of sub-Saharan Africans is far greater in France (7% in 1990) than the other countries (<2%). According to Borrel (2006),
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 3.14 Proportion of foreign residents in selected European countries
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
the proportion of Asians is about the same figure, and their presence in Switzerland (5.2% of migrants) is comparable, but far exceeds that of Belgium. As multilingual countries, Belgium and Switzerland also attract considerable numbers of Dutch, French and German speakers, who tend to occupy posts requiring relatively high levels of qualification. The migrant population is largely urban, with 16.7% in the Île-deFrance (almost 40% of all foreigners live in the Paris region), 9.7% in and around Marseille, 9.2% in and around Lyon and Grenoble, with Alsace, Languedoc-Roussillon and Corsica showing similar proportions, compared to less than 3% in more rural regions such as Basse-Normandie and Brittany. Detailed studies of particular cities show concentrations of migrant populations to be sociolinguistically significant, notably the northern suburbs of Paris (Armstrong and Jamin, 2002) or the northern quarters of Marseille (Binisti and Gasquet-Cyrus, 2003). In Belgium, numbers of non-nationals are fairly evenly spread across the three regions (Table 3.15). The proportion in Brussels is however considerably greater, and indeed on a par with the Vaud (26%) but is exceeded considerably by Geneva (38%). Like the general population, migrants have become better qualified (four times more graduates in France in 2004 than in 1982; Borrel, 2006), although less well qualified than the population as a whole (21% with higher education compared to 30% overall in France, 26% compared to 37% in Belgium; Mermet, 2006; OECD, 2008). The migrant population is also relatively young, since firstly, they tend to arrive typically as young adults of working age and secondly, their birth-rates are higher compared to people of European descent. They also suffer higher rates of unemployment, with (even well-qualified) nationals of countries outside the EU being particularly hard hit. In 2006 unemployment among Belgians with basic qualifications was lower than for graduates from non-EU countries (13% against 22%; OECD, 2008). The OECD report Table 3.15 in 2006
Geographical distribution of foreigners in Belgium
Region Bruxelles-Capitale Flanders Wallonia OVERALL
Yearly change 283,527 331,694 316,940 932,161
27.5% 5.4% 9.2% 8.8%
+3.6% +5.6% +1.4% +3.5%
Source: OECD, 2008.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
76
also shows that the considerable number of naturalisations granted in the two decades from the mid-1980s helped increase rates of employment among workers of migrant origin. Naturalisations can however lead to a mismatch between perceptions and statistics. By and large, people of European extraction have integrated well into francophone societies (Ardagh, 1995: 447; Rayman, 2003 cited in Piguet, 2004), despite some unpleasant incidents in the early days (19th and early 20th centuries), for instance concerning Belgians in northern France and Italians in Provence and Switzerland. Over the second half of the 20th century, considerable numbers of migrants of non-European and non-Christian background have built up, and these are easily perceptible as foreigners and can be resented even if naturalised, as can people from the French overseas départements and territories possessing French nationality by birthright. These negative perceptions, fuelled by (fear of) unemployment and to a lesser degree disapproval of ‘foreign’ cultural practices, have undeniably given rise to xenophobic reactions. In all three countries, far-right parties have enjoyed electoral success, notably the National Front in France. In Belgium and Switzerland, francophones have shown themselves more tolerant of migrants than their Flemish-, German- or Italianspeaking compatriots. The electoral successes of the far-right Vlaams Belang (formerly Vlaams Blok) and the separatist N-VA (Nieuw VlaamsAlliantie) in Flanders contrast with the perennial presence of the Socialist Party in the governing coalition of Wallonia, contributing to a solid consensus of tolerance (Quévit, 2009). In Switzerland, German speakers coined the term Überfremdung (excessive presence of foreigners), and populist electoral successes began predominantly in the urbanised German-speaking cantons (Mazzoleni, 2003) and are largely associated with the Schweizerische Volkspartei (Union Démocratique du Centre or UDC), led by the charismatic Christoph Blocher. In the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino (Tessin), the populist LEGA (formed in 1991) has enjoyed considerable success. From 2002, the UDC began to bridge the so-called Röstigraben, the difference in outlook between Swiss Germans and Romands, obtaining considerable poll shares in Suisse romande. Public opinion fluctuates according to mediatised events. All three countries are represented by football teams made up of players of various origins. Success, as was illustrated most spectacularly by the French victories in the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000, encourages harmony but can be easily undone by other events, such as the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 (Mermet, 2006: 201), the headscarf affair (affaire du foulard)7 that flared up in 2003, and the urban riots of 2005. Indeed,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 77
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
football matches have also been the focus of protest, in particular the France-Algeria match in 2001 and the France-Tunisia game in 2008, when the Marseillaise was whistled. While such disrespect towards the national anthem understandably provoked outrage, not least among politicians, more considered reflection interpreted the phenomenon more as protest against the French state (which is considered to have done too little to achieve integration of people far more at home in France than their so-called country of origin) than against France and its values, which young people of migrant origin generally espouse but from which they do not fully benefit. This espousal of mainstream values contrasts with the frequent portrayal of migrants, particular Maghrebians, as outsiders, including linguistically (Goudaillier, 2001). Studies of the linguistic effects of past migrations seem however to confirm the success of assimilationalist policies among the Flemish in the Nord (Landrecies, 2001; Pooley, 2006a) and the Italians in Provence (Blanchet, 2003), after a generation or more of contributing to the survival of somewhat levelled varieties of the traditional vernaculars (Picard and Provençal) and regional accent features (see Section 7.4). It is certainly arguable that something similar is currently happening among the Maghrebians, who have contributed to the vitality of traditional slang forms in the suburbs of Paris and other cities, while becoming (perceived as) the leading users, within multiethnic communities, of more recently emerged varieties like verlan. The major difference compared to their predecessors, who are linguistically and culturally integrated, is the apparently low level of social assimilation shown by some young people of migrant origin of the second and third generations. In contrast to research on similar subjects of Turkish origin in Germany, their higher-achieving, well-integrated French counterparts have been largely overlooked (Pooley, 2008).
3.7 Internationalisation While the role of French as an international language unquestionably waned in the 20th century, national and regional governments in francophone countries have introduced measures to combat the perceived external threat of the declining use of French in international gatherings and the internal threats of domain loss and needless anglicisms. It is mainly the French government or its designated agencies that have sought to combat the external threat. While the francophone communities are not alone in their concern about domain loss to English (cf. Linn and Oakes, 2007 on Scandinavia), the issue may be less acutely
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
78
felt in Belgium and Switzerland, where among the Dutch- and Germanspeaking communities, it is perceived as less of a problem (Phillipson, 2003: 82). Measures to combat domain loss and the pervasiveness of English-inspired terminology include the Loi Toubon of 1994 in France and the Quebec language laws of the 1970s. The proliferation of such measures and of government and non-government organisations set up to promote and defend the French language, of which there are over 200 in France alone (Offord, 2003), make French the most protected language on earth. Both the Quebec language laws and the Loi Toubon (including the Pelchat amendment on music quotas) have yielded positive results. Francophone Quebeckers can live out their lives fully in their L1 and music fans listen to more francophone music and buy more CDs by French-speaking artists than pre-Pelchat. The attitude of the authorities is, however, greatly out of kilter with that of the general population, whose knowledge of and enthusiasm for English increased greatly over the second half of the 20th century. A surprising finding of an INED survey of minority-language knowledge and use (Héran, Filhon and Desprez, 2002: 3–4) was that English had become the leading minority language in France, with, on an adjusted estimate based on the sample size, over 2.7 million people citing it (4.5% of the population). An INSEE survey of the same year (Clanché, 2002) found that around 7% of respondents used a foreign language not acquired through family-based transmission regularly, with middleclass (18%) and median-class (11%) informants leading the way. While such proportions are undoubtedly much higher than any comparable survey conducted around 1960 might have found, they are clearly surpassed by residents of Brussels, 35% of whom profess to speak English well (Section 2.6). Brussels is of course the seat of a number of important international institutions and so has a particularly high proportion of non-nationals, but Belgians increasingly have recourse to English for communication between members of the two major communities (Dardenne and Eraly, 1995: 38), averting potentially conflictual exchanges. Although Rash (1998) plays down analogous phenomena in Switzerland, there are similarly anecdotal indications that communication between younger German and French speakers increasingly has recourse to English. In both cases, English is perceived in both cases to possess a welcome neutrality that the national languages lack. Education policy in all three countries has recognised the necessity of English by introducing or proposing to introduce the teaching of it as the first foreign language at primary level. In France, the starting age was lowered to five in 2002 and in Belgium to eight in 2003 (Enever,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 79
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
2007: 210). In Switzerland, the teaching of the national languages not spoken as L1 has been an important factor in promoting national unity since World War I, when the two major language communities favoured different sides in keeping with their linguistic commonalities (Forster, 2008). This solidarity has been undermined since the 1990s by the controversy over the place of English in the curriculum. A report by the Swiss headteachers’ conference in publicly-funded schools, CDIP (Conférence des directeurs de l’instruction publique) in 1998 which recommended the study of a national language and English at primary school, was preceded by a measure implemented unilaterally by Zürich canton to introduce English from the first year of primary school, and consequently before French. This provoked protest among members of the federal parliament who sought (unsuccessfully) to enshrine in the constitution the primacy of national languages, and in 2004 the CDIP put forward a compromise proposal designed to harmonise the system while leaving a degree of cantonal responsibility. The proposal was that by 2010 the first foreign language should be introduced in the third year and the second in the fifth year (first cohort in 2012), leaving to individual cantons the responsibility of deciding whether the first language learned should be English or a national language. Several of the German-speaking cantons have opted to follow Zürich in according priority to English, while the other three linguistic communities begin with national languages. Despite the language-policy measures introduced by the authorities in francophone Europe, English continues to exert what Phillipson (2003: 16) calls a ‘narcotic’ power, or as Dardenne and Eraly (1995) put it, a mark of social distinction. One could speculate that francophones might also react by asserting a (conceivably common) national identity by their use of French. While Belgian and Swiss francophones might be more inclined to assert their community identity in the face of the perceived threat from the Flemish and German majorities, the French, at least according to Ardagh (1995: 440)8 have a relatively weak sense of national identity compared to two of the leading English-speaking nations, the USA and UK. Moreover, the prevailing pessimism over recent decades in France noted by Chauvel (2005) was hardly designed to bolster the prestige of either the country or its language.
3.8 Media and popular culture Although the homogenising effect of globalisation and internationalisation on francophone Europe is undeniable, French culture is widely
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
80
acknowledged to have resisted americanisation and developed modern indigenous forms to a far greater degree than most European countries. Considering the French cultural nation as whole, patterns of resistance, maintenance and indigenous development differ from area to area of popular culture, with varying impact on linguistic issues. Broadly speaking, one can differentiate, firstly between originally indigenous forms, and secondly, imported forms, such as detective novels, comic strips, many forms of popular music as well as many television genres. In some cases, the French adaptations are sufficiently distinctive to attract government support, as in the case of the bande dessinée (BD) (Miller, 2003). In each of these cultural forms, the dominance of France within francophone Europe is paramount and as with serious authors, they are largely assimilated into the popular culture of the French nation. Examples are the Belgian writers Georges Simenon and Amélie Nothomb, or the BD artists Hergé and Franquin, who created the well-known characters of Tintin and Gaston Lagaffe. The remainder of this section is devoted to a study of the most popular pastime (in terms of time devoted to it) – television. Table 3.16 shows that francophones, particularly the Belgians and the French, were among the most avid viewers in western Europe, averaging over 200 minutes per day, with the Swiss watching rather less (under three hours). Table 3.16 Average daily time (in minutes) spent watching television in selected European countries (Poesmens, 2005) Country/Community
Belgium (francophone) Belgium (Dutch-speaking) France Switzerland (francophone) Switzerland (germanophone) Switzerland (italianophone) Italy United Kingdom Spain Germany Netherlands Ireland Finland Norway Austria Denmark Sweden
Time spent watching television in 2004 (minutes per day) 216 162 204 173 (167 in 2007) 148 178 240 223 218 210 192 177 167 166 164 162 151
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 81
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Early sociolinguistic studies (e.g. Trudgill, 1974) played down the influence of television in language change, but at the time of his fieldwork (in the late 1960s) many of his informants would have known life without television in their early years, whereas at least two generations, almost all of whom have not experienced life without television, have now grown up. Moreover, the medium now frequently encourages interactivity and audience participation. As for the influence of the television and radio on French speech, the Paris-centred media in France, which also control the dubbing of foreign-language material, leave little room for regional accents (nor indeed more than a token presence of regional languages on France 3) and the viewing habits of francophones suggest considerable exposure to reference and supralocal forms of pronunciation. In Belgium and Switzerland, this is compensated for to a much greater degree, for instance by public-service news broadcasts, where the greater vitality of readily identifiable Belgian and Swiss accents (compared to French regional accents) at higher social levels means that they are given more air-time in a valorising context (see Sections 4.8, 4.9). For France, these figures show that watching television occupies more time (59%) than all other free-time pursuits put together, averaging between three and three-and-a-half hours viewing per day in 2005 for the population over four years of age (Mermet, 2006: 395, 411). Given that the 35-hour working week gives the French more leisure time than most nationalities, the dominance of television probably holds not only for Belgium and Switzerland, but also for all countries listed. In France there is some variation according to age, with the under-25s watching just over two hours, adults of working age around the overall average, and retired people rather more. Televisions remain on average switched on for over five hours a day and a large number of people take their evening meal while watching (Mermet, 2006: 395). The medium is a powerful instrument of both homogenisation, with the most popular category of programme, known as fiction (drama series, sitcoms and soap operas), showing greater amounts of Anglo-American than French-produced material (Dauncey, 2003b: 70). These are generally dubbed in Standard French, making due allowance for widely understood informal features. The state-controlled television service of the 1950s and 1960s was intended, like radio, to be an instrument of the democratisation of high culture, fulfilling the Reithian ideals of educating, informing and entertaining. More cynically, one could argue that television, up to the 1980s, favoured the dominant ideology as embodied in: (1) state institutions and elites, (2) the middleclass, (3) heterosexuality, (4) the family (Hayward, 1990). The advent
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
82
of commercial television, through reforms introduced in the 1980s, has created financial imperatives and pressure to maintain audience figures, which, as Bourdieu (1996) claimed, reduces the quality of programmes to the lowest common denominator. Disdain for American-influenced popular culture by intellectuals is exemplified by Finkielkraut’s (1987) La Défaite de la pensée and contributes to the ambivalent attitude of many French viewers, who express dissatisfaction with television while continuing to watch it. Surveys like that of Télérama/Sofres in 2005 may show that viewers claim to want cultural offerings of the type exemplified by Arte as much as they want light entertainment, but viewing figures for all social strata emphatically favour the latter. Both dubbed Anglo-American programmes and largely Paris-produced national productions promote homogenisation of culture and behaviour, showing examples of American and Parisian style and taste to small-town and rural provincial areas (see Gordon, 2003: 150). According to Hervé Bourges (1993: 11), television dug the grave of traditional France, coinciding with the decline of regional accents (a study comparing the presence of regional accents in television news bulletins in France, Belgium and Switzerland described in Chapter 4 suggests that levelling is less advanced outside France). While populist shows like Loftstory (Big Brother) are enjoyed by all social classes, they rarely, unlike in the UK, serve to give air-time to regional accents, but sometimes provoke some discussion of language quality, for instance articulateness and richness of vocabulary (Bizet, 2002). Whereas the French television market is dominated by terrestrial platforms, cable and satellite enjoy a bigger share in Belgium and Switzerland. The small territories of these two communities mean firstly, that few programmes are home-produced and that the channels of neighbouring countries, overwhelmingly France, provide readily accessible material in their L1s. Both the Belgian and Swiss francophone communities, however, have public-service channels: RTBF (Radio-Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française) and TSR (Télévision Suisse Romande). While it may not dominate the market, TSR at least is the single most popular channel, attracting between 36% and 41% of prime-time audience. Its claim to popularity is that it aims to be Swiss-centred, focussing on current affairs, magazine programming, sport and feature films, while leaving the soaps, talk shows, sitcoms and drama series to the foreign competition. In its mission statement RTBF subscribes to Reithian-style ideals: promouvoir le développement culturel, être une source d’éducation permanente et offrir des divertissements attractifs.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 83
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
The statement goes on to mention specifically the ‘usage correct de la langue française’. This is not incompatible in practice with broadcasting non-supralocal French pronunciation forms, as is largely the case in Suisse romande and France.9 Moreover, the democratisation of high culture in Belgium finds expression in a Belgian version of Arte. While public-service television faces fiercer competition from commercial channels in both Belgium and Switzerland, they undoubtedly serve to give focus and embodiment to the collective identity of the francophone communities, simply by televising speakers from all parts of the respective territories and informing viewers of what is going on within them. The high level of cable connections (over 80%) points to greater openness to commercial television, bringing in its wake a greater domination of light entertainment and Anglo-American material.
3.9 (i) Symbolic changes and the late 20th-century zeitgeist: evolving social and national identities The socioeconomic changes described earlier have undermined the foundations of traditional institutions and swept away historic divisions which served as clear reference-points on the social map. In an internationalised market, multinational companies respond more readily to incentives offered by governments than to loyalties derived from the national origins of companies within their group. De-localisations, based on the iron law of labour costs, have contributed to the diminishing proportion of industrial jobs and the decreasing importance of the left-right split in politics, marginalising the ideological values of the working-class left, like communism and the revolutionary imperative. In France the turning point for the Socialist-Communist alliance known as the Union de la Gauche was reached in 1984 following the departure of the three serving Communist ministers from the first Mitterrand government, which veered increasingly towards the electorally more acceptable centre ground. Between 1986 and 2002 there were three periods of cohabitation or power-sharing (1986–88, 1993–95, 1997–2002), which saw a prime minister and cabinet of a different political party from the president, and which were generally positively perceived as a check on the more controversial policies of either tendency. The appointment of both right-wing and left-wing ministers in the Sarkozy government of 2007, although interpretable as an astute pre-emptive move to undermine political opponents, blurred the traditional cleavages still further.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
84
Successful state intervention, implemented inter alia through five-year plans in the period 1945–1975, resulted in the expansion of the publicsector share of the economy and in secure institutionalised career paths and pensions for many French workers (Chauvel, 2005). This approach, predicated on high and consistent growth rates, has proved unsustainable and led to widespread dissatisfaction among the median classes (Chauvel, 2005). High-level training for public-sector posts can lead in some cases to protracted periods of unemployement or temporary contracts. The spectre of précarité and expectations of a less successful career and lower levels of material success seem real, even for relatively welleducated people in the median classes, many of whom have achieved higher levels of education than their materially secure parents, undermining the meritocratic ideal of a ‘social republic’ transmitted through education. Neoliberal economics, while threatening a traditionally highly interventionist polity, has also increased individual choice. The marketing of its products and services encourages hedonism, perhaps even narcissism, often presenting consumption as a positive act expressive of personal or cultural identity. The corollary of the decline of long-standing points of symbolic reference is the development in the 1980s of anti-authoritarian values (Perrineau, 1998: 289), based on an implicit or explicit egalitarian ethos and the valuing of individual freedom above the values of the traditional consensus based on authority: valorisant l’autonomie et l’épanouissement individuels, reconnaissant à chacun le libre choix de son mode de vie, fondé sur le principe de l’égale valeur intrinsèque de tout être humain quel que soit son sexe, sa religion, sa race ou son rang social (Dubar, 2000: 138). Perrineau uses such phrases as ‘normes désacralisées’ and ‘révolution invisible’ to refer to a widespread change in attitudes that has strong anti-elitist and anti-hierarchical aspects. This nexus of attitudes or zeitgeist translates into strikingly greater informality in many aspects of life, as we show later through selected examples in dress and other practices. This informality can lead to excesses, such as a noticeable increase in incivility and the manifestation of anger (Roché, 1996: 47), but is often resisted in various ways as individuals seek to recover or reinvent the positive aspects of order. Of the core values represented by the republican motto ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’, individual freedom is undoubtedly the most highly prized (Mauchamp, 1995; Mermet, 2006: 245). But in an era where vastly
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 85
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
increased leisure time and greater affluence reduce the importance of work-related identities, and where work can seem alienating, the pursuit of freedom in the form of pleasure seems a goal that is both reasonable and attainable. While substantial social inequalities remain, the dominant egalitarian ethos goes largely unquestioned and when threatened can mobilise people into manifestations of fraternity, relabelled as solidarity, sometimes transcending party politics – as in the case of environmental issues. The fairly recent notion of the voter as consumer is clearly an egalitarian one, and runs quite contrary to the earlier paternalist view of politics. Political action, as Dubar (2000: 138) argues, is increasingly fragmentary, local and goal-specific, reflecting increased individualism and seen for instance in campaigns conducted by the Droit-au-Logement association calling on the authorities to free up empty dwellings for the homeless. Campaigns like these tend to be adept at manipulating the media, playing on the emotions and eschewing the rational arguments, however specious, deployed by more traditional political militancy. Media-conscious presentations require a new use of language, characterised by Ion (1997: 91–5) as ‘parler vrai’ addressing concrete issues in a straightforward manner – in contrast to the ‘langue de bois’ associated with the vagueness and pomposity of mainstream political leaders. These groups, referred to as tribes by Maffesoli (1988), set clear and achievable goals in the name of shared ethical values without always seeing the necessity of the long-term commitment and infrastructure of politicalparty membership, in contrast for instance with the Communist Party, whose membership has declined in proportions comparable to church attendance. Reactionary tendencies are, as previously indicated, manifested in farright politics. The electoral successes of the Front national in France, the Vlaamsbelang (formerly Vlaamsblok) and the Nieuw Vlaams-Alliantie (NV-A) in Flanders and the radicalised UDC in Switzerland is strongly indicative of a sense of dissatisfaction and of insecurity, particularly among the lower social strata. It also points to a relative lack of acceptance and integration of the migrant communities and no doubt diversity in general, compared to a number of neighbouring countries. That said, while a radical party has succeeded in transcending the Röstigraben in Switzerland, such tendencies have not affected, at least to the same degree, Belgian francophones, who have persistently voted more to the left, with the Socialist Party in Wallonia dominating coalition administrations which have no significant far-right representation. In Flanders there may be some element of fuelling fears of separation understandably harboured by the francophone community. The
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
86
francophones nevertheless enjoy greater support from the international community, as indicated by the changes in the linguistic demography of Brussels. The community base of all political parties may not exempt them from criticism, but it sustains their relevance in a manner that grand ideologies no longer can. While Belgium, as previously noted, enjoyed economic prosperity in the 1945–75 period, it did not greatly expand its public sector to do so, nor did it create a sense of expectation comparable to that in France. Unlike France, Belgium cherishes no pretence of being a greater power, but readily embraces its European and wider international role, politically and strategically, as the only viable way forward for a small nation, and so is unburdened by the notion underlying a number of French initiatives seeking to promote its role as a major world power through prominent participation in international alliances. The role of Brussels as the capital of Europe and the seat of the European Commission and SHAPE10 contributes to its importance and may reinforce its role as the lynchpin that holds together a deeply divided nation. Similar attitudes prevail with regard to the armed forces, where participation in international theatres in UN peace-keeping operations adds to the nation’s prestige. As far as education is concerned, Belgium is ahead of France both in terms of higher-education qualifications and the effective employability of its graduates. The role of religion in public life, not least in education, is also more prominent. The National Day is celebrated in part by a Te Deum attended by all leading politicians. Within the francophone community, regular church attendance is not significantly greater than in France, although the Flemish community is considerably more observant of (Catholic) religious practice. The pervasive influence and popularity of French popular culture in Belgium does not suggest greatly different attitudes towards hedonism and individual fulfilment. The greater role played by privately-owned television channels and the generally lower popularity of reading compared to France suggests a lesser degree of the democratisation of high culture advocated by many French intellectuals, irrespective of their political temperament. In Switzerland, the Romands, having settled the pressing identity issues of the 1990s (disagreement with the German speakers on Europe and disapproval of their attitude to Jewish assets acquired during World War II) in favour of their Helvetic political heritage with its unique forms of local democracy, which permit regional distinctiveness, are unlikely to be tempted in any great numbers by secessionist discourses of the kind that caused the Jura to break away from Berne
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 87
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
in the 1970s. Indeed, the resolution of the issue of compensation to Jews killed in Nazi Germany whose assets had been blocked in Swiss banks led to displays of national euphoria (with the national flag being sported on tee-shirts and company logos). An opinion poll conducted by the Polytechnic of Zürich in 2001 suggested that people felt better about themselves and safer than ever. In this relative rapture about ‘Swissness’, the proposal to join the EU was rejected more decisively than in 1992 on the grounds that the country would lose its uniqueness and its competitive edge in the banking sector. A referendum on bank secrecy showed the majority of the population supported it. Despite the attack of 11 September 2001 and a series of disasters on home soil late the same year (Altwegg, 2006: 123–5) that dampened the optimism of a few months earlier, the National Exhibition of 2002 turned out to be a national showcase, benefitting from the cooperation of intellectuals so signally absent at the historic anniversaries of 1991 and 1998. Swiss accession to the UN in 2004 gave a new role to the army, traditionally a factor of national cohesion among the different linguistic communities, which had endured a major crisis in the late 1980s when the possibility of dissolution was mooted. A Switzerland surrounded by friendly nations who were once her enemies certainly appeared to have no need to pursue the traditional policy of armed neutrality without incursion on to foreign soil. A peace-keeping role has however come to be perceived as compatible with political neutrality, and in 2004 Swiss troops took on their first engagement outside their homeland for centuries. For the Swiss Germans this greater openness to external influences, particularly if economic advantage is at stake, seems to be compatible with the persistence of particularisms, which both differentiate them from Germans, and render them incomprehensible to their compatriots, while internationalisation for the Romands draws them more into the French cultural orbit, where the scope for cultural and linguistic distinctiveness is much more limited. The degree of these limitations for prestige varieties is evaluated in Section 4.9 and for vernaculars in Sections 6.9–6.11.
3.9 (ii) Symbolic changes and the late 20th-century zeitgeist: evolving social practices and representations in the everyday Personal choice affords opportunities to express individuality. Choice is not infinite but constrained by the array of possibilities available,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
88
and this gives rise to discernable trends. As already stated, these can be summarised in the notion of informalisation, a throwing-off of earlier hierarchies derived from sources of authority increasingly called into question, notably the state, the education system, the family and organised religion. We propose to take three examples to explore this analysis: dress, religion and issues of morality, and terms of address, to sketch patterns of cultural diffusion, bearing in mind their implications for the central focus of the study, changes in pronunciation. Dress Clothing is an obvious example of informalisation; as Adonis and Pollard (1997: 242–3) point out, items of workwear and sportswear like tee-shirts, jeans and trainers are now increasingly acceptable in more formal contexts. The authors speculate whether trends like these reverse: . . . the sociologists’ ‘principle of stratified diffusion’ (the theory that trends in dress, music, entertainment, and lifestyle always begin at the top and work their way down through society). If it had ever been wholly true – and the past history of the upward trajectory of trousers, the lounge suit, and casual wear generally [. . .] suggest otherwise – the 1960s turned it upside down, with the young of the upper and middle classes emulating the denizens of Liverpool and the East End of London. Language and dress are of course both social practices. The ‘language of clothing’ is no doubt a complex subject, but a glance at photographs of earlier periods suggests at once greater uniformity and hierarchy (upperand middle-class clothing imitated by the working classes) in contrast to the present fragmented, non-hierarchical situation, and this mutation seems to have a wider application to social practices generally, including of course variable language. Clothing can function therefore as a sign of ‘tribal’ loyalty in Maffesoli’s (1988) sense of the word, complemented by individualising features such as piercing and tattooing. These latter clearly indicate how some members of the middle classes may adopt working-class practices. The non-hierarchical term ‘tribe’ is also used to refer to the various dress styles favoured by the young, such as Baba Cool or BCBG (Bon chic, bon genre). Mermet (2006: 194) extends the notion to describe people who share a common interest, such as sport and virtual friendship on social-networking sites. Obvious differences between clothing and language are that clothing is the object of conscious choice, and that, as previously noted, sociolinguistic
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 89
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
variation seems to operate in a narrower compass than other types of social practice. A further difference is that by no means everyone shows signs of wishing to dress down. At the more formal (and generally more expensive) end of the market, the Paris-based couture houses have stood up well to competition from London, Milan and New York, becoming more international in the process, and at the same time extending their collections downwards in the price range, in the direction of ‘masstige’, as seen in the marketing of relatively affordable luxury products under designer labels. This process is akin to those promoting professionalisation described earlier.
Religion The decline of religion represents in our present analysis a perhaps more fundamental shift, since most religious systems presuppose a hierarchy, and indeed Christianity has given us that word. We can note the obvious connection between religious belief and social conservatism, and this association is far from defunct in developed countries – the US provides an interesting exception to the correlation generally seen between increasing material prosperity and declining religious belief, although it has been argued that even in that country religion represents for many a ‘lifestyle choice’ rather than a moral framework (Walden, 2006). Despite each country’s particular history, affiliation to mainstream religious groupings has shifted in essentially similar ways across a number of western European countries. In terms of self-description, France and Belgium form part of an intermediate grouping (Germany, Spain, the UK) with slightly over two-thirds of the population claiming to be Christian. The Swiss, in contrast, are professedly among the most Christian nations in Europe, virtually on a par with Austria and the three countries in the Americas shown in Table 3.17. Also significant is the low proportion of people in Switzerland claiming no religion (NON) despite a modest Muslim (MUS) presence. In contrast, France and Belgium (with Germany, Spain and UK) are part of cluster of nations where non-believers and Muslims together constitute around 30% of the population. Historically, France was the first country to make non-belief ‘respectable’, from the 18th century onwards among the higher classes, giving rise to bitter quarrels throughout the 19th century which were largely resolved through the separation of Church and State in 1905. In education, however, Church schools continue to contribute to the overall system, albeit without the full integration that was proposed
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
90
Social Levelling 91 Table 3.17 Religious affiliation by percentage of population in selected countries (Johnstone and Mandryk, 2001)
Belgium France Switzerland Austria Germany Italy Netherlands Spain Sweden UK Argentina Brazil USA
Religion and percentage of population CHR
NON
MUS
BUD
JEW
HIN
SIKH
68 68 87 90 69 77 56 68 55 67 93 91 85
28 20 8.2 7.7 27 20 38 31 42 28 3.7 3 9.4
3.6 10 3.1 2.2 3.7 2.4 5.4 1.2 3.1 2 1.4 0.1 1.5
0.3 1.02 – 0.06 0.05 0.09 0.2 0.01 0.04 0.28 0.05 0.3 0.9
0.2 1.2 0.24 0.1 0.12 0.06 0.19 0.13 0.18 0.52 – 0.2 2
– – – 0.03 – 0.03 0.3 – 0.06 0.84 0.01
– – – – – – – – – 0.68 –
0.4
0.07
in the 1980s. Within the Belgian and Swiss educations systems, the contribution of religiously affiliated schools remains much higher than in France (Forster, 2008). The rate of nominalism within the institutionalised churches is, however, particularly high in France, with only 25% of professing Catholics being practising members of the Church as opposed to 75% in Belgium and 50% in Switzerland, whereas 76% of professing Protestants are members of a church belonging to the Swiss Federation of Protestant Churches. In both Belgium and Switzerland the churches receive public funding and play a greater role in public life, for instance in politics. In Belgium, the overtly Catholic Christliche Volkspartei and Parti Social Chrétien can still expect to participate in the formation of the coalitions required to form a government. In Switzerland, there are three major parties with names redolent of Christian affiliation. The largest of the three by far is the Parti démocrate-chrétien playing a far greater role in national life than the other two, the Parti chrétien-social and the Parti évangélique. Nominalism is far from being confined to Catholicism, but is greater in France, at least in the traditional Protestant churches (Reformed, Lutheran) and has gained ground amongst Muslims. In the mid-1990s only a minority followed regular observances, with this ‘disaffection’ being more marked among men than women, and among people of Algerian background than Moroccan or Turkish. Answers given in
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Country
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
private to anonymous surveys may, however, sometimes be difficult to maintain publicly within the Muslim community, which gives, certainly viewed from the outside, a perhaps misleading impression of solidarity that contrasts with the fragmentation of western religious practices. Such findings suggest that the longer migrants stay in France, the more they subscribe to French secular values. This is not to deny the considerable number of practising Muslims in France, indicated by the rapid rise in the number of mosques and places of prayer: 20 in 1970, 250 in 1980, 1,500 in 2000 (Lenoir, 2008: 115). The presence in France of the highest numerical (but not proportional) Muslim population in Europe has not only made Islam the second religion in France but has also contributed to a questioning of the secular system, manifested most visibly in the row over the wearing of religious emblems in state schools which was ‘settled’ in 2004 by a law forbidding any visible religious symbol in state schools, a measure reported with dismay and incomprehension in other countries. Since the 1970s migrations from former Indo-China (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia) have given rise to a sizeable Buddhist community (estimated at around 400,000 by Lenoir, 2008: 116). Moreover, Buddhism seems to strike a chord with the zeitgeist and has attracted a fair number of European converts, disaffected by traditional forms of Christianity but who baulk at embracing Islam, thanks to the presence of exiled Tibetan lamas and the establishment of retreat centres. On a number of moral issues, Belgium and Switzerland have proved more conservative, adhering for longer to traditional religious teachings. As mentioned in Section 3.3, the first major law liberalising abortion in Belgium was passed in 1990 but could be enacted only after the monarch had stood down for a day in order to mark disapproval of a measure he found morally unacceptable, although it enjoyed majority support. Although abortions have been legal in exceptional cases in Switzerland since 1937, a national law analogous to those introduced by neighbouring states from the 1960s and 1970s was not passed until 2002. Civil partnerships, known as the Pacte Civil de Solidarité or PACS, were introduced in France in 2000 and in Belgium in 2003. Unlike the Nordic countries, which legislated for the recognition of gay partnerships in a form having a lesser status than marriage, France and Belgium extended the partnerships to heterosexual couples and Belgium approved gay marriage. According to an INED study (Festy, 2006), Belgium had the highest rates of eight selected countries (Germany, Netherlands and five Scandinavian states) of legally registered gay and lesbian couples in 2003–2004, with the proportion of male couples (24.8/10,000 in 2004)
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
92
outnumbering by at least two to one the proportion in any other country. French law prohibits the publishing of any statistics on the PACS, but estimates suggest that heterosexual partnerships have outnumbered same-sex by around four to one since an initial phase of approximate equality in 2000. In Belgium also, heterosexual couples entering into civil partnerships outnumber gays and lesbians by about three to one. On this, as on other social issues, Switzerland was slower to come into line. Three cantons have introduced the registered partnership (parternariat enregistré): Geneva in 2001, Zürich in 2002 and Neuchâtel in 2004, before a referendum held in 2005 showed that 59% of the population approved the partnerships. A federal law was approved later that year, coming into force from the first day of 2007. These social changes underscore the importance of individual choice, as do the multiplicity of groupings within the Catholic Church (Ardagh, 1995: 434). The defection from the mainstream churches should not be construed as indicative of a decline of interest in spirituality. As in other parts of the world, non-mainstream religions that emphasise personal experience, commitment or fulfilment are increasing both in the number of their followers and the mosaicisation of forms. The numbers of born-again Christians (Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Charismatics) increased tenfold in France over the second half of the 20th century and the two largest sects (Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons) also grew considerably. One can also add Buddhists, and the multiplicity of New-Age gurus and of smaller sects (Rapport parlementaire, 1995). This mosaicisation of religious ‘supply’ has encouraged ‘dabbling’, fuelling the popularity of the spiritual outside organised religion and perhaps contributing to the detachment of religious adherence from the hierarchical view of social organisation. The increasing diversity in the religious sphere bears comparison therefore with other social trends, in that common elements are detectable, like the questioning of hierarchies, conservative reaction, individual fulfilment, generational differences, fragmentation and considerable Anglo-American influence. As with dress, we can suggest that the mosaicisation of religion is a parallel phenomenon, unlikely to favour divergence from mainstream linguistic practices, but closely in line with the broad trends we are considering here.
Address forms Our last examples of informalisation are more specifically linguistic in character, as they concern forms of address: firstly the increasing use of the informal second-person pronoun tu, and secondly the use of
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 93
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
first names. While the dual-pronoun system has remained intact as a structured system, its social distribution has in recent times changed in response to less rigidly hierarchical conditions. Non-reciprocal tu–vous usage has now largely disappeared; for example, while formerly the relations between army officer and private, customer and waiter, etc., would find expression in non-reciprocal tu–vous exchanges, these will now be characterised by reciprocal vous. The major exception remaining is the adult–child relationship. At the same time, some groups having a ‘shared fate’, such as students and teachers, now largely use reciprocal tu. The social relations expressed by the T/V opposition now articulate principally social intimacy versus distance rather than ‘power and solidarity’, in Brown and Gilman’s well-known phrase (1960). Nonreciprocal tu–vous reflects hierarchy quite straightforwardly, while any erosion of reciprocal vous can be thought of in terms of Brown and Levinson’s analysis (1987: 198–9), which suggests that use of the V-form, which is of course also the second-person plural form, allows hearers the interpretation of being addressed as representatives of a social group. The obvious corollary is that the T-form individualises the hearer. A further shift in the pronoun system apparently in process is towards greater use of tu or vous in preference to on with indefinite reference, i.e. to people in general, as in Coveney’s example (2003: 165): (1) Parfois tu tombes sur des gens qui ont le même âge et qui ont une plus grande maturité In this example variation is possible between tu tombes and on tombe, both variants having indefinite reference. Coveney cites Ball’s suggestion (2000: 67) that ‘on is now closely associated with formality, and tu is used as an informal equivalent’. The issue is complex because on is now very largely used as an informal equivalent to nous, with definite first-person plural reference, with or without subject doubling, as in [nous] on va sortir (Coveney 2000). A further possible factor motivating the shift from indefinite on to tu is therefore an ‘overload’ in the referential function of on. In broad terms the greater use of tu parallels the informalisation of society consequent on the breakdown of hierarchies, and indeed older francophones can generally testify to having experienced or heard about vouvoiement in family and wider social circles. Ardagh (1995: 354) has some useful comments on the generational, attitudinal and gender differences in T/V use among the middle classes. Younger people, teenagers, students and young professionals, he observes, use reciprocal
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
94
tu but among older people the tutoiement of male camaraderie may contrast with reciprocal vous among women, even in husband-and-wife friendships. Gardner-Chloros’s (2007) study of a circle of women friends in the Var broadly confirms the generalised shift to tu, but documents instances of the survival of vous which appear increasingly anomalous. To quote perhaps the most striking example, one member of the circle uses vous to her lover, because of his status as a doctor. The reported reaction of her teenage daughter is eloquent: ‘tu couches avec et tu lui dis vous’ (Gardner-Chloros, 2007: 112). Electronic media have given rise to many situations where strangers will address one another in the T-form, as in chat or discussion forums (Williams and van Compernolle, 2007). In the great majority of cases, reciprocal tu is the norm but intervention by moderators and experts, such as medical professionals contributing to a forum on health matters, may trigger use of vous, whether or not reciprocal. Other languages with the T/V distinction show signs that the T-form is gaining ground: in Spanish, use of the T-form appears to be triggered among strangers by other social indicators like dress (MacKenzie, p.c.). In Swedish the so-called du-reformen, despite what its name suggests, was the result not of an official initiative decree but of sweeping changes in social attitudes from the late 1960s to the early 1970s (Clyne et al., 2006). In the German-speaking countries, the same authors note a partial reversal, with greater use of Sie rather than du compared to the 1970s. In English-speaking societies, perhaps under American influence, the comparable phenomenon of the greater use of first names, particularly in formal and workplace settings, seems to promote a superficial egalitarianism. In the UK, informal versions of names, such as Jack and Harry (Office for National Statistics, 2002) are now commonly used on birth certificates. In France, use of first names has increased to a greater extent than in Germany (Ardagh, 1995: 354) albeit without reaching Anglo-American levels. Ardagh’s observations also suggest plausibly that middle-class social gatherings in UK display a greater mixing of backgrounds than in France, where despite generally greater loquaciousness, hosts and guests contrive to maintain greater social distance and talk less about their personal lives, or else tend to socialise more exclusively with people from a similar professional background. Traditionally, many Belgians noted for their franc parler and like the Swiss imbued with a more sincere egalitarian ethos, may find the French bourgeois somewhat snobbish (Singy, 1996), and in the case of the Belgians in particular seem to set greater store by both urban identities (regional identities
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 95
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
in the case of Switzerland) and working-class values, and signal these more openly through their way of speaking. The Anglo-American influence in choice of first names suggests a clear social-class split. One of the by-products of a study by Pooley (2004) of linguistic attitudes among Lille school students showed a clear class distribution (based on Table 3.9) among the respondents with the names Slade, Wesley and John coming from the lowest social stratum, and traditional French names such as Maxime and Aurélie being favoured by the higher social classes. All these observations point on the one hand towards greater informalisation, and on the other that the process, at least in superficial ways, has not gone nearly so far as in the USA and UK. This picture seems to provide a fairly close parallel with changes in pronunciation, with supralocal English containing now more historically lowerclass forms than supralocal French. In the latter language, levelling towards relatively informal variants of the reference variety seems to prevail, as we shall see in the following chapters. At the same time, Belgium and Switzerland appear to be generally more conservative and follow France’s lead in adopting social changes affecting most comparable countries, while at the same time developing, at least within their own borders, a greater sense of identity and difference from the extraterritorial norm, despite its undoubted pervasiveness.
3.10 Concluding remarks The social transformations of the second half of the 20th century have occurred too rapidly and too recently for the full effects either on the behaviour or ‘linguistic imaginary’ of francophones to be evaluated adequately. Nonetheless, certain tendencies are now sufficiently clear for some of the apparently bedrock findings of early variationist sociolinguistics to be put into perspective as characteristic of an industrial era which has now largely passed, even if some of its attributes remain entrenched in the collective consciousness. To reiterate, these tendencies are firstly, that service-dominated economies have given rise to a median-class majority, the ‘lower’ ends of which are increasingly difficult to distinguish from the ‘higher’ strata of the so-called popular classes. These latter wish to be differentiated clearly from the underclass (groupes d’exclusion) who, at least insofar as their access to the standard is hampered, are the guardians of stigmatised vernaculars, whether indigenous, or related to post-World War II migrations. Secondly, the longer time spent in full-time education
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
96
favours greater exposure to and use of near-standard speech. Thirdly, large-scale upward mobility among the indigenous populations at least, even if largely symbolic in nature and hence describable as professionalisation, has been accomplished on a wide scale. While this trend will no doubt slow down in the current economic climate, the changes in linguistic practice that it has accompanied are unlikely to be reversed. Fourthly, the radically different altered balance in the public sphere (compared to mid-20th century), whether considered in terms of parity of opportunity, job-market participation or widespread female superiority in educational achievement, can be expected to reduce the traditional differences between women and men. Women no longer have to compensate for lack of personal status through the use of ‘aspirational’ speech forms. While women still constitute the majority of care-givers to young children, they are now largely liberated from the historic burdens of language shift (from the ancestral vernacular languages) and variety shift (from socially marked forms of French). Their role in future linguistic mutations remains to be seen. Fifthly, the solidarity of traditional working-class communities, such as those studied by Milroy (1987) in Belfast, has given way to deprived communities, where acceptable local jobs are scarce, and a sense of community severely undermined both by poor-quality social housing and law-and-order issues. Indeed, as Bassand (2004) argues quite plausibly, solidarity may be greater at the higher end of the social spectrum, whether in city-centre and rurban-village communities or within professional congeries. Although the areas of poorer housing stock, whether preserved, renovated or replaced have become home to disproportionate numbers of migrants and people of migrant origin, the resulting sub-cultures have been largely portrayed negatively, and unlike in the UK and Germany, have produced fewer distinctive forms that might serve as a focus of ‘reverse assimilation’ into mainstream varieties. Increasing educational achievements are of course an indicator of a generational divide, which manifests itself in a number of other social practices, such as domestic arrangements, religious practices, tastes in food, dress, music and other forms of self-expression. In relation to the throwing-off of the old (that marked the 1960s and 1970s), there is perhaps a degree of ‘correction’, for example in the wearing of smart or ‘feminine’ clothes, unaccompanied however by a return to the old deferential values. This mixed picture reflects perhaps the range of individual choice now available, with values laid out in a ‘cultural supermarket’ in a non-hierarchical way.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 97
Social and Linguistic Change in European French
The 1960s and 1970s are universally agreed as having marked a profound cultural shift in attitudes. Traditional forms of authority – political, parental, religious – were called into question and remain so, and informality increased in a society that became, and has continued, measurably more equal and, in terms of public discourse at least, more egalitarian. In general, but by no means always, France led these trends in francophone Europe, not least through its dominance of popular media. The consequent cultural subservience of Belgian and Swiss francophones leads them, not without discomfort, to acknowledge inter alia the extraterritoriality (i.e. in France) of linguistic norms while embracing, both in behaviour and perception, home-grown norms in their own countries. The cross-frontier urban areas of Lille-Métropole and Geneva-Annemasse point to the likelihood of geographical variation in degrees of advergence. The development of the EU has drawn Belgium and France politically closer while Switzerland has achieved considerable success, remaining outside the EU, through a combination of widely approved bilateral agreements. These have enabled the country to benefit from many of the provisions of the EU, while maintaining politically unifying discourses evoking freedom, independence and self-determination. There are indications of an emerging Romand identity, although as in Belgium, traditional civic identities, which may be based on past industrial successes, remain relatively strong, bolstered by regional forms of government. While both communities may perceive themselves, and be perceived, as threatened, the Romands seem to have become reconciled to their national political culture, while the Belgian francophones cling to a fragile national unity, whose future is by no means assured. In the remaining chapters, we aim to show how this complex and often contradictory array of factors, exerted in a cultural commonality dominated by France, brings together nations with distinct sociopolitical identities and yet reflects differential speech behaviour within a common language shared by three geographically contiguous territories. The next chapter addresses the question of whether a common language also implies shared prestige norms.
Notes 1. Election results and opinion polls later in 2009 showed that for both major communities, constitutional reform had slipped significantly down the lists of voters’ concerns (RTBF, 7th October, 2009).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
98
2. Délégation à l’Aménagement du Territoire et à l’Action Régionale, since 2005 renamed DIACT (Délégation Interministérielle à l’Aménagement et à la Compétitivité des Territoires). 3. Now referred to as métropoles régionales. The métropoles d’équilibre were: LilleRoubaix-Tourcoing; Nantes-Saint-Nazaire; Bordeaux; Toulouse; MarseilleAix-en-Provence; Lyon-Grenoble-Saint-Etienne; Nancy-Metz-Thionville and Strasbourg. 4. Pretentiously imitating French habits at the expense of local identities. 5. Date of the Loi Weil, which was not fully implemented until 1980. The Loi Neuwirth of 1967 authorised consultation centres for family planning. 6. A law dating back to 1937 permitted abortion in cases where the mother’s life was in danger. 7. In October 2009, the issue remained unresolved in the Belgian francophone community, where matters may be decided at a local level. RTBF reported the need for clear community-wide regulation on Islamic headscarves following the exclusion of two primary-school pupils in Dison (Liège) by the mayor of the commune. 8. On the basis of a Gallup international survey conducted in 1982 which put the question ‘Do you feel very proud to be . . . American, British, French etc.’ 80% of Americans, 55% of British, compared to only 33% of French said ‘yes’ (Ardagh, 1995: 440). 9. This is not to deny that southern accents may be heard. 10. Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers in Europe.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Levelling 99
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland
4.1 Linguistic levelling in the light of social levelling In Section 3.9 of the previous chapter we referred to a number of changes in the zeitgeist of the francophone areas and other parts of Europe: in particular, an anti-authoritarian spirit which has led to the questioning of and loss of confidence in many of the major institutions of society; secondly, and no doubt as a consequence, a tendency to informalisation in a number of social practices. At this point we can raise the question whether the institution that is Standard French has been undermined in comparable fashion, or at the very least lost some of its ‘sacred aura’ while undergoing changes commensurate with informalisation, bearing in mind the considerable weight of factors (levels of education, service-sector employment) which favour increased exposure to and mastery of standard or near-standard forms. Accompanying this sacred aura is the exclusive, or as Gadet (1996) has it, monocentric character of the norm. This monocentrism is firmly focussed on France in general and Paris in particular (cf. Singy, 1996), and in the French capital itself on a certain social reference group who serve as a model for the so-called reference variety. While for a number of other languages it seems perfectly possible to refer to regional or national standards, this was hardly the case for French, at least until very recently. In the latter part of the 20th century, however, the monopoly of the Paris-centred norm was challenged by the emergence of a prestigious Québécois pronunciation (Poirier, 1998; Dumas, 2001). Although this can of course hardly be construed as a serious rival to the Parisian norm outside Quebec, it can perhaps be seen as constituting a second precedent for norm-setting, the first being the feminisation of professional titles (Section 3.5). As progress on this latter issue remained 100
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
4
blocked in France through the intervention of the French Academy, recommendations to bring terminology into line with the declared goal and increasing reality of gender parity were introduced in Switzerland and Belgium several years earlier than in France. The undermining of France’s traditional dominance was exacerbated by the generally pessimistic national mood in France in the 1990s (Chauvel, 2005). Under these conditions there was some scope for the emergence of alternative national norms in Belgium and Switzerland, particularly since both countries were experiencing an identity crisis, with these francophone communities under clearly definable threats, whether perceived or real. Given the federal structure and strong regional traditions in both territories, the unity of these norms is far from assured (Sections 4.8 and 4.9). In France only one candidate for a prestigious regional norm has ever been suggested, that of Provence (Taylor, 1996; Blanchet and Armstrong, 2006; Section 4.6).
4.2 The reference pronunciation of France and the ideology of the standard As has already been argued in Section 2.6, the ‘one-language-one nation’ ideology was developed earlier and more explicitly in France than in any other country and applied with ‘unusual intolerance’ (Grenoble and Whaley, 1998). As Klinkenberg (1992: 42) puts it: le français offre sans doute l’exemple le plus poussé qui soit de centralisme et d’institutionnalisation linguistique. The long centralising tradition of state intervention in language matters dates back at least to Louis IX in the 13th century (Szulmajster-Celnikier, 1996: 39), with regard to elaboration of function (Section 2.2). From the 16th century, works on codification or corpus planning began to appear, some of which dealt with issues of pronunciation, as Table 4.1 shows. In each case a fairly specific reference group of speakers is named as the custodians of the standard or reference variety. The reference variety is overwhelmingly based on the usage of the dominant classes of Paris, although two qualifications can be made. Firstly, the court of François 1er was peripatetic, moving between Paris and Touraine – a factor which certainly contributed to the latter region’s reputation for ‘linguistic purity’ (cf. Gueunier, Genouvrier and Khomsi, 1978). Secondly, the linguistic reputation of the Protestants, as asserted by Henri Estienne, was buttressed by the crucial importance to their faith of reading the
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 101
102 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Source or period
Social group
Early grammarians 16th century
Court of François 1er
Estienne (1582)
Parliament and discontented Protestants
Vaugelas (1647)
The royal court, but only ‘la plus saine partie’
Revolution
Parisian bourgeoisie
Durand (1936)
La petite bourgeoisie parisienne
Pichon (1938)
‘Les plus vieilles familles parisiennes dont sont issus les officiers généraux et les évêques’
Fouché (1959)
‘La conversation ‘soignée’ chez les Parisiens cultivés’
Le Roy (1967)
La Comédie française
Malécot (1977)
‘La conversation sérieuse mais détendue de la classe dirigeante de la capitale [. . .]. Parisiens authentiques parmi les chefs d’entreprises, hauts fonctionnaires, cadres supérieurs et tous ceux qui ont des situations de responsabilité dans les professions libérales’
Encrevé (1988)
Les professionnels de la parole publique
scriptures, which could only favour a standardised variety. Persecution forced many Protestants into exile to a variety of destinations, of which the most important French-speaking city was Geneva. These exceptions apart, Reference French was a Parisian class dialect before the Revolution either of the royal court (‘français du roi’) or certain parts of it: ‘la plus saine partie’, in the celebrated phrase of Vaugelas. The term ‘saine’ is connected with the 17th-century concept of the honnête homme and the urbanity required of him: see Lodge (2004: 151–4). After the Revolution, the most frequently cited reference group is the Parisian bourgeoisie, often the haute bourgeoisie although Durand (1936) cites the petite bourgeoisie. The defining attributes of social class may be education (‘Parisiens cultivés’)1 or profession. Malécot is alone in suggesting that being born and bred in Paris is of importance, in contrast to Walter’s (1977) depiction of the adoptive Parisian. Malécot chose to concentrate on informal usage, whereas reference to the Comédie française
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 4.1 List of social groups cited as exemplars of Reference French (Laks, 2002)
suggests an archaïsing diction, different from ordinary discourse. The usage of professionnels de la parole publique (politicians, broadcast journalists) evokes the formal and often scripted styles heard publicly. While these criteria allow theoretically for a considerable degree of variation, a far greater proportion of the population have mastery of a (near-)standard variety than is the case for instance for RP in England. If in a number of comparable languages (e.g. English and Spanish), it is conceivable to speak the standard variety with a national or regional accent, the republican ideology of unity within uniformity tends to include a certain type of pronunciation as part of the standard. State interference in linguistic matters (Judge, 1993: 7) by a long tradition of centralised regimes (monarchic, imperial and republican) has certainly contributed to the importance of the French language in national life and a sense of nationhood, to the detriment and exclusion of other indigenous languages, but it is rather more difficult to determine the precise role of the state in the successful standardisation (and homogenisation) of pronunciation. There was, however, a radical difference of attitude towards regional languages and dialects under the ancien régime compared to the Revolutionary and indeed all subsequent regimes. Before the Revolution, there appears to have been little concern to impose the standard language on the rural populace via schooling; as Lodge points out (1993: 213), the state was: . . . at best indifferent to the language used by the mass of its subjects, at worst very ready to exploit the advantages it gained from the linguistic exclusion of the peasantry from economic and political power. If the ancien régime approach was divide-and-rule, the diametrically opposed Jacobin position, famously summarised in Barère’s speech to the Comité du Salut public (1794), emphasised the patriotic necessity for every citizen to acquire the national language, in order to gain familiarity with new laws. It also condemned regional languages such as Breton and Basque, as sources of superstition and anti-government intrigue. A common language was the prerequisite of liberty and equality. The Jacobin ideology emphasised the civic duty laid upon citizens of participation in the republican process, as opposed to the promotion of social mobility through education. A prominent feature of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary period was therefore the state’s will to impose centralised standardisation, in weights and measures, currency, territorial divisions and other areas. The linguistic aspect of this was expressed
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 103
in the motto: ‘La langue doit être une comme la République’; or more briefly, ‘République une, langue une’. The French language came to be closely identified with national identity, and correspondingly, regional languages with disloyalty to the republic. Barère’s speech to the Comité du Salut public, along with another key revolutionary text also dating from 1794 (Grégoire’s Rapport sur la nécessité d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser la langue française), while entirely congruent regarding the need for a single national language and the suppression of regional languages, are discordant with regard to regional accents. Grégoire certainly deemed needful the harmonisation of pronunciation throughout the country, even if this was less urgent than lexical uniformity: Les accents feront une plus longue résistance, et probablement les peuples voisins des Pyrénées changeront encore, pendant quelque temps, les e muets en é fermés, le b en v, les f en h. A la Convention nationale, on retrouve les inflexions et les accents de toute la France. Les finales traînantes des uns, les consonnes gutturales ou nasales des autres, ou même des nuances presque imperceptibles, décèlent presque toujours le département de celui qui parle. While this passage acknowledges with seeming tolerance the diversity of accents in France, even among the educated and relatively privileged members of the National Convention, in another passage Grégoire upbraids those who asserted that speakers in southern France would never lose their characteristic prosodic patterns (‘prosodies éclatantes’) by affirming that southerners are as patriotic as any other part of the population. In other words (Grégoire’s own), ‘L’accent n’est donc pas plus irréformable que les mots’ (Section 2.5). Barère’s speech, while unequivocal in its utter contempt for distinctively aristocratic speech, appears ambiguous as regards regional accents: Ces puériles distinctions ont disparu avec les grimaces de courtisans ridicules et les hochets d’une cour perverse. L’orgueil même de l’accent plus ou moins pur ou sonore n’existe plus, depuis que les citoyens rassemblés de toutes les parties de la République ont exprimé dans les assemblées nationales leurs vœux pour la liberté et leurs pensées pour la législation commune. The following passage reads as being tolerant of accent diversity while underscoring the importance of a common ‘voice’, i.e. concordance of
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
104 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 105
Les hommes libres se ressemblent tous; et l’accent vigoureux de la liberté et de l’égalité est le même, soit qu’il sorte de la bouche d’un habitant des Alpes ou des Vosges, des Pyrénées ou du Cantal, etc. One of the measures proposed at the time of this address was the establishing of primary schools and the appointment of teachers, for whom the restrictions specified were that they should be neither of aristocratic nor ecclesiastical background. The appointment of teachers of relatively modest origins, insofar as the project could be realised at all, meant that many of the appointed exemplars of Standard French might well have spoken with a regional accent. If regional languages were however, in Barère’s estimation, hideous wounds on the face of France, only rather attenuated accents would have been likely to avoid stigmatisation. Among the higher social classes, the prestige of Parisian pronunciation has been clearly established since medieval times (Lodge, 1993). Among the lower social classes, the shift from monolingualism or regional-language-dominant bilingualism was well advanced before the advent of free compulsory primary education. For these speakers the target variety was the Parisian vernacular, propagated through contacts with Paris and Parisians, through migration to the capital and for men, military service,2 which lasted between two and five years, between 1870 and 1914. These factors contributing to the processes of dialect levelling can only be assumed to have favoured Parisian variants, given the numbers of Parisians (including adoptive) involved, along with the capital’s prestige, both overt and covert. The repudiation of aristocratic speech seems, however, to have affected relatively few phonetic features, most of which are shared by vernacular varieties, notably the [wE]-[wa] variable as in bourgeois (Lodge, 2004) and the elision of certain consonants such as /l/ in il (Lemaire, 2008), where bourgeois norms (as opposed to aristocratic) reflected orthography more closely.
4.3 Attempting to define Reference French It will be useful at this point to introduce two important distinctions: firstly, between prescriptive and statistical norms (Müller, 1985: 83) and, secondly, between registers or styles. In this latter respect Carton
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
content rather than of pronunciation, and it is in this perspective that the already cited ‘chez un peuple libre la langue doit être une et la même pour tous’ should be understood:
106 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
high mid
low
front
central
back
i
y
u
e
ø
o
E
œ
O
a
A
(2001: 7) regards as fundamental in evaluating French speech data the distinction between a ‘registre surveillé’ (RS) and ‘conversation ordinaire’(CO). RS is closer to what Müller (1985: 83) refers to as the prescriptive norm for France, which contains maximally 37 phonemes compared to the statistical norm of 31. The maximal system or prescriptive norm is presented in Tables 4.2 (vowels) and 4.3 (consonants). To these eleven oral vowels should be added the four nasal vowels /œ/ ˜ un, brun; /˜O/ bon; /˜ E/ vin; / A ˜ / blanc. Although not shown in Table 4.1, the mid-central unrounded vowel often referred to as schwa or mute-e (/@/) is generally regarded as part of the phonemic inventory of French. Much of the controversy surrounding mute-e concerns its quality, since it can vary between [@], [œ] and [ø]. From a social perspective, as we argue in Section 4.4.3, the significance of its quality is far outweighed by its presence or absence in certain environments. As will become clear when we discuss Belgian and Swiss pronunciation (Sections 4.8 and 4.9), length is not indicated as a factor in vowel contrasts in France, despite its potential usefulness in reflecting a number of orthographic distinctions such as aimé [e]-aimée [e:] and lexical differences: fête [fEt] and faites [fE:t]. The potential importance of length contrasts was reflected in Martinet’s (1945) survey of 400 officers with whom he was detained in a German POW camp during World War II. Although, for obvious reasons, the set of informants selected were all male, their number (400) and their wide and still unequalled regional representativeness means that the study provides a valuable insight into middle-class pronunciation in the early 20th century, including some interesting intergenerational differences, given that the subjects were born between 1880 and 1920. Martinet concluded that vowel-length contrasts were receding, but that speakers were sensitive at least to some of them. Some length contrasts continued to
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 4.2 The oral vowel phonemes of the prescriptive norm (PN) Müller, 1985: 83)
be noted in teaching manuals and bilingual dictionaries after 1945, but many speakers born since that time by the 1970s would have difficulty appreciating the significance of some of the minimal pairs proposed by Martinet (Gadet p.c.). Even without the vowel-length distinctions, the prescriptive norm represents an old-fashioned variety equated by some authors with Reference French (e.g. Rittaud-Hutinet, 2001; Pooley, 2006b: 359), in contrast to Lyche (forthcoming 2010) who regards this norm as being identical with the usage of the majority of speakers, and little if at all different from Müller’s statistical norm or indeed supralocal or Oïl French (Pooley, 2006b). How does this regionally unmarked supralocal variety differ from the prescriptive norm? Some areas of the phonology, such as the high vowels: /i/, /y/ and /u/, have remained stable. Some contrasts, however, although reported by a majority of the subjects in Martinet (1945), are generally agreed to have virtually disappeared from the speech of younger speakers, in particular /a/-/A/ and /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ (Léon 1983; Fonagy 1989; Carton 2000; Dominicy 2000). Tranel (1987) refers to a merger of /a/-/A/ by expansion in favour of the front vowel, while the loss of contrast allows for a range of /a/ variants between the two to be used without clear social patterning. Some frequent lexical items, pas in particular, are subject to considerable phonetic variability, and are capable of being pronounced [pA], [p6], [pO] or [pö], in addition to standard [pa]. Many speakers frequently have the back vowel in sequences like je sais pas, j’y vais pas, etc., realised as [SEpA], [ZivepA]. In contrast, some generally older and more conservative speakers retain [A] as a phoneme in minimal pairs like patte-pâte, and as an allophone in the suffix -ation. If the vowel is in recession, its social distribution remains complex, resembling a ‘split’ variable, one found in northern speech and in upper- and lower-class supralocal French, but less often in the middle of the social distribution (Gadet 1989: 94). While most of Martinet’s respondents claimed to distinguish /œ/ ˜ from /˜ E/ (including a significant minority from the south), the proportion was lower in Paris than in the rest of non-meridional France (57%–79%). On the basis of fieldwork conducted in 1979, Péretz-Juillard (1985) noted that Parisian children did not have /œ/ ˜ in their phonemic inventory. A later study by Hansen (1998: 11–12) suggests that the [˜ E]-[œ] ˜ merger, now largely complete in mainstream usage, may be in the process of being followed by the merger of [˜O] and [ A ˜ ], even though hundreds of minimal pairs depend on this latter opposition. As Hansen points out, a simplification of the French nasal-vowel system from four items to two
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 107
widely separated in phonetic space ([˜ E] and [˜O]) can be accounted for broadly in functional terms. A further line of reasoning points to a threevowel system involved in a chain shift, with merged [˜ E] backing towards [A ˜ ], which in turn backs and raises towards [˜O]. The consequent raising of the latter vowel then results in a third phoneme, [õ], which has been attested in some varieties, although only impressionistically. Variation between [ A ˜ ] and [˜O], as in France realised as something close to [föO ˜ s] has been attested at least since the 16th century (Dominicy, 2000). In France this remains a non-standard feature (although occurring marginally in the formal data gathered for Switzerland: Section 4.9), but in the longer term it seems a plausible candidate for change from below. The mid-vowel contrasts are largely restricted to closed syllables with a strong tendency, known as the loi de position, to allophonic alternation in both in the prescriptive norm and Reference French, with the high vowels [e ø o] occurring in open syllables and the low vowels [E œ O] in closed, e.g. donner /dOne/ contrasting with donnèrent /dOnEK/, peu /pø/ with peur /pœK/ and sot /so/ with sotte /sOt/. For the latter two vowels, this allophonic alternation has been shown to be consistently followed by Parisian speakers (Landick, 1995, 2004) as well as in certain regional varieties, as in southern France or the Nord–Pas-de-Calais (Carton, 1987; Pooley, 2004b). In the prescriptive norm and Reference French, /O/ can contrast with /o/, as in côte-cotte /kot/-/kOt/ in closed syllables and /e/ with /E/ in open, e.g. les-lait /le/-/lE/. This latter distinction has for some time been receding in unstressed syllables (see L. Armstrong, 1932: 85) in favour of a phonetically intermediate variant, as in [ZoK fl fiE] (example cited by Coveney, 2001: 77) which is ambiguously j’aurai or j’aurais. It can be assumed that normative pressures continue to promote the maintenance of these contrasts; they are of course very productive in the -er verb conjugation, although genuine ambiguity in context is no doubt rare, as Gadet remarks (1989: 92–4). Another widely noted change is the fronting of /O/ to /œ/, first noted in a 1958 article by Martinet, famously entitled ‘C’est jeuli, le Mareuc!’. This historically Parisian vernacular feature has become in recent decades fashionable and indicative of ‘un souci de bien parler’ (Carton, 2001: 9) with young women taking the lead in its adoption, a finding confirmed by Armstrong and Low (2008) on the basis of data collected in Roanne (Section 7.3). The occurrence of /o/ fronting so far from Paris seems indicative of its geographical spread and integration into an unmarked supralocal variety. The consonants of the prescriptive norm have undergone little change relative to the vowels (Table 4.3). The dominant realisation of /r/ is a
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
108 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 109 Table 4.3 Consonantal phonemes of the prescriptive norm (Müller, 1985; Lyche, forthcoming 2010)
Voiceless stop
p
Dental Alveolar Palato- Palatal Velar Uvular alveolar t
Voiced stop
b
d
Nasal
m
n
k g
ñ
Voiceless fricative
f
s
S
Voiced fricative
v
z
Z
Voiced approximant Glide
N K ö
l
ű, j
w
uvular articulation, with degree of friction depending on phonetic context. Fewer and fewer speakers use the palatal nasal /ñ/ and cursory analysis of data recently gathered under the aegis of the Phonologie du Français Contemporain (PFC) project suggest that contrasts like that distinguishing la nielle and l’agnelle investigated by Martinet (1945) have virtually disappeared, with [nj] being used in all cases (Lyche, forthcoming 2010). Martinet’s results already suggested intergenerational differences, with fewer younger subjects claiming to distinguish such pairs. In terms of the phoneme inventory (but not of its distribution) the palatal nasal has been replaced by the velar /N/. Although used by French speakers in alternation with /g/ following assimilation before a nasal, as in langue maternelle [l A ˜ NmatEKnEl], its phonemic status, questioned by some (e.g. Walter, 1983), is due to its presence in lexical items or their variants loaned from English ending in [IN], as parking /paKkiN/ and bowling /buliN/. The PFC data (the project dates from 1999), although not yet fully analysed, suggest that some spelling pronunciations are becoming more frequent, e.g. exact[t], quand[t], with historically mute graphemes coming to be pronounced, particularly in word-final position. Against this, some word-final consonant clusters tend to be simplified even in formal styles (Wachs, 1997), as indicated by the elision of liquids after an obstruent in items like ministre pronounced [minis] by many PFC informants, even in reading style. Other simplifications, particularly
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Bi-labial Labiodental
in frequent sequences, are becoming systematic for some speakers, e.g. parce que [paskø] and exprès [EspöE]. Trimaille (forthcoming) presents some evidence suggesting that the palatalisation or affrication of /t/ and /d/, hitherto considered a workingclass feature, is becoming more frequent in middle-class speech. Leaving aside this latter feature and /o/ fronting, which are the only readily identifiable changes from below, the variety emerging from all the changes reviewed corresponds to the statistical norm (norme d’usage) described by Müller (1985: 83). The differences between the prescriptive and statistical norms represent a space for stylistic variation between a speaker’s most careful usage and ordinary conversation, equatable with the phonetic and phonological aspects of français courant, français moyen or français général. For Lyche (2009), the reduced inventory of phonemes is perfectly compatible with Reference French. On this basis, the latter variety has undergone changes indicative both of informalisation and simplification, and betrays perhaps a diminished reverence for the orthographic standard. The loss of the four contrasts /ø/-/œ/, /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/, /a/-/A/ and /ñ/-/nj/, all of which can be considered mergers by expansion, are readily explicable in functional terms, given that they serve to differentiate no more than a handful of minimal pairs, such as jeune-jeûne, brin-brun, patte-pâtes, Régnier-Rénier. Despite what was suggested above, the merger of /ø/-/œ/ and the loss of /ñ/ can also be characterised as changes from below, in that they are vernacular but ‘system-internal’ forms that have become part of standard usage. These simplifications can be explained in functional terms, although social factors are probably of equal importance insofar as a widening distribution of standardised forms gives rise to the reduction of contrasts of the type found in variety-contact situations. As discussed previously, it seems plausible that one consequence of the relative lateness and rapidity of the French social mobilisation process has been the diminution of pronunciation differences in the developing Oïl cities. Labov (1972: 300) expresses the situation in the following terms: rapid language mixing seems to follow a kind of classic structural reductionism, and it would not be difficult to argue that it is a subtype of the same process that produces contact languages [. . .] One of the universal constraints on change seems to be operating here – that in contact situations, [linguistic] mergers expand at the expense of distinctions. In this perspective it seems difficult to distinguish between ‘functional’ and ‘social’ explanations, if by functional is meant here
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
110 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
something like the reduction of redundancy. At the same time, standard languages tend strongly to contain elements of structural redundancy that function as social markers. Lack of variationist results for the features listed above makes speculation on their social-stylistic value unprofitable, but one is tempted to suggest nevertheless that the relative subtlety of the phonetic contrasts between the mid-vowels, the two front nasals and /ñ/-/nj/ militates against their value as salient sociolinguistic markers. That said, the /o/-/O/ distinction in closed syllables, as in côte-cotte, appears not to be threatened. As was mentioned above, the surprising aspect of the situation is that affrication of /t, d/ and fronting of /o/ are the only clear signs in pronunciation of the social levelling of interest here, at least so far in our discussion. There remain a number of features that variationist approaches have shown as possessing social-stylistic value. In the following section we consider three of these as having ‘standard’ realisations clearly indicated in the orthography.
4.4 Stylistic variation: omission or insertion phenomena? The variables in question are: 1. Variable deletion of liquid consonants /r/ and /l/: (a) word-final /l/, particularly in clitic pronouns, such as il, ils, elle; (b) word-finally after obstruents e.g. centre [s A ˜ t] or table [tab] 2. Variable liaison, e.g. ils sont_à la maison [ils˜O(t)alamEz˜O] 3. Realisation or deletion of mute-e in various contexts: (a) VC_CV, as in la semaine-la s’maine [las@mEn-lasmEn]; (b) monosyllabic words in (V)C_C(V) as in dans le bureau [dãl@byKo – dãlbyKo] While the realisation of these variable segments is a clear indicator of more formal spontaneous styles, or of scripted speech, their correlation with social differentiation has varied over time, a widespread normative view prevalent in France often attributing their omission uniquely to le français populaire or ‘working-class French’. Of the three features, only the elision of liquids appears to be an ease-of-articulation phenomenon, with perhaps reduced social significance as a consequence. Against this it is arguable that the realisation of schwa and variable liaison are better viewed as insertion phenomena, signalling stylistic differentiation.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 111
112 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Variable /l/-deletion in standardised varieties has been reported by Ashby (1988) in Tours and Armstrong (1993, 1996) in Lorraine. Several consistent findings have emerged from these studies: higher deletion rates in some contexts than in others across all varieties, in particular il + C compared to elle in any context. Sankoff and Cedergren’s (1971) study of Montreal French showed /l/-deletion to be a sociolinguistic marker, co-varying with class and gender, with the consistently higher deletion rates of men suggestive of stability. Table 4.4 shows speaker group scores for /l/-deletion rates in all subject clitic pronouns except pre-consonantal il in a variety judged to be regionally unmarked (Armstrong, 2001). The inclusion of nearcategorical deletion rates in il + C would mask the sharper style-shift patterns apparent in other contexts. While deletion rates in France are lower than for Canadian varieties, there is no direct evidence available for increasing deletion in supralocal French; /l/ is arguably a ‘marker’ type of variable that shows a fair degree of style shift, perhaps because of its clear representation in spelling. With regard to word-final post-obstruent liquid dropping (WFPOLD) (Feature 1b), e.g. centre [s A ˜ t] or table [tab], Gadet (1992: 41) suggests that pre-consonantally as in l’aut’ jour it is a stylistic feature, while prepausally as in il y en a quat’ and pre-vocalically as in je vais êt’ en cinquième it is a working-class feature. This differentiation according to phonological context has not been borne out by variationist studies, although realisation of the liquid has been shown to be more frequent prevocalically. Some studies have shown that /r/ is more frequently deleted than /l/ (Armstrong, 1993; Pooley, 1996) and there is considerable evidence to show that deletion is the majority form for working-class Table 4.4 Total numbers (N) and percentage deletion rates (%) for /l/-deletion in subject clitic pronouns except il + C: group scores (Armstrong, 1993) Speaker group
Interview
Conversation
N
%
N
%
Males 16–19 Females 16–19 Males 11–12 Females 11–12
160 178 145 257
9.4 12.4 8.3 14.3
243 377 266 315
30.9 27.8 22.5 17.1
All groups
736
11.7
1201
24.5
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
4.4.1 Variation in the liquid consonants /l/ and /r/
speakers in Paris (Laks, 1983), Lille (Pooley, 1996) and Avion (Pas-deCalais) (Hornsby, 2006b). The Dieuze study (Armstrong, 1993) suggests that /r/-deletion in particular is hardly less frequent among adolescents from the median classes, while in Montreal, upper-middle class speakers delete with comparable frequency (Kemp, Pupier and Yaeger, 1980). The latter authors show convincingly that it is word-final cluster maintenance that is socially marked. In France, Armstrong and Boughton’s (2009) study of the perceptions of judges from Rennes regarding data from Nancy has shown that WFPOLD is a feature of which informants are conscious, and can refer to in impressionistic terms like ‘elle mange des lettres’ or ‘il finit pas ses mots’. Armstrong and Boughton’s data suggest that it is a classic sociolinguistic marker, showing class and gender differentiation but minimal age-related differences, and somewhat more mysteriously, consistently higher deletion scores in Rennes compared to Nancy. The data from Dieuze presented in Table 4.5 show a striking pattern of hyperstyle variation for WFPOLD followed by a vowel, as in je vais être en cinquième. WPFOLD + V generally disfavours /r/-deletion, as the overall deletion rate indicates: at 44.9%, compared to 52.9% for WFPOLD followed by a consonant or pause. The linguistic factor which appears to inhibit /r/-deletion before a vowel concerns the resyllabification that takes place in this context; thus, the full form of l’autre année syllabifies to the form [lo.töa.ne.], where enchaînement or linking causes consonants to attach to following vowels, opening syllables and producing the CV.CV. Small numbers of tokens per speaker group unfortunately preclude statistical testing of these results, but they are intuitively very striking; interspeaker variation is dwarfed by the style effect. What seems to distinguish WFPOLD + V as a stylistically sensitive variable is the Table 4.5 Total numbers, percentage deletion rates and style shift for /r/ in the sequence WFPOLD + V: e.g. in je vais être en cinquième (Armstrong, 1993) Interview
Males 16–19 Females 16–19 Males 11–12 Females 11–12 All groups
Conversation
(N)
%
(N)
%
25 32 30 40
24.0 31.2 23.3 12.5
55 42 37 30
78.2 69.0 70.3 43.3
127
22.1
164
67.7
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 113
fact that deletion rates in interview style are low for all speaker groups: 22.1% compared to 55.6% for WFPOLD + C or #. This appears to endorse the notion that the informants were conscious of the nonstandard or even stigmatised nature of /r/-deletion in this context in the relatively formal interview style. By contrast, lower self-monitoring, as well as the solidarity-based nature of the relations between speakers, may have overridden these considerations in conversation style. 4.4.2 Variable liaison While the realisation of linking consonants remains a marker of more formal styles, two real-time studies (Ashby, 2003; Smith, 1996) suggest that its use is diminishing and that even in relatively formal usage, it has become a minority form. Ashby’s study of informants from Tours in 1976 and 1995 found a decline in the use of variable liaison from 36% to 28%. Smith (1996) reported real-time evidence of change in variable liaison, over roughly the same period, from 61.6% in the early 1960s (Ågren, 1973) to 46.8% in his own corpus, recorded in 1995–96 (Table 4.6). At the other social extreme the application of the same set of variables to non-standard (and regionally marked) speech in Lille (Pooley, 1996), showed that occurrence of variable liaison was largely restricted to forms of être, with the most frequent form est yielding the most liaisons. If the decline in the retention of ne, also studied by Ashby, shows a weakening of the influence on speech of the written standard, where the negative particle remains obligatory, the relation between writing and variable liaison seems more complex, since knowledge of spelling alone is not a reliable guide to the prescribed variable liaison forms. Table 4.6 Variable liaison in 1960–61 and 1995–96 on public-service radio in France (Ågren, 1973; Smith, 1996) Category After forms of être After forms of avoir After forms of ‘semi-auxiliaries’ falloir, devoir, pouvoir After pas After polysyllabic adverbs and prepositions pendant, toujours After plural nouns as in Les soldats anglais
1961
1996
87.9% (N = 3858) 51.4% (N = 1140) 50.2% (N = 851)
78.8% (N = 1301) 28% (N = 411) 25.8% (N = 407)
23.1% (N = 965) 40.3% (N = 988)
21.4% (N = 379) 12.8% (N = 234)
26.6% (N = 639)
22% (N = 309)
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
114 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
The recent history of variable liaison appears to show it to have ebbed and flowed in response to large-scale social conditions; in particular, in response to the relationship between the upper-middle and lowermiddle classes. Smith (1996: 22–3) points out that in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the haute bourgeoisie (the upper-middle class living on inherited income) used liaison more sparingly than the class below them in familiar and colloquial speech. In the period between about 1900 and the 1960s, the use of variable liaison probably saw an increase, with some liaison forms that had fallen into disuse being reintroduced, e.g. nous sommes arrivés and ils doivent aller (Encrevé, 1988: 259, citing Martinon, 1913). While this may well be a case of linguistic change tracking social change, as Smith argues (1996: 27), it seems less likely that the avoidance of certain forms was indicative of the haute bourgeoisie distancing themselves from the bourgeoisie. The haute bourgeoisie, like the aristocracy before them, showed remarkably relaxed attitudes to certain normative tendencies which were more scrupulously observed by the aspiring classes. This was therefore perhaps a matter of social confidence rather than the wish to signal social distance. The decline in the use of variable liaison on public-service radio since the 1960s can be thought of as an indicator of informalisation and of a less deferential attitude to the written norm. This decline in use is accompanied by uncertainties over which liaison consonant should be inserted. Studies of style shifting in unscripted data (Armstrong, 1993; Hornsby, 1999) have shown that speakers often make errors, particularly if the linking consonant is other than one of the three most frequent /t/, /n/ and /z/, as in for instance trop [z] âgés or un long [t] apprentissage. Examples of incorrect or ‘forbidden’ liaison in attempted shifts to formality have been noted like mille [z] élèves (Gadet, 1997: 51). These may be motivated either by ignorance of the norm, or perhaps a hypercorrect desire to mark plurality. Some of the more frequent items in the h-aspiré set such as haricot and Hollandais [lezaKiko] [lezOl A ˜ de] (prescriptively [leaKiko] [leOl A ˜ de]) are being increasingly assimilated, and with increasing acceptability, into the majority pattern of invariable liaison in the context plural article plus word-initial vowel.
4.4.3 Mute-e For clarity we refer to the vowel of interest here as mute-e; its problematic status in the phonemic system of French is reflected in the plurality of labels that have been applied to it, none of which is particularly satisfactory, as has often been remarked. Lucci (1983: 107) suggests that the
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 115
choice of label should reflect the bias of the study. The labels e muet, e caduc (literally ‘deciduous’ or ‘falling’ e), e féminin all reflect incomplete or impressionistic observations of the vowel’s behaviour. The term schwa [@] (Lass, 1984: 110), applied to a central mid-high unrounded lax vowel, undoubtedly useful in general phonetics, was used in an early generative description of French phonology by Schane (1973: 14), who described schwa as the only lax vowel in an otherwise tense vowel system. There is, however, an overwhelming consensus in other and more recent studies, e.g. Martinet and Walter (1973), Dell (1980) and Jetchev (2003) that the vowel is often tense, rounded and realised as [œ] or [ø] and may be best represented archiphonemically as [Œ]. The rounded and more tense quality of the vowel may well be a factor in its apparently increasing stability, but this does not preclude deletion, whether as a doubtful result of speech rate (Gadet, 1997: 71–8 does not include it in her list of ease-of-articulation features or ‘facilités de prononciation’) or style shifting. Dell’s (1980: 170) much-quoted example of the homophonous pair des genêts and des jeunets, both pronounced by Dell [deZœnE], illustrates the point since only des genêts is subject to variable deletion, as indicated by the transcription of the Petit Robert as [deZ(@)nE]. Martinet and Walter (1973) reported considerable variation in the phonological systems of a sample of 17 middle-class Parisian informants, recorded with a view to examining individual variation in a fairly fine-grained way, and reported that for mute-e, ten informants generally had [ø], while three had [œ] and four had schwa. This however is an over-simplification, since several informants had [ø] phrase-finally, as in fais-le, etc., with [œ] in other positions. This seems in line with the standard distribution of the mid-vowels, since phrase-final position is stressed, often emphatic, and [ø] is the mid-vowel canonically found in stressed open syllables. Martinet and Walter (p. 24) remark on the phonetic realisation of mute-e that: Pour certains [locuteurs], cette voyelle d’allégement a toujours un timbre bien distinct, celui de la voyelle centrale qu’on note [@]. Pour d’autres, aujourd’hui plus nombreux, elle se réalise comme le [œ] de peur ou le [ø] de feu. The authors’ use of toujours and aujourd’hui clearly implies that in their view change is in progress in how mute-e is realised. Socially and stylistically, however, phonetic quality is less important than deletion or non-deletion, or rather variable rates of insertion.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
116 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
In classic generative analysis, orthographic unaccented <e> is generally seen as an underlying form as in la semaine where the second <e>, although never pronounced in Standard French, is explanatorily useful because its presence is held as blocking nasalisation (cf. plan-plane). The first <e> in la semaine is pronounced variably, as in [las@mEnlasmEn]. Indeed, variationist studies (Armstrong, 1993; Hansen, 2000; see Tables 4.7 and 4.8) have shown it to be a strong majority form lending weight to the contention that in the phrase-medial context VC_CV, the most favourable to deletion (as in la semaine or dans le bureau), zero is the base form leaving the possibility of variable insertion of mute-e. The subjects in the Dieuze study (Table 4.7) are secondary-school pupils from the median classes, with boys and girls in two age bands as indicated, recorded in group conversations (in the absence of the investigator) and interviews with the researcher. Both social and stylistic variation is rather limited, with no obvious overall patterning and only small degrees of style shift. We can infer either that the speaker sample Table 4.7 Total numbers (N) and percentage insertion rates (%) for mute-e in the context: VC_CV, e.g. in la semaine in Dieuze (Armstrong, 1993) Sex / Age
Interview
Conversation
N
%
N
%
M 16–19 F 16–19 M 11–12 F 11–12
120 120 120 120
30.0 11.7 24.2 25.8
120 120 120 120
9.2 15.6 16.7 20.8
All groups
480
22.9
480
15.6
Table 4.8 Mute-e insertion in monosyllabic words in (V)C_C(V) as in: c’est dans le bureau (Hansen, 2000) Class / Age
Interview (N)
%
Reading passage (N)
%
MC Young MC Adult ALL MC 1989
1204 606 1810
27.7 41.1 32.2
787 403 1190
78.9 23.9 77.3
WC Young WC Adult ALL WC 1992
281 347 628
28.1 31.4 29.9
242 243 485
87.6 87.4 87.5
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 117
displays a limited range of communicative competence, or perhaps more plausibly that the stylistic range elicited is restricted because the influence of writing was not directly present in either speech style. Regarding the latter point, the comparison with Hansen’s result is very direct. Hansen’s Paris study (Table 4.8) compares scripted and unscripted styles, with striking results. Two speaker groups were sampled: one middle-class (‘cultivés’) with graduate-level education; and one workingclass (‘défavorisés’) having education lower than the Baccalauréat. The results concern variable deletion of mute-e in monosyllabic words preceded by a single consonant, another context that is favourable to deletion. Thus c’est dans le bureau can be realised: [sed A ˜ l@byKo] or, much more commonly (p<. 01), [sed A ˜ lbyKo]. The results in Tables 4.7 and 4.8 show few interspeaker differences, and these are far exceeded by intraspeaker variation. The largest degrees of interspeaker differentiation are 13.4%, between young MC speakers and MC adults, in interview, and 13.7%, between MC adults and WC adults, in the reading passages. At the same time degrees of intraspeaker variation are quite dramatic: the smallest shift is 32.8%, by MC adults across interview and reading styles, while the largest is 59.5% for young WC speakers. Social-class differences do not show the classic pattern of close convergence in scripted speech relative to unscripted, and this is mostly clearly apparent if we compare the ‘All WC’ and ‘All MC’ results. While there is rather little age and social-class differentiation in interview style (MC adults providing the most notable exception) there is a systematic class difference in the reading styles, where insertion rates for the MC groups are lower than for WC. These results recall those reported by Armstrong and Unsworth (1999) in regard to mute-e in southern French, and the explanation offered there (p. 149) may be applicable to the results in Table 4.8 also: ‘this pattern fits Chambers and Trudgill’s (1998: 60) self-monitoring hypothesis if one assumes that WC speakers approach the task of reading aloud with lesser familiarity and hence greater attention to their performance’. We may mention in passing that the southern French results also showed hyperstyle variation in contexts that were structurally similar to those where variable insertion takes place in supralocal French. The results in Tables 4.7 and 4.8 suggest therefore that mute-e is a variable whose insertion is highly sensitive to scripted speech styles. Normative teaching styles appear still to inculcate its insertion in reading aloud, including the recitation of poetry, where mute-e is often needed to satisfy the metre. Exercises like dictation can be assumed to increase awareness of its prescribed presence in reading. The hyperstyle
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
118 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
pattern in Table 4.8 may hence be a quirk of the normative methods used in France to teach the language. Hyperstyle is commonly held to be an aberrant pattern, found in languages characterised by an unusually wide gulf between spoken and written forms. The sociolinguistic behaviour of mute-e varies greatly according to its surrounding linguistic environment, to the extent that it is hard to theorise as a unitary variable. We examined above its variable behaviour between two consonants, where it seems to be stable in the dominant variety while showing an unusual style effect. Its distribution after a single consonant + pause seems to be changing in supralocal French; the relative recency of this shift means that reliable data are lacking, but Table 4.9 below shows a small increase between 1989 and 1993 in what Hansen and Mosegaard Hansen (2003) call ‘prepausal schwa’, in two corpora recorded in Paris. In the following discussion their terminology is adopted. As Hansen and Mosegaard Hansen point out, realisation rates across the 1989 and 1993 corpora are not dramatically different, and individual scores vary considerably despite the small overall increase. It is, however, noteworthy that the frequency range narrowed somewhat between 1989 and 1993, and that insertion rates are higher in a less informal style in the later corpus. Certainly the short period between the two corpora rules out any confident claim regarding a change in progress. The authors suggest, supporting their argument by analysing several stretches of conversation in their corpora of Parisian speech, that realisation of the vowel has generally a pragmatic function, that of highlighting an important element in the discourse. In this connection we can reiterate the point made earlier regarding the system-internal nature of this element of variation, as opposed to any dialectal or workingclass origin. The authors argue that at the outset pre-pausal schwa was a naturally motivated post-consonantal ‘release phenomenon’ which Table 4.9 Rate of realisation of pre-pausal schwa after a single consonant in Hansen’s 1989 and 1993 data (Hansen and Mosegaard Hansen, 2003), as in: c’est Pierre-euh, bonjour-euh
Overall realisation rates Range of individual rates
1989, conversation + interview
1993, interview
%
%
N
18
2291 6%–55%
N
25 359 8%–37%
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 119
has now acquired a sociolinguistic distribution. Younger urban female speakers, as so often, appear to be leading this change, if that is indeed what it is. At present pre-pausal schwa is associated with a falling intonation pattern, where a high note on the antepenultimate syllable precedes a low note on the schwa. In this it differs from the pre-pausal schwa commonly heard in southern French. In summary, mute-e looks superficially like a fast-speech feature, but its seemingly increasing realisation as a round mid-vowel like [ø] or [œ] goes against any analysis that assumes it is simply deleted at higher rates in casual (and so faster) speech. Its increasing stability may be connected with its increasing tendency to be realised as a ‘full’ vowel. There appears to be an explicit pedagogical tradition that recommends, and even teaches, its insertion in scripted speech styles. In this it resembles variable liaison. Therefore the constraint under which speakers operate may have to do with insertion in formal styles, rather than deletion in informal styles.
4.5 The education system and the acquisition of Standard French in France Chambers and Trudgill (1998: 70) claim that a social hierarchy is reflected directly in a linguistic hierarchy, and by derivation in a stylistic hierarchy (Section 1.2). This seems to fit the regional-dialects-plusstandard model, but given the generally highly levelled character of supralocal French and the correspondingly greater importance of stylistic variation, particularly between scripted and unscripted styles, other approaches to these issues which bring to bear the input of the education system are of particular interest. As with the variationist studies quoted in earlier sections, the evidence is not abundant, but the study by Caitucoli, Delamotte-Legrand and Leconte (2003) of the perceptions and expectations of pupils, students and teachers regarding the acquisition of the standard at different educational stages offers a promising path of enquiry. This study largely consists of three, admittedly limited, cases using data collected in three different locations in Normandy: a primary school in Le Havre; an 11–15 secondary school (collège) in Dreux; and the University of Rouen. The primary-school study shows that awareness of the differences between the vernacular acquired in the family setting and the standard variety to be acquired in school is strong and that the norms which underpin it are inculcated, at least in the teachers’ perceptions, to a far greater extent by parents than by themselves. These norms cover socio-regional factors (‘l’accent paysan est désagréable’; ‘le langage des
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
120 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 121 Table 4.10 Mise en mots of primary-school pupils in Le Havre regarding French lessons (Caitucoli et al., 2003: 21)
Parler correctement; parler avec des mots français; dire des expressions polies; pas dire des bêtises; faut faire attention aux fautes; faut faire attention à ce qu’on dit; tu peux pas parler comme tu veux What is learned On apprend la politesse; on apprend à causer comme il faut; on apprend à bien s’exprimer; on apprend du langage soutenu; on apprend l’orthographe; on apprend à parler normalement; on apprend à écrire des choses intelligentes; j’apprends à parler normalement; j’apprends à faire attention à ma façon d’écrire; tu apprends à pas couper la parole au maître The role of the teacher Le maître corrige les fautes; le maître nous apprend à bien parler; le maître vérifie si on parle comme il faut à l’école; le maître surveille comment on écrit les phrases; le maître nous corrige pour qu’on nous comprenne; le maître interdit le langage familier
ouvriers est incorrect’) and the ideology of the standard (‘c’est à l’école qu’on apprend le bon usage’). The fact that the school selected for study is located in a poor workingclass area with a high proportion (50%) of pupils of migrant origin meant that French lessons were perceived to be teaching a linguistic form very different from the children’s idiom of spontaneous expression. Table 4.10 gives examples of how the sample of 9- to 11-year-olds expressed their perceptions of the situation. The strongly normative character of the pupils’ discourse contrasts starkly with the tolerance professed by the teachers, an impression strongly confirmed by the investigators. The teachers see their corrections as being limited to addressing matters of courtesy and eliminating expressions deemed to be vulgar, while spontaneous use of expressions in ‘français familier’ such as ‘louper une marche’ or ‘se casser la gueule’ is not censured. Teachers are careful to differentiate between making their pupils aware of the norm, and being overly normative and thus stifling individuality. From their perspective, the pupils are given the chance to express themselves and ‘improve’ their French by practice. Another thread of discourse underlines the difference between teacher and pupil perception: [. . .] je peux espérer qu’ils verront les différences et que nous pourrons en parler et puis, si leur langage s’améliore en partie, c’est gagné [. . .] bon, ils en font des erreurs mais Dieu sait que nous on en fait aussi!
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
What is allowed or forbidden (langue légitime)
122 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
The teacher acknowledges some insecurity in relation to the norm although her or his approximation to it is far closer than that of the pupils, some of whom can mimic ‘teacher talk’ without truly internalising it. Further observations show that the pupils are in some respects far more severe than the teachers, correcting stylistic errors in lexical choice like bouffe against nourriture and in pronunciation, e.g. in response to one boy’s story, a classmate commented ‘Julien quand il parle il fait pas les liaisons’. The censorious attitude of the pupils and the tolerance of the teachers may be interpreted as an expression of solidarity, or equally of course as symptomatic of a common oppression ‘devant la norme’. Caitucoli et al. raise the question whether this rapprochement is successful given the findings of the studies in the secondary and university sectors. The secondary-school study shows that the pupils appear to be aware of the greater degree of tolerance allowed in oral expression, but not to have fully grasped the multi-register approach espoused by their teachers. They can differentiate between examples of ‘langage familier’ (‘code commun illégitime’) and ‘langage courant’ (‘code commun légitime’) but raise many questions over the ‘langage soutenu’ which Caitucoli et al. refer to as the ‘surnorme académique’. While this line of questioning seems to refer to spoken styles, this part of the study is based on the results of written tasks, where the students were asked to rewrite as if for a classmate a text written in ‘langage soutenu’ (characterised by rare words, past historic, long sentences with sequence of tenses). Around half of the pupils carried out the task successfully, showing fair ability in ‘translating’ into their identity variety, while just over half (mainly females) proved unable to rework the stories into their language of spontaneous expression, either making relatively minimal changes towards a neutral register, or manifesting considerable difficulties with the written form. The university students displayed remarkable linguistic security in their mastery of the norm, as well they might, having negotiated all educational hurdles up to the Baccalauréat. This contrasted almost diametrically with the lecturers’ expectation of straightforward sober mastery of a norm equated with ‘langage soutenu’. Many students of course come through the system successfully, but there are many too
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
– Mon plaisir, c’est quand y a un petit malin qui imite ma façon de parler [. . .] la bonne à l’école bien sûr, mais pas la leur et savoir que un peu parler comme ça ne change rien pour eux, c’est quand même génial! (op cit., p. 23)
whose perceptions blind them to the linguistic fracture between their representations and the expectations of the lecturers, who perceive mastery of the written standard as a straightforward imperative. This latter attitude is unsurprising given the charge laid upon academics to master the written norm. The conclusion of the study is somewhat gloomy, since the rapprochement and tolerance of the primary stage does not lead for many to a bridging of the gap between vernacular norms and the standard variety required in education. The secondary-school study suggests that many students are conscious of the existence of formal norms but are unsure of what they consist of. The university study suggests a greater degree of confidence on the part of students in relation to the norm, despite the negative impression given by the lecturers who note many falling short of normative correctness. But a common thread seems to be a reluctance to question the norm. The overall picture suggests that the norm, or rather norms, consist of a range of varieties that exhibit characteristics of both destandardisation and devernacularisation. It must be conceded that with regard to pronunciation only one of the features studied in Section 4.4.2 (variable liaison) was explicitly mentioned in the foregoing account, but wider inferences for pronunciation could be drawn. The findings appear however to be concordant with the levelling implied by the differences between Müller’s (1985) prescriptive and statistical norms.
4.6 Is there a southern (Provençal) regional standard? In considering this question, care must be taken to differentiate between overtly prestigious southern accents and more covertly prestigious varieties. Poirier’s study (1998: 140) suggests that a prestigious variety is one which speakers could use with confidence in the public arena, e.g. politicians giving speeches in national forums or interviews on national media, teachers and lecturers in the classroom or television announcers on nationwide outlets (Blanchet, 2006: 265). Such categories of speakers evoke differing expectations. A study conducted in Tours (Castellotti and Robillard, 2002) found that 70% of respondents considered that it was acceptable for a teacher to speak with a southern accent and around half that number (36.7%) for a television announcer. Blanchet and Armstrong (2006: 267) argue vigorously, firstly that southerners and Provençaux in particular have a strong regional (Mediterranean or Provençal) identity that for many takes precedence over their national identity (Cesari, Moreau and Schleyer, 2001), and
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 123
secondly that the most important identity marker is their regional dialect of French. They are undoubtedly correct in arguing that in the south in general and Provence in particular, a regional accent is not automatically dismissed as a stigmatised class dialect. Urban speakers feel reasonably secure about having a southern accent, and in Taylor’s (1996) study of Aix-en-Provence subjects took the view that a slight southern accent, the major characteristics of which are listed in Table 4.11, was the most prestigious way of speaking. This variety, while audibly southern, allows for distinctions characteristic of the prescriptive norm to be made. The key socially marked difference is the slight nasalisation of canonically fully nasal vowels in mainstream varieties, as against V + nasal consonant in working-class speech. Surprisingly, Blanchet admits of use of a velar nasal appendage as in [pEN ] pain, while Taylor equates the feature particularly with working-class men. Taylor suggests that the quality and frequency of mute-e is also a factor of some significance (see Section 5.12). Another distinctive regional feature in Blanchet and Armstrong’s view (2006: 266) is the complementary distribution of the mid-vowels, which differentiates the south from other regions but attenuates social differences on home soil. Despite Blanchet’s almost passionate apologia for the vitality of southern varieties, closer examination of the nature of the evidence and the search for examples of serious, overtly southern, public figures attenuates the force of his case. Much, indeed most, of the evidence presented is perceptual rather than behavioural, and other perceptual studies of southern regional languages (Wanner, 1993) or accents (Kuiper, 2005) remark on the supralocal character of the speech of their younger respondents. As regards professionnels de la parole at national level, the age factor seems crucial. It is difficult to name politicians and television announcers whose speech substantiates Blanchet’s claims and who are Table 4.11
‘Regional standard’ in Provence (Taylor, 1996)
Feature
Variants
Schwa quality with low to moderate retention Nasal vowels Front mid vowels in word-final open syllables, e.g. lait, chantais Front mid vowels in word-final closed syllables, e.g. mer, sel Back mid vowels in word-final closed and pseudo-closed syllables, e.g. aube
[fl @] or [@] ˜N VV [e], [e fl] or [E] [e fl] or [E] @ @ [o flb ] flb ][6
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
124 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
younger than, for example, Sarkozy, the incumbent president (b. 1955). There seem fewer still if the birth date of 1965 or later is adopted, the date taken as a benchmark in our discussion in Chapter 5. The former interior minister Charles Pasqua (b. 1927) is the outstanding example of a leading politician having an immediately recognisable regional accent, but it is harder to point to comparable figures born after 1945.
4.7 The emergence of alternative prestigious pronunciations in Francophonie Nord: the example of Quebec Poirier (1998: 148) states that linguists are in general agreement on what constitutes prestige pronunciation in Quebec, and ordinary speakers are generally well aware of it even they do not always comply with it. Among linguists there is also a common consensus regarding two underlying and potentially conflictual trends observable since the 1970s in Quebeckers’ use of French, between on the one hand the wish to affirm a distinctive identity, and on the other a desire to conform more closely to an international norm (Poirier, 1998; Dumas, 2001: 248). In his analysis of the sociolinguistic situation in Quebec, Corbeil (1983) proposed dual norms which he termed ‘supra-norme’ and ‘infranorme’, the former applying to all varieties and the latter specifically to Quebec, thus constituting a regional and perhaps a national standard. The notion of a supra-norm does not impugn its monocentric character but rather corroborates it. It does, however, raise questions as to its nature, as Maurais’ (2008) study of perceptions of the norm among ordinary Canadians amply illustrates. A study commissioned by the Quebec Office de la Langue Française in 2002 (Maurais, 2008: 7) had noted three perceived varieties: (1) French French, (2) standard Quebec French, (3) informal Quebec French. The so-called ‘français français’ is construed as equivalent to ‘français standard’ or ‘français international’. The survey of 2004 on which Maurais (2008) is based also uses the term ‘français d’Europe’ in its questionnaire. While the results give some indication that Quebeckers are more favourably disposed towards an international or European standard than the French of France, the questionnaire contains more questions which invite binary comparison between Franco-French and Quebec French. From a European perspective, the emergence of a recognised national norm in Quebec sets a precedent for other francophones outside France to assert a greater degree of ownership of the language. Maurais’ 2008 survey suggests that the indicators associated with linguistic security are
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 125
stronger in Quebec than in Belgium and Switzerland. The common factor is the less than wholehearted acceptance of French norms, along with a strong desire not to sound like French people. In the European context however, some terms of the debate are either meaningless or unhelpful. The notion of international French as a kind of supra-norm to which French speakers are also subject finds no echo. The collapsing of European French into one entity in contrast to Quebec ignores the potential diversity which we discuss, beginning with Belgium.
4.8 Prestigious pronunciations in Belgium There exists in Belgium a strong and deeply rooted tradition that fully espouses notions of ‘Le Bon Usage’ emanating from France, and that despite the fact that an influential work of reference bearing that title was written by a Belgian, Maurice Grevisse (1895–1980),3 and updated by his son-in-law and designated reviser André Goosse (born 1926).4 Like many other canonical language-centred artefacts written by nonFrench nationals (see Section 2.4), this work has been assimilated into a shared francophone heritage. Although this normative tradition was generally marked with a clear purist streak, the teaching of French prior to Belgian independence (1830), whether to first-language speakers or second-language learners, was largely free of political and ideological considerations, unlike in France where the influence of a centralised nation-state loomed large from the 16th century onwards. Before independence teachers and manual writers in the so-called Belgian provinces were largely concerned with the pragmatic matter of guiding learners into acquiring standard forms, perceived as ‘une langue de qualité’, of which the supreme arbiter was the French Academy. Following independence, two tendencies emerged, labelled in somewhat dramatic theological terms by Trousson and Berré (1997: 362) as ‘sin’ (faute) and ‘redemption’. The first tendency shows Belgian francophones in danger of falling from linguistic grace each time they open their mouths or put pen to paper. The way of salvation was explained in numerous (and mostly highly successful) publications whose aim was to correct belgicisms, wallonisms, flandricisms and other common mistakes, while guiding readers through the minefield of difficulties and exceptions. While best practice, such as that of Grevisse, based descriptions and recommendations on the careful observation and balanced evaluation of usage, this normative way of approaching the acquisition of French has, as numerous perceptual studies demonstrate (e.g. Francard, 1993; Yzerbyt, Provost and Corneille,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
126 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
2005), left stigmata of alienation and insecurity in the Belgian psyche. This extraterritoriality of the standard resulted in the perception that Belgian francophones were mere users rather than owners of the language, and thus forced to employ the language on its owners’ terms. Moreover, works of reference produced in France rarely bother to mention other standard varieties (Moreau, Brichard and Dupal, 1999: 5). This normative trend is reflected in the fact that Belgium did not venture to take language-planning decisions ahead of France until late in the 20th century, for instance on the issue of the feminisation of job titles (Bouchard et al. 1999) or the readability of administrative texts (Strauven, 1993). As observed in Section 2.6, the francophone Belgian community is under threat, having lost its traditional political and economic hegemony over its Flemish compatriots, some of whom openly advocate secession. These pressures might be thought to have the effect of galvanising francophones into a common cause, with possible linguistic consequences, although one must allow that a shared sense of belonging does not exclude regional variation in speech. Any such consequences would have to undo centuries of differences between two possible centres of influence, Brussels and Wallonia. Pohl (1962: 22), suggests that variation in the use of French in the capital is considerable, ranging from the most overtly prestigious to the most stigmatised: Bruxelles, de toute façon, est la ville où se parle le français de Belgique le plus proche du français optimal de Paris, et où se parle aussi le français le plus corrompu. There are a number of reasons why Brussels exerted far less linguistic influence on the rest of francophone Belgium than did Paris on the French regions. At the time of independence, the city was the capital of a unified francophone state, founded and governed by a French-speaking (and often French-educated) elite, including people from Flanders, augmented later in the 19th century by francophone and francophile exiles from various parts of Europe. While solid data on their speech behaviour are lacking, one can suppose that this could be expected to create an aristocratic and bourgeois elite who may well have been somewhat conservative in their speech behaviour. Among the lower strata of society, there was a significant shift to French, but most vernacular forms were heavily Flemish-influenced and thus lacked any covert prestige for L1 speakers in Wallonia where it is difficult, historically speaking, to posit a common vernacular variety. According to Lechanteur (1997: 82), there
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 127
was never any inter-regional or even sub-regional oral Oïl koiné, save to a limited extent around large cities or through the medium of writing. While the Bruxellois and Walloon vernaculars may be very different, there is greater commonality between their prestige forms. Scholarly opinion regarding the existence of a common norm or set of norms is divided, with some like Moreau (1997) claiming that there is such a thing as ‘le bon français de Belgique’ while Francard (1998) and Hambye and Francard (2004) argue vigorously against the existence of any such variety. Any distinctive but high-status features identified by those who espouse this perception appear to be commonly regarded as minority forms and not vectors of a sense of common identity or a panBelgian variety, labelled by Trousson and Berré (1997: 338) as symbolic of ‘une hypothétique belgitude’. As already indicated, Moreau (1997) and other scholars such as Lafontaine (1986, 1988) and Garsou (1991) argue that it is meaningful to speak of ‘le bon français de Belgique’. While the results of a number of studies point to a perceived prestige Belgian variety or varieties, scholars have shown much caution in listing pronunciation features compatible with them. Moreau (1997) warns further that there are differences between ‘discourse about the norm’ and actual prestige usage(s) among Belgian francophones. Scholars are, however, less cautious in citing indicative lexical items, e.g. aubette, chicon, and drève described by Moreau (1997: 397) and Moreau and Dupal (1999) as legitimate Belgian features in general use across a wide social spectrum. Perceptual studies suggest these items are considered by Belgian informants to be perfectly acceptable French, but for many not particularly Belgian (although informants from the higher social classes show greater awareness of national differences). The clear consensus among linguists is however that they are Belgicisms. In contrast, for the general public, what is recognised as specifically Belgian tends to be characteristic of vernacular usage (Moreau and Dupal, 1999: 8), socially rather than regionally defined and therefore stigmatised. A number of perceptual studies (Brichard, 1991; Lhoir, 1994; Moreau and Brichard, 1999a) have shown that Belgian francophones can differentiate with fairly high degrees of accuracy French and Belgian speakers from a wide range of social strata. Success rates range from 78% (Brichard, Lhoir) to 86% (Moreau and Brichard, 1999a), with regional differences among Belgian speakers correctly identified in 35% of cases among working-class speakers compared to 10% for middle-class (Brichard, Lhoir), a proportion that drops to just 3% in Moreau and Brichard (1999a).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
128 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
This latter study compared short stretches of speech from 60 speakers (24 from France and 12 from each of Brussels, Liège and Mons) evenly divided by gender, and between university teachers and speakers with at most three years of vocational education. The extracts, from which all nationally identifiable factors were removed (e.g. septante vs soixante-dix, and place references) were played to two groups of 40 young people from Mons, equally sampled by gender and level of education – firstly, a group of first-year university students and secondly, a group of pupils in the last two years of vocational secondary education. Scores were significantly higher for the university lecturers from both countries (4.1 compared to 2.84 on a scale of 1 to 7). In positive perception the vocational students rated the working-class speakers slightly higher than the university students and the Belgian speakers slightly higher than their French counterparts in each case. Their ratings of the university lecturers were virtually identical but both groups of judges rated the Belgian speakers slightly but perceptibly more highly than the French. The judges were also asked: ‘Would you like to have a son who speaks like that?’, which yielded results favourable to the Belgian university teachers (Moreau and Brichard, 1999b: 34). The university teachers’ speech tended to be perceived, on the one hand as young and possessed of the qualities commonly associated with prestigious varieties, like intelligence and authority. On the other hand, the warmth and friendliness usually attributed to vernacular varieties was lacking, a finding clearly apparent from such terms as ‘haughty’, ‘snobbish’, ‘severe’, ‘authoritarian’ and ‘effete’. These two sets of characteristics are typical of those assigned to standard and prestige varieties, and constitute therefore strong evidence of a perceived if rather ill-defined norm. The results of these last two studies point to a shift in norms as tabulated in the differences between Parts 1 and 2 and Part 3 of Table 4.12. Part 2 is the country-specific application of Part 1, in which the traditional dichotomy between socially defined varieties is overlaid with national stereotypes. Part 3 shows that the traditional association between Belgian French and notions such as ‘populaire’ or incorrect have at least been partly ruptured. Prestige and vernacular norms are now perceived as both social and trans-national, whereas in the past prestige forms and norm-setting were the exclusive prerogative of French speakers. There is, however, no implication of a pan-francophone norm, implied by the Canadian term ‘international French’.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 129
130 Social and Linguistic Change in European French Table 4.12 Perceived comparisons of variety status (Moreau and Brichard, 1999b: 29–30) 1. Traditional dichotomy Langue populaire Langue de la bourgeoisie culturelle
2. Belgian French in the perception of Belgians Langue incorrecte Langue de prestige
Langue des Belges = Langue populaire Langue des Français
3. Possible characterisation of the current sociolinguistic situation in Belgium Langue stigmatisée Langue de prestige
Langue populaire (belge ou française) Langue de la bourgeoisie culturelle (belge ou française)
A number of perceptual studies show also that many Belgian speakers, particularly the more highly educated, do not regard French speakers as having the monopoly of the best French, as suggested by Table 4.13. The respondents were pupils in their final year of secondary school, divided evenly by gender and across the educational streams (the général attracts the most academically able students and the professionnel the least, with the technique at an intermediate level). More pupils in both the general and technical sections disagree with the idea that the best French is spoken by French people. By contrast, in the lower-ability range (and by inference in the lower social strata) almost two-thirds (63%) of the respondents associate the best French with speakers from France. The result aligns with the more conservative, or perhaps deferential, attitudes generally seen among working-class informants. The responses in Table 4.13 may be compared with those in Table 4.14, where subjects were asked firstly whether they thought there was a country where the best and worst French was spoken, and secondly to specify the country concerned. For Francard the results show that neither the linguistic subjection of Belgium to France nor the linguistic pre-eminence of France are seriously called into question. Yet Table 4.13 Responses to statement: ‘Le meilleur français, c’est celui que parlent les Français’ (Francard, 1993 : 25) Level of education Général Technique Professionnel
Agree
Disagree
Undecided
16% 21% 63%
49% 36% 15%
21% 43% 36%
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Langue incorrecte Langue de prestige
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 131 Table 4.14 Countries where (a) the best and (b) the worst French is spoken (Francard, 1993: 27–8)
France Belgium Canada Switzerland
Worst French 57% 15% 13% 11%
Belgium Africa Canada France
25% 25% 18% 11%
this interpretation seems questionable for at least two reasons: firstly, the proportion of ‘undecided’ is in many cases sufficiently high for the results to be treated with caution; secondly, a considerable number of those who responded positively and specified a country were prepared to question the once perhaps automatic assumption that France was the linguistic norm-setter. Moreover, a number of studies show a rather grudging acknowledgement of the norm, suggesting that most Belgians prefer not to speak like a French person (e.g. Garsou, 1991: 22). Other studies have demonstrated the subjective nature of the supposed superiority of the French norm. For instance, Moreau and Brichard (1999a) strongly suggest that the widespread impression of the greater fluency of French speakers is a result of different strategies used in floor-holding, with the French making greater use than the Belgians of fillers to keep their communication flowing. This study was based on recordings of 60 speakers who were analysed for ‘fluency’: 24 French from north of the Loire and living in Paris for at least five years, and 36 Belgians, 12 each from Liège, Brussels and Mons. The sample was evenly divided by gender and level of education (university teachers against those with a maximum three years of vocational studies). Speakers were asked to give their views on the issue of smoking in public places. As the shortest answer was 20.4 seconds, a sequence of equivalent length was analysed for all. Belgians averaged very marginally more content words, at 25.35 per minute compared to 25.05 from the French. Apart from these, the Belgians used slightly more and longer silent pauses, whereas the French speakers made greater use of filled pauses like euh, and fillers like hein, bon, bien and enfin as well as repetitions, with use of vowel length and change of syntactic structure showing negligible differences. In both cases, it was the university teachers who embodied to the greatest degree the national tendencies as they emerged from the study. A further study by Moreau et al. (1999: 19–26) had the finding, classic in the UK, that a change of accent can radically change the perception of a speaker’s intellectual performance. Recordings were made of two
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Best French
Parisian university lecturers talking about nuclear energy and smoking in public places. The investigators transcribed them, incorporating all the fillers and hesitation phenomena, and then asked a Belgian actor to record Liègeois and Bruxellois vernacular versions of the same text, scrupulously reproduced with regard to time taken and hesitation phenomena. Two groups of first-year students at the University of Mons-Hainaut were asked to evaluate the speakers on a number of criteria, including richness of vocabulary, incomplete sentences, fluency, correctness and speech rate. Judges showed a very high success rate in identifying the nationality of the speakers – none suggested that the Belgian speakers were not authentic – and consistently rated the French speakers more highly on breadth of vocabulary, range of grammatical structures, fluency and correctness, with the Liègeois sometimes being rated higher for use of hestitation phenomena and speech rate. In both studies, the differences appear to be attributable to stereotypical accentbased representations of the varieties concerned, rather than any actual differences invoked. Although the studies reviewed above suggest the existence in perception of a pan-Belgian prestige variety, the authors concerned do not offer any description of it. Given the large number of descriptive studies available, it is however possible at least to list the candidate features of this non-regional variety. We begin with Walter’s (1982: 110) analysis of the speech of a middle-class Bruxellois (b. 1950; referred to as JMB) whose oral vowels are shown in Tables 4.15a and 4.15b, comparing his output to a list of unmarked Belgian features compatible with formal usage. This list, shown in Table 4.16, is compiled from a number of descriptive studies: Remacle (1969); Baetens-Beardsmore (1971, 1979); Piron (1979, 1985); Pohl (1983, 1985, 1986); Warnant (1997); Ball (1997); Klinkenberg (1999, 2000a, 2000b); Pöll (2001); Francard (2001) and Hambye, Francard and Simon (2003). Table 4.15a Oral vowels in open stressed syllables by middle-class Brussels speaker (born 1950) of francophone background (Walter, 1982: 110) Front unrounded
Front rounded
Back
i:/i
y
u or u:/U
e:/e
ø
o:
w
E
o
˘ a
a or a;
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
132 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 133
Front unrounded
Front rounded
Back
i
y
u
e:/E; ˘e or ˘e
o: œ
o or o∗ a:
˘ a
Note: ∗ Transcription in italics indicates here and in any subsequent tables a vowel of somewhat indeterminate quality.
Table 4.16
Non-supralocal features of ‘unmarked’ Belgian French
Feature
Example
1.
/a/-/A/
[pat] patte ∼ [pa:t] pâtes
2.
/e/-/E/
[mEtöe] mettrai ∼ [mEtöE] mettrais [pike] piqué ∼ [pikE] piquet
3.
E/-/œ/ ˜ /˜
[böE˜ ] brin ∼ [böœ] ˜ brun
4.
/O/-/o/
[sO] sot ∼ [so] seau
5.
Vowel length: /e/-/e:/; /i/-/i:/; /u/-/u:/; /y/-/y:/
[ne] né ∼ [ne:] née [ami] ami ∼ [ami:] amie [vA ˜ dy] vendu ∼ [vA ˜ dy:] vendue
6.
Diaresis (where synaresis is standard)
scier [sije]; tuer [tywe]; louer [luwe]
7.
Absence of /ű/
huit [wit]
JMB’s pronunciation and the inventory of Table 4.16 show a high degree of concordance. Firstly, the /a/-/A/ contrast is maintained by length and variably realised by JMB, more clearly in closed than in open syllables. Secondly, the /e/-/E/ distinction is shown to be largely a matter of vowel quality, although Walter (1982) suggests that this may be reinforced by lengthening, which always signals /e/, although in closed and unstressed syllables the quality difference is rather indeterminate. Thirdly, although JMB’s realisations are not shown in Tables 4.14a and b, like the majority of Belgian speakers of his generation he maintained the /˜ E/-/œ/ ˜ contrast. JMB shows variability in his pronunciation of / A ˜ /, with a backed variant [ A ˜ ] suggestive of mainstream variants and a fronted variant [ã] typical of both Brussels and other Belgian vernacular varieties. Generally, nasal vowels are long but length is not contrastive.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 4.15b Oral vowels in unstressed and closed syllables by middle-class Brussels speaker (born 1950) of francophone background (Walter, 1982: 110)
Fourthly, /o/ and /O/ may be contrasted by quality in open syllables as in [sO] sot - [so] seau, whereas JMB tends to follow the loi de position with /o/ and /O/ both being realised by a close variant and /o/ consistently signalled by length [o:]. The front rounded mid-vowels /ø/ and /œ/ contrast by quality and occur in complementary distribution. Fifthly, both descriptions note contrastive vowel length, but whereas the inventory in Table 4.16 emphasises the masculine–feminine morphological contrast, for JMB it is phonological distribution that appears crucial, since length contrasts were observed in the front and back high vowels [i:] and [i], [u:] and [u] only in open stressed syllables. Sixthly, the examples of diaeresis in items like lion, buée, louer, nouer and scier are consistent with the description commonly given. Finally, the absence of the /ű/-/w/ contrast seems compatible with educated usage. JMB’s pronunciation of /r/ is uvular [K] in medial position but may also be realised with strong friction. A strongly articulated /r/ may well be an incoming feature, since Hambye (2005) shows the feature to be most used by well-educated younger speakers in scripted styles. Neither Walter’s description of JMB’s speech, nor the inventory of Table 4.16 includes word-final consonant devoicing but behaviourial studies such as Bauvois (2001, 2002a) and Hambye (2005) show it to be a strong minority variant for middle-class speakers (Section 6.7). JMB also uses a number of non-supralocal features whose social significance is unclear. He sometimes reinforces the labial stops [bb ] and [pp ] either by gemination or the use of a weak schwa [b@ ]. /S/ may be followed by some degree of labialisation [Sw ]. He also shows four nasal-consonant contrasts, with the velar generally being reinforced by a homorganic stop [Ng]. Combinations of palatal nasal followed by palatal glide also occur, i.e. [ñj]. The list shown in Table 4.15a and b could be lengthened but contemporary levelling argues against this (Francard, 2001: 257). The ‘norm’ seems to be shifting in Belgium in similar ways to France, if more slowly. Younger speakers, Francard claims, are reducing or eliminating from their speech altogether the /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ and vowel-length distinctions, indicative of slow-sounding stigmatised accents, and generally distinguish /4/ and /w/. The remaining contrasts, as Hambye and Francard (2004) argue, are too few to be socially meaningful. Moreover, the maintenance of old-fashioned standard features does not form a positively affirming linguistic whole in the perception of self-identity of Belgian francophones, but rather one that is negatively defined; ‘une identité en creux’. The major theoretical grounding against the notion of an emerging endogenous norm (Hambye and Francard, 2004, 2008) is the set of criteria put forward by Manessy (1997):
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
134 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
1. 2. 3.
4.
The variety should be valorised and legitimised by the social group that uses it and sees it as a symbol of identity. The variety is a model for the community as a whole. Users consciously differentiate themselves from structurally and historically related varieties, which constitute exogenous or imported norms. The nature of the differences is unimportant, provided speakers see them as socially meaningful.
To apply these criteria to the Belgian (or any other francophone) community requires a standard variety, acknowledged as such by the community itself and both different from the Standard French of France and considered to be the target variety for the whole of that community in both Brussels and Wallonia. The issues surrounding any prestige variety are perhaps best illustrated through lexis. The VALIBEL project, in particular, has gathered a considerable body of written data from a variety of sources from a broad social spectrum of informants (Hambye and Francard, 2004: 50–1). Hambye and Francard (2008: 7) note just under 1,000 lexical items that are common to all of francophone Belgium, 80% of which were known to informants in various parts of the country, with a claimed usage rate of 50%. If what is happening in the lexical field were paralleled at least broadly in phonology, this would seem to constitute sufficient grounds for a distinctive Belgian norm. Hambye and Francard nonetheless strongly contest this view, basing their argument on a model of the social distribution of the norm in France. In Belgium the alleged regionally neutral prestige variety is for the most part only used by the most highly educated speakers in formal situations. It does not correspond to their ‘français courant’ or ‘ordinaire’. The results of the Moreau et al. (1999) study, they further argue, owe more to the fact that respondents were reacting to educated usage and not to a geographically definable variety, despite their slight but consistent preference for Belgian usage. Hambye and Francard also rebut any suggestion that the respondents were judging the speakers in relation to an endogenous norm, which even if it existed, would require definition. Given, however, the generally high success rates of informants who have been asked to differentiate Belgian from French speakers, it would be imprudent to dismiss the possibility that the respondents did not hear ‘Belgian’ features, and that they do not regard a perhaps slight Belgian accent as the ‘best’ way of speaking. That this prestige variety is only used by a minority of relatively privileged speakers would not deny it prestige status. After all, as long ago as 1979 Piron (1979: 209) called a non-regional prestige variety or style (admittedly defined on
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 135
lexical criteria) ‘un français marginal’ or ‘un français de Belgique saisi dans sa parlure bourgeoise’. In terms of social practice on home soil, this marginal French would not be entirely dissimilar from that of RP in England, since this variety (or rather set of varieties) is only used by a small proportion of the population. If, following Honey (1991), prestige paralects are allowed for, then there is scope for a range of relatively unmarked features capable of differentiating formal usages in Belgium from the Reference French of France. Public-service broadcasters are widely held to be models of the norms (Moreau, 1997; Maurais, 2008). Indeed, within francophone Belgium the expression ‘l’accent RTBF’ can be used with connotations not dissimilar to BBC English in Britain (at least until fairly recently). Given this perception and the easy availability of data, a small-scale study of newscasters and reporters on RTBF news was carried out for the present work. Speakers from three journaux télévisés broadcast in July 2008 were analysed and the results are summarised in Table 4.17. The fact that the newscasters used more non-supralocal French features than the other speakers could be simply a reflection of the fact that longer stretches of discourse were available for analysis. A plus sign in a cell indicates that the speakers used a token of the corresponding variant at least once. Perhaps surprisingly, an older well-established newsreader, François de Brigode, used all five of the features noted, including vowel length in a greater range of contexts, although word-final sequences in [a:l] as in national and latéral proved particularly favourable in this respect.5 De Brigode was the only person in the sample to use word-final consonant devoicing (WFCD), which in his usage is clearly compatible with formal discourse, and indeed its use by middle-class speakers in the Bauvois and Hambye studies suggests that it can be used without stigma. The four other variants noted: vowel lengthening, use of [w] for supralocal /4/, /œ/ ˜ and diaeresis are all widely distributed, and used by younger speakers. Three of the speakers did not deviate from supralocal usage, although clearly this should not be taken as implying that they never do. Outside politics and the media, people in positions of responsibility requiring high levels of education generally deviate more widely from the supralocal norm, except in the western part of Wallonia, in the Tournaisis, where levelled pronunciations are more in evidence. The study suggests that a number of non-supralocal and regionally unmarked features, including those listed in Table 4.17, appear to be compatible with formal public discourse. Since some of these features may well be undergoing levelling, it is somewhat problematical to speak of a single acceptable norm, but there are arguably two poles: on the one
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
136 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 137 Use of non-supralocal features on RTBF news
Newsreaders
Gender Year of birth (? = estimated)
François de Brigode
M–1962
Ophélie Fontana
F–1979
WFCD Vowel [w] vs /ű/ [wit] [œ] ˜ diaresis length
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
Reporters +
Thomas Galissieux
M–1980?
Johanne Montay
F–1969
+
Louis Michel
M – 1947
+
Didier Reynders
M–1958
+
+
Christian Brotcorne
M–1955?
+
+
Joëlle Milquet
F–1961
Jean-Marc Nollet
M–1970
Laurette Onkelinx
F–1958
+
+
Alain Dramière
M–1973?
+
Politicians
+
hand a supralocal norm as defined against the French of France, and on the other, a markedly Belgian norm that is not regionally specific but may include features that descriptive studies have presented as vernacular, such as WFCD. While due caution should be exercised, given the limited amount of data available, it is reasonable to hypothesise that older speakers and perhaps men in general are likely to be nearer the Belgian pole, and younger speakers and women the unmarked. This
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 4.17
resembles a ‘classic’ sociolinguistic situation. As Klinkenberg (1999: 515) observes, this latter ‘intermediate’ norm would not need to be taught explicitly, nor be systematic or definable, as Hachez and Wynants (1991) argue for the written norm of school pupils in relation to the ‘absolute’ of standard written French. The norm would merely have to deviate from exogenous French norms without stigmatisation. Many of the studies reviewed in this section suggest that one may go further and say that many well-educated Belgians take pride in the fact that they do not sound French, nor wish to.
4.9 Prestigious pronunciations in Suisse romande Although the situation of Swiss francophones has, as might be expected, much in common with that of their Belgian counterparts, discussion of Swiss usage is rather more multi-faceted, emphasising home-grown forms to a greater extent. This approach is embodied in lexis in the Dictionnaire de Suisse romande (DSR) (Thibault, 1997) and extended to cover both lexis and pronunciation by the same author in an overview article (Thibault, 1998). To the question ‘Is there a national variety used in all francophone (and part-francophone) cantons that is clearly distinct from the usage in the neighbouring regions of France?’, the answer, he concedes (Thibault, 1998: 25), has to be at least partly negative. There are however many differences from supralocal French that have legitimacy. Thibault further argues that speakers have no need to be aware of a national variety that might be partly compliant and partly noncompliant with a so-called standard variety, and no reason to expect that such a national variety should form a coherent system. Although in phonology it is obviously easier than in lexis to characterise the overall system of certain speakers, in both cases the marks of identity and identification are largely limited to differences from mainstream usage in France. While these differences may or may not be compatible with formal public discourse, the sense of self-hatred that permeates much epilinguistic discourse in Belgium, such that what is specifically Belgium is stigmatised, seems much weaker in Switzerland. Specifically, there has been even in otherwise highly normative works a marked undercurrent of acceptance of Swiss regional and even dialectal features in suitable contexts. For Thibault (1998: 26) all positive metalinguistic discourse is legitimising, even if subject to restrictions of suitability. In the remainder of this section we propose to consider, firstly three approaches to the norm, describable as (a) normative or pedagogic,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
138 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
(b) deriving from language-planning issues, (c) arising from public response to the DSR; secondly, representations of legitimate and nonlegitimate usage from a sociolinguistic perspective; thirdly, the differences between supralocal French and Swiss pronunciation features that appear to be compatible with public discourse among educated speakers, whether based on perception or behaviour. We discuss thirdly a brief survey of newsreaders and public figures on the main evening news broadcast of a well regarded public-service channel, Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR). While there has been, as in France and Belgium, a normative tradition enshrined in the educational tradition and in self-help books (recueils de cacologies) written to enable Swiss speakers to correct their mistakes or at least become aware of them, this is in general considerably less censorious than elsewhere in francophone Europe, although censoriousness is by no means totally absent (Manno, 2003: 352). Acording to a recent wide-ranging survey of such publications (AquinoWeber, Cotelli and Nissille, 2009), descriptive works in this category have only outnumbered the prescriptive since about 1980. In the earliest work cited in their overview, Essai des remarques particulières sur la langue françoise pour la ville de Genève (1691), Poulain de la Barre, a Protestant convert originally from Paris who sought refuge from persecution in Geneva, drew up an impressive inventory of mistakes, classifying them against the yardstick of an ideal usage recommended by grammarians, rather than Parisian norms. Moreover, he observed that Parisians made far more mistakes than Genevans. Seen in historical context, it is unsurprising that literacy was more widespread in Geneva than in most parts of France, given the city’s emergence as an important centre of the Reformation. Literacy among lower social groups was more widespread rather earlier among Protestants (Table 4.1). As early as 1536 Calvin issued a decree concerning free and compulsory education in Geneva (Forster, 2008: 15). Other major leaders of the Reformation, Farel, Zwingli and Viret (who founded a school in Lausanne), actively promoted education in other cantons. Later in the 16th century, under the impetus of the CounterReformation, Catholic movements like the Jesuits started to set up schools in Catholic cantons. Protestantism also had two other potentially important longer-term linguistic and social consequences: firstly, the relatively early abandonment of Francoprovençal (by the 18th century; Knecht, 1985); secondly, a set of distinctive and highly normative values within the francophone sphere, characterised by Denis de Rougemont as a kind of work ethic, influenced by osmosis from the
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 139
‘Germanic’ qualities of orderliness, precision and cleanliness, sobriety, thrift and others. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the genre known as the ‘recueil de cacologies’ was plentiful. Although by definition its aim was to point out mistakes with a view to correcting them, it did not totally condemn all Swiss expressions, recognising some rather as both more expressive and/or more suitable to informal contexts (Thibault, 1998: 31; Aquino-Weber et al. 2009). In some cases non-standard Swiss terms were deemed more precise and in many cases, even if fallen into disuse in France, could often boast highly respectable etymologies. More recently, columnists in the print press have been more concerned with Germanisms, construed as a threat to Romand identity, than dialectalisms or archaisms. Several studies (Di Pietro and Matthey, 1993; Lüdi et al., 1995; Matthey, 2003) confirm this aversion to Germanisms or terms or structures so perceived, like elle lui aide. These tend to be regarded by francophones more positively if they believe them not to be of Germanic origin. Studies like Galloway’s (2007: 89) of French-German bilinguals in Biel-Bienne provide no evidence that monolinguals in either language are influenced by the mixed speech of bilinguals, even if they are able to speak some L2 when obliged to, but the ‘mixing’ of phonologies is crucially influenced by interaction in bilinguals living in language-contact situations. There is much scope for comparing the phonologies of francophone mono- and bilinguals, but so far little to disconfirm that monolingual speakers are the ‘norm’ and that they are little influenced by bilinguals. Professional associations, such as those representing journalists and translators, show far less tolerance of helvetisms, perhaps because they are aware that their members may be competing in an international market. Returning to specifically Swiss concerns, reactions to the legitimising effect of the DSR are of two kinds: firstly, the affirmation of local, regional and national identity, particularly in relation to France; secondly, those asserting that the publication of the dictionary shows that Swiss French is not only of equal worth to the kind of French recommended by the Académie Française, but has attained legitimacy. While most of what we have said so far about Switzerland emphasises the distinctive character of Swiss French, advergence towards what Swiss speakers interpret as ‘good French’ has been reported at least since the early 1970s, when Voillat (1971: 238) noted on the basis of informal observations that Swiss French was becoming homogenised with French norms. There are however good reasons for believing that this
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
140 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
homogenisation is not uniform. Recent informal observations (by Pooley) among respondents in the neighbouring pays de Gex (France) working in Geneva, suggest that Genevans cannot be readily differentiated from French people, whose speech corresponds very much to the supralocal norm. Homogenising pressures might be well be most acute in Geneva, given its large number of foreign residents, many of whom are highly educated and/or from France, the presence of international organisations, its unusual geographical position whereby it is surrounded by French territory and is part of a transfrontier ‘metropolis’ with Annemasse. In this it is comparable with Tournai in Belgium. The development of the métropole lémanique can be thought of as leading to the spread of advergence, but despite increased economic transport links, Lausanne maintains a separate sense of identity (Section 3.4). The Jura, particularly, maintains a distinctive identity based in large measure on language, since it was formed in 1978 as a French-speaking breakaway from the canton of Bern. While the differentiating aspects of Swiss-French identity (they are neither French nor German Swiss) have perhaps proved most important in a historical perspective, as in Canada the decline of traditional religious values has promoted the commonality of language as a greater unifying factor. As already observed, a public-service television station (TSR) informs all Swiss francophones about the whole of Suisse romande; policy issues like education are discussed community-wide; and the francophones are increasingly presented as a distinct electoral group although their voting patterns are not homogeneous. The increased use of the term Romandie encapsulates some degree of territorial unity. Under these conditions the emergence of a national standard is quite conceivable. The most thorough analysis of representations is that of Singy (1996), who in a questionnaire-based study on the Vaud portrays a paradox similar to what emerges from the Belgian studies: on the one hand a reluctant recognition of the hexagonal norm, and on the other a definite sense of pride in their own speech forms. France, and Paris in particular, are seen as the places where the Vaudois believe that the best form of language is spoken, with the most refined accent, and from which most innovations stem. The Vaud is by comparison in a doubly or triply peripheral situation, both in relation to Paris and France, and to Geneva, and to a lesser extent to Neuchâtel, with Lausanne a poor third within Suisse romande but nonetheless the most cited reference point within the Vaud (Singy, 1996: 238). Recognition of external norms is not of course a reliable predictor of behaviour, although comparison with the Belgian data might be
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 141
expected to give the textbook conclusion that qualities associated with overt prestige are attributed to the French of France, while Vaudois speech evokes qualities like warmth and friendliness, typical of vernacular forms. To cite a few crucial indicators, most respondents believed that they had an accent (83.1%) and the majority thought that Swiss people tried to ‘lose’ their accent (79.3%, p. 152) or at least to attenuate it when talking to French people (76.9%, p. 191).6 Indeed, most subjects (69.1%) believed that French people judged their way of speaking negatively, a perception strongly confirmed by Kuiper (2005: 38-42), whose French informants consistently placed Belgian and Swiss accents below those of the 22 regions of France with regard to correctness and pleasantness, as well as degree of difference from Reference French. Of Signy’s respondents, 33.8% (Singy, 1996: 192) admitted that they had tried to modify their speech in the presence of French people. When asked whether the Vaudois speak better, less well or as well as the French, a substantial minority (41.9%) responded ‘less well’, as against the narrow majority (54.6%) who said ‘just as well’ (p. 195). Against these negative indicators, the majority of respondents (74%) claimed that they liked their accent; 65% believed that a Swiss speaker was on an equal footing in a conversation with a French person (p. 179) as compared to 76.5% when faced with a Belgian (p. 182); 75.4% (p. 163) thought that the Vaudois could be proud of the way they spoke; 59.9% (p. 165) claimed to use Vaudois words to assert their identity. These apparently mixed, and indeed inconsistent, reactions may to some extent be explained by the answers to questions involving specific lexical choices. Of the four regionalisms presented, two were considered either more ‘correct’ or equally correct by the great majority (96.1% for septante or septante and soixante-dix; 81.3% for dîner or dîner and déjeuner ‘lunch’) whereas only a minority judged the French form alone to be correct (pp. 166–9). With the pairs serpillère-panosse ‘floor-cloth’ and tomber-déguiller, the majority of informants (67% and 86.3% respectively) opted for the first (French) alternative. If a comparison with pronunciation is legitimate this would suggest broadly two sets of variants, one of which is compatible with formal usage by educated speakers. The breadth of Singy’s sample is hard to fault – there are 606 respondents with an acceptably even split between men and women, three age groups (40 and under, 40–65, 65 and over), four social classes (higher, new middle, traditional middle and lower) and residents from different geographical zones within the canton: (1) Lausanne, (2) towns of more than 9,000 inhabitants, (3) peripheral areas, (4) intermediate
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
142 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
periurban areas around large towns. Judging by the responses gathered, it is difficult to claim a perception among the subjects of a regional standard. Indeed, women and young speakers from the higher social classes emerge as the most linguistically insecure, compared to the relative security of the over-65s, whose speech is no doubt more regionally marked. Singy quite rightly points out that younger people from the professional classes are likely to have more international contacts than their older counterparts, whose geographic mobility was far less. The results contrast quite sharply with earlier studies (Métral, 1977; Schoch, Furrer, Lahusen, and Mahmoudian-Renard, 1980) based on the Martinet (1945) methodology of asking informants whether they distinguished certain minimal pairs. The responses of subjects in these two studies suggested that the majority of them believed that they spoke what amounts to a highly conservative variety of Standard French. In the case of Métral (1977) the result is scarcely surprising, since he deliberately chose to replicate Martinet (1945) using primary-school teachers as a reference group. His questionnaire was completed by 400 respondents from all four exclusively French-speaking cantons (Genève, Jura, Neuchâtel and Vaud) and two of the three part-francophone administrative areas (Fribourg and Valais), where French speakers are in the majority, unlike in Bern. The study of Schoch et al. (1980: 3) is based on 513 questionnaires returned by school pupils from five locations: Geneva, Fribourg, St. Maurice (Valais), Lausanne and Moudon (both in the Vaud). The birth dates of the two sets of informants overlap in generational terms, but Métral’s primary-school teachers who were active in the mid-1970s can be assumed to have been born for the most part between 1920 and 1950 and were questioned in adulthood, whereas the pupils studied by Schoch et al. were born between 1956 and 1963 and were questioned mostly in their mid-teens. Tables 4.18 and 4.19 show the oral-vowel distinctions in word-final and non-final stressed syllables respectively, as indicated by the most frequent responses to the relevant questions, in the Swiss variety characterised by Métral as the koiné, a variety he regarded as artificial but nonetheless a convenient way of summarising his findings in a manner comparable to Martinet, who had used the same procedure to define a ‘non-southern’ French. The symbols shown in brackets are the points of differentiation from informants from the contiguous area of Burgundy in the Martinet study. In the early part of his article, Métral appears to deny categorically the existence of a romand koiné in pronunciation, although he did concede that insofar as the notion had any credibility, it corresponded largely to certain geographical and social
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 143
144 Social and Linguistic Change in European French Table 4.18 Oral vowels in word-final stressed syllables in varieties used in Suisse romande (Métral, 1977: 168) with points of contrast in Burgundy (Martinet, 1945) in parentheses Back
i/i:
y/y:
u/u:
e/e:
ø/ø: (ø only)
o
E/E: (E only)
O
a
A/A: (a:)
Table 4.19 Oral vowels in non-final stressed syllables in varieties used in Suisse romande (Métral, 1977: 168) with points of contrast in Burgundy (Martinet, 1945) in parentheses Front unrounded
Front rounded
Back
i/i:
y/y:
u/u:
E/E:
œ/ø: (ø only)
O/o: (o/o:)
a
A/A: (a:)
characteristics, possessed by middle-class or aspirational speakers living in the urban areas of the Swiss plain (Geneva-Lausanne-Fribourg or métropole lémanique), rather than the more mountainous regions (ValaisJura). The koiné was however not to be equated with a Suisse-romande standard, even though the speakers that deviated from it most were working-class city dwellers and the inhabitants of the mountain cantons. At one point he suggests that this shared usage was more prevalent in communities where language shift had occurred early, and that in areas where the abandonment of Francoprovençal occurred later, people tended to follow the model(s) of the broadcast media (Métral, 1977: 147).7 Although in his view it does not represent a community standard, Métral sees his results as manifesting ‘un état de langue conservateur, largement académisé et fortement influencée par la graphie’. In the Swiss data, contrastive vowel length covers a much wider range of distinctions than for Martinet’s Burgundy informants. The /a/-/A/ contrast is solidly maintained by vowel quality, sometimes reinforced by length (the only distinguishing feature from Burgundy). Most respondents also claimed to maintain the four nasal-vowel set including the /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ contrast (as did the majority of Martinet’s non-southern subjects).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Front unrounded Front rounded
Of the six regions studied, only the collective claims of Vaud informants amounted to a variety corresponding in form to the koiné, the others all deviating in various ways; for instance, Genevans do not distinguish /o/ peau and pot /O/, and the /a/-/A/ contrast in word-final open syllables as in rat-ras does not occur in the Valais, Neuchâtel and the Jura. As the informants in the Schoch et al. study came from a broader social range and participated in the study while in their teens, often a time of rebellion against mainstream values, it is surprising to note that the results were remarkably similar to Métral’s, at least with regard to the most frequent features, particularly given the latter’s comment about the variety’s old-fashioned writing-based character, in particular in relation to vowel length, /a/-/A/ (including the tendency not to distinguish rat-ras) and /o/-/O/ in open syllables. It may be that pupils filling out a questionnaire in school gave answers in compliance with standard variants, as if they were doing a test and were expected to respond in a prescribed fashion. In other respects the Schoch et al. results hint at a greater degree of advergence compared to those of Métral. The /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ contrast, although generally stable, showed a greater degree of neutralisation in all areas, but most marked in Geneva (Table 4.20). Considerable differences between various lexical items were also found; in particular, neutralisation was significantly more likely in the minimal pair empreinte-emprunte than in brin-brun. As to consonantal variables not considered by Métral, the Schoch et al. results show only marginal professed use of variants generally regarded as non-standard, such as word-final consonant devoicing (WFCD), the use of /h/ as in hêtre (standardly homophonous with être), or the neutralisation of the /nj/-/ñ/ distinction. Table 4.20 Proportion of claimed merged pronunciations among Swiss secondary-school students in selected lexical items for /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ (Schoch et al., 1980: 10) Item
brin-brun empreinte-emprunte N
Region Geneva
Lausanne
35.9% 66.9% 142
10% 26.2% 130
St. Maurice (Valais) 16.5% 35.1% 97
Moudon (Vaud) 9.9% 38% 71
Fribourg
11% 34.3% 73
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 145
Some fairly widespread non-standard features were also noted, in particular the reinforcement of vowel length by yod, as in armé [aKme:]armée [aKmej], the yodful forms being particularly prevalent in Geneva, Vaud and Neuchâtel, where maintenance of the distinction was most strongly claimed. One interesting point is that informants from the country town of Moudon in Vaud (population 12,501 in 2004 and classified by Singy as an intermediate peripheral area) differed most from their Lausannois counterparts, and were most receptive to WFCD and /nj/-/ñ/ neutralisation. A recent study (Grosjean et al., 2007) suggests that well-educated young speakers (university students from Neuchâtel) maintain vowellength distinctions to a degree that is similar to the professed usage of Métral’s informants. The study compares the sensitivity of students from Neuchâtel and Paris to ‘feminine’ length contrasts such as: aimé-aimée, ami-amie, bu-bue, clou-loue. The Swiss informants proved considerably more adept at recognising (Table 4.21) and realising long vowels (which were around three times longer than short vowels) than their Parisian counterparts. The results shown in Table 4.22, which were given further corroboration by a PFC-inspired study by Racine, Bühler and Andreassen (2009), correspond closely with the claims of Métral’s informants from Neuchâtel, but appear to discount any yod reinforcement noted in the speech of Walter’s Neuchâtelois subject (1982). The results of a small-scale survey of the TSF news in March-April 2009 (Table 4.22) suggest a greater degree of advergence than the data so far presented. The broadcasts featured newscasters, journalists, politicians and those holding responsible positions in various organisations. These data also point to significant age differences, with younger speakers showing at most only subtle differences from supralocal French. The features showing the greatest vitality are /œ/ ˜ and vowellengthening, which is rarely morphophonemic in distinguishing <ée>
Table 4.21 Recognition of short and long vowels by students from Neuchâtel and Paris (Grosjean et al., 2007) Neuchâtel
Paris
Short vowels
Long vowels
Short vowels
Long vowels
96.67%
85.56%
83.6%
43.1%
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
146 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 147
Newscasters
˜ œ
a–A
A ˜ A ˜ 6˜
V:
V: as Vj
Michel Cerutti (circa 1960)
+
m
±
±
–
Darius Rochebin (1966)
–
–
–
±
–
Agnès Wuthrich (circa 1978)
–
–
–
±
–
Politicians Pascal Couchepin
+
±
Conseillers d’Etat
±
±
±
Conseillères d’Etat
+
±
–
Journalists Female
±
m
–
±
–
Male
±
m
m
±
–
SJ (female)
–
–
–
±
–
PG (male)
+
±
Various interviewees 3 IR graduates GE
–
–
–
m
–
Ex-consul New York
–
–
–
±
–
GE Lawyer
–
–
–
–
–
GE Spokesperson Greens
–
–
–
–
–
GE dietitician
+
±
Director GE Airport
+
±
GE Police spokesman
+
±
GE Fire Service spokesman
±
±
Key: ± = variable use; m = marginal use.
from <é> and reinforced by yod by only a minority of speakers. Other striking frequent contexts for vowel lengthening are the adjectival endings -al such as international [a:l] or [E:ö] as in financières; and high vowels in closed syllables, as in mesure [mzy:ö] and cours [ku:ö]. The few speakers that distinguished /a/-/A/ did so by vowel length as in [pa:k] Pâques. Only a minority of speakers had an [o]-coloured
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 4.22 Use of non-supralocal French features in TSR evening news MarchApril 2009
realisation [ A ˜ 6˜ ] or fronted realisation of / A ˜ /, i.e. [ã]. Some speakers, for instance a spokesman for SwissCom (not featured in the table), had a close realisation of /o/ before /r/ in closed syllables, as in transport and encore. However, the few ordinary members of the public interviewed on the bulletins selected mostly had more readily perceptible Swiss accents. Impressionistically, phonetic vowel lengthening seemed to be the most frequent non-supralocal French feature. As with Table 4.16, some allowance has to be made for the fact that in a complete news bulletin, newscasters produce more data than other speakers, and this cumulative effect makes the oldest of the three, Michel Cerutti, appear rather conservative. Although, as in the RTBF study and indeed on France2, some vowel lengthening is due in part to the careful style and hence a desire to avoid overt hesitation, much of it definitely is not. Advergence towards supralocal French was noticeably greater among younger speakers, suggesting that for older speakers Swiss features are more readily tolerated even in relatively formal public style. In summary, the reference variety of France, while having been the object of considerable advergence, has nonetheless undergone a small number of changes from below. The prestige varieties of Belgium and Switzerland are more conservative insofar as a number of old-fashioned standard features are better maintained than in France, but the signs of advergence are clear, particularly among younger speakers, even if the phenomena described warrant further verification. That said, there is indisputably greater tolerance of non-supralocal French and indeed non-standard features in public discourse, particularly for older speakers. We turn now to regionally marked varieties, firstly in France (Chapter 5) followed by Belgium and Switzerland in (Chapter 6).
Notes 1. Hansen (2000) uses this term for subjects with degree-level education (Bac +3). Given the high rates of upward mobility promoted by increasing educational achievement in the second half of the 20th century, it is difficult to rule out the formulation of a further, at present ill-defined, notion of high-cultural refinement. 2. Grégoire’s report also mentions the military as a factor in levelling: ‘En général, dans nos bataillons on parle français, et cette masse de républicains qui en aura contracté l’usage le répandra dans ses foyers’. 3. Le Bon Usage was firstly published in 1936. Grevisse published ten other editions, the last of which appeared in 1980. 4. André Goosse oversaw the revisions of 1991, 1993 and 2007 (14th edition).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
148 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
5. Some vowel lengthening serves as a floor-holding strategy to avoid disfluency and is also frequently used by newscasters on French channels. 6. Moreau and Bauvois’ (1998) comparison of their informants’ behaviour with regard to French and Belgian interlocutors points very much in the same direction. 7. This interesting notion attributed to Voillat does not appear to have been verified empirically.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Accents and Levelling in France, Belgium and Switzerland 149
The Levelling of Regional Varieties in France
5.1 The problematic nature of identifying regional accents in France In this chapter we consider the ongoing levelling of regional pronunciation, using perceptual and behavioural data. The picture of regional variation among speakers born in the first half of the 20th century, built up from the landmark studies of Martinet (1945), Walter (1982) and Carton et al. (1983) is contrasted with what can be gleaned from more recent work. In so doing we contest the widely accepted view expressed by Walter (1982: 52) that regional factors outweighed the social in determining how individuals spoke: Ce qu’il faut reconnaître, c’est que les différences sur le plan géographique l’emportent pour le moment, dans nos régions, sur les différences sociales. More recent perceptual work suggests the complete reverse, as shown in a study on Nancy and Rennes reported in Armstrong (2001: 31–50) and Armstrong and Boughton (2009: 9–15). The results showed that a sample of 40 urban Oïl-French speaker-listeners from Rennes were much more successful in identifying the social class than the regional origins of a sample of eight speakers from Nancy on the basis of a oneminute recording of each speaker. If this evidence is robust, regional markers over a wide area of northern France are levelled; an alternative explanation is that markers are less salient for various social reasons. Against this, Table 5.1 suggests that at least one largely non-localised and socially sensitive feature, word-final post-obstruent liquid deletion (WFPOLD), may have provided a cue to aid social-class identification by 150
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
5
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 151
Nancy speaker
YWCM OWCF OWCM YWCF OMCF YMCM YMCF OMCM
Perception as WC by Rennes informants (N / 40)
% WFPOLD
37 28 35 14 23 11 2 1
83.7 69.1 67.5 54.8 44.4 39.6 28.6 25.0
Key: YWCM = younger working-class male; OMCF = older middle-class female, etc.
the Rennes panel. Table 5.1 shows a fairly close correlation between the Rennes panel’s perceptions of the Nancy sample as working- or middleclass, and the latter group’s deletion rates of /l/ and /ö/ word-finally (tab(le), quat(re)). While obviously none of the Rennes respondents commented on this feature in these terms during the test, several did make observations on the working-class Nancy speakers such as: ‘il bouffe les mots’; ‘elle mange des lettres’; ‘il finit pas ses mots’. It seems likely therefore that the respondents were referring to relatively high rates of deletion of various segments. The WFPOLD scores are ranked much in line with social-class expectations, and in particular the gap that separates WC from MC speakers is noticeable, allowing for OMCF’s slightly anomalous production. This speaker’s regional provenance was correctly identified by several Rennes informants; in contrast to this, from a social-class perspective her score for liquid deletion ranks broadly as one would expect. It is worth pointing out that OMCF’s regional origin was identified by intonational not segmental information. Social levelling as previously defined appears not therefore, on the basis of this admittedly slender and indirect data-base, to be taking place in French, either in perception or production. Other research, described below, provides support for this suggestion. The Nancy-Rennes study suggests a general lack of awareness among the Rennes respondents of distinctive localised pronunciation traits in the voice samples, and perhaps of any northern French regional accent features. This is unsurprising if the most marked regional features are
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 5.1 Correlation between rank order of Nancy speakers by perception as working-class and rates of word-final post-obstruent liquid deletion (Armstrong and Boughton, 2009: 14)
disappearing following the overarching processes of standardisation and levelling sketched previously. This seeming lack of awareness appears at first puzzling when compared to results obtained by Kuiper (1999) in a ‘classical’ perceptual dialectology study which employed the more usual mapping and rating methods (as opposed to direct linguistic stimulus) to elicit the perceptions of regional accents of a panel of Parisian respondents. Kuiper’s 76 informants were given a map of France which was blank except for certain cities, rivers and mountain ranges, and asked to ‘circle and identify in writing any regions “where people have a particular way of speaking”’ (Kuiper, 1999: 244). A composite map produced from these responses shows that Alsace-Lorraine was the second most frequently designated area (55/76 or 72% of responses), and was preceded only by Provence (63/76), and followed by the Nord and Lille (44/76). The informants were then given a list of 24 regional varieties of French (22 metropolitan regions plus Belgium and Switzerland) and asked to rate them according to degree of difference from the norm (the respondents’ own variety), correctness and pleasantness. Lorraine French rated very highly (or badly) for markedness on all three rankings: 20th out of 24 for degree of difference (where 24th was maximally different, i.e. perceived to be furthest from the norm), 21st for correctness and 22nd for pleasantness. For Kuiper’s Parisians therefore, Lorraine French sits very near the bottom of the perceptual heap, as they believe it to be strongly divergent from the norm, incorrect and unpleasant. But what the Rennes test results show is that when a different method is adopted, namely when listener-judges are presented with authentic samples of Lorraine French (albeit urban, Romance-substrate), they perceive very little regional divergence, and are largely unable to link it to a particular geographical area when they do. There appears then to be a mismatch between these two different kinds of perceptions, elicited using different experimental tools, and corresponding to the perceptual in the imagination, prompted by the ‘draw-a-map’ and ranking methods used by Kuiper, and the perceptual that responds to actual language data, as in the Nancy-Rennes study. Concentrating on the speech of Nancy, we can suggest that the conflation by Kuiper’s respondents of Lorraine with Alsace shows a link between the two in the informants’ minds, having no doubt more to do with outdated historical-political factors than current linguistic observations. While many Alsace speakers continue to have a marked accent1 influenced by the Germanic-substrate dialect still spoken there, all evidence points to a regionally neutral Lorraine accent on the other side of
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
152 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
the Romance-Germanic boundary. As regards the perceptions of Kuiper’s informants of correctness and pleasantness, they are still vitiated by the Alsace-Lorraine conflation but do not go against our suggestion given above concerning the lack of social levelling in France, for they clearly imply a continuing hierarchy in speakers’ minds that ranks the standard accent most highly, to the extent that the Parisian variety is the standard (as assumed by Kuiper and his informants). These two sets of results suggest therefore that French is more regionally than socially levelled. To the extent that a comparison with UK English is useful, they stand in stark contrast to a situation where highly marked regional pronunciation features seem to be involved indissociably in the reduction of social differentiation. The lack of copious results on French precludes any confident statement, but we can suggest at the very least that the sociolinguistic situation in non-southern France is now very different from Walter’s portrayal, quoted earlier.
5.2 The relation between regional, social and stylistic variation The changes in question may be characterised in terms of levelling, which, according to Gadet (2003: 105–6), affected firstly geographical (diatopic) then social (diastratic) features, leaving the intraspeaker or stylistic (diaphasic) dimension as the most noticeable area of variation at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries: Pour le français de France [. . .] après une domination diatopique ayant suivi l’achèvement de la francisation, puis une saillance diastratique correspondant à l’industrialisation et l’urbanisation, il serait actuellement dans un primat diaphasique lié à l’accentuation de la division du travail (spécialisation des activités, spécification des discours, tertiarisation des professions). En effet, la variation diatopique va s’atténuant devant les facteurs d’uniformisation entre régions à l’œuvre depuis plus d’un siècle, surtout la mobilité des locuteurs. Les variations diastratiques traditionnelles s’atténuent aussi, en particulier avec la scolarisation (quoiqu’elles demeurent, avec l’exclusion et l’immigration). Les frontières entre genres discursifs et entre styles apparaissent aujourd’hui en pleine mutation. Une tendancielle homogénéisation des façons de parler dans les échanges non institutionnalisés va
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 153
154 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
The suggestion here then is that geographical and social differences in French pronunciation are less marked than stylistic. We have already noted the curious hyperstyle effect that characterises the variable deletion of French schwa, but results are lacking for other variables. We have suggested already that supralocal French is characterised geographically as shown in Map 5.1 (Armstrong, 2001a: 2): the urban non-southern
Map 5.1
The supralocal French area as defined by Armstrong (2001)
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
vers un relâchement de la pression de la norme, et vers l’extension d’usages des styles ordinaires et familiers.
French of France, spoken broadly north of the Garonne and the Massif Central, excluding the extreme peripheral areas to the east, (arguably) the Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing conurbation in the north and the Bretonspeaking west. Map 5.1 is designed to illustrate this. The variety that we have mostly referred to as supralocal French seems in its phonology to be closely equivalent to le français moyen (Martinet and Walter, 1973) or le français standardisé (Carton et al., 1983) or the norme d’usage (Müller, 1985). In what follows we attempt to nuance the view expressed by Armstrong by pointing to some areas of divergence within this uniformity. We can note again that the relation between the social and spatial dimensions of variation in France seems to have been expressed quite differently by earlier scholars. Walter (1982: 52) clearly emphasised the primacy of the regional over the social, in a phrase that we had occasion above to discuss critically. The full quotation is as follows: Ce qu’il faut reconnaître, c’est que les différences sur le plan géographique l’emportent pour le moment, dans nos régions, sur les différences sociales. Comme le rappelait plus précisément André Martinet dans un article récent [Martinet, 1979], les différences sur le territoire ‘caractérisent mieux des types, alors que les facteurs sociaux ne font guère qu’accuser ou atténuer les caractéristiques de ces types’. This view recalls Trudgill’s pyramidal characterisation of the English dialect pattern, at least to the extent that it establishes a relation between regional and social-class variation. The view differs in suggesting that working-class origin in France betrays regional origin more clearly, while the UK pattern is that a marked regional (especially urban) accent is more characteristic of working-class speakers. This may appear to be the same relation expressed in two different ways, but the equation is not in fact reversible; the French view cited above states that region is the dominant social feature – ‘les différences sur le territoire caractérisent mieux des types’, where ‘types’ can be presumed to refer to social categories. This view reflects perhaps the methodologies used to gather the data on regional variation in France, which in Walter’s own study (1982) and the conspectus of Carton et al. (1983) both pursued the tradition established in dialectology where subjects able to produce emblematic, mostly rural, varieties are deliberately selected. This almost inevitably leads to the selection of lower-class urban or rural informants with low levels of mobility, thus distorting the social-class dimension, even though a few of the speakers selected were of higher social status.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 155
Moreover, the age dimension of individual communities was not systematically considered, going against the procedures now conventional in sociolinguistics. Carton et al. (1983) selected speakers born between the late 19th century and World War II, and Walter’s informants were born between 1887 and 1956, with little social background information given about the communities they represented. Both studies purported admittedly to chart the territory only in broad-brush terms, pending more detailed studies. On the assumption that these studies of highly localised varieties represent lower-class speech forms, the comparison with the findings of Martinet’s (1945) study of middle-class informants adds at least an approximate point of comparison, if one wishes to evaluate the degree of homogenisation that occurred in the later decades of the last century. Another important point is that Armstrong deliberately formulates the claim for the spread of supralocal French in urban terms, although the term encompasses both a city as large as Paris and a country town as small as Dieuze in the Moselle département (population about 3,612).2 Recent work on rural areas, particularly some of that published under the direction of the PFC (see Girard and Lyche, 2003, 2005), allows us to investigate beyond the urban definition of ‘supralocal French’. The supralocal French area as defined by Armstrong (2001) is certainly considerably larger than the area around Paris, if it is taken as coterminous with Pottier’s (1968) estimation, shown in Map 5.2, of that where rural bilingualism or bidialectalism is considered to be totally absent. Although the existence of rural bilingualism does not necessarily correspond at a micro level to the use of localised varieties of French, it does signal the presence of speakers in certain areas for whom contact between French and a local variety of an ancestral language is a mental reality, even if no longer actualised. No doubt in the joint processes of language obsolescence and the levelling of locally marked varieties, different scenarios have been played out. It seems to us, however, to be no coincidence that the only informant presented in the Carton et al. anthology of regional accents from the central white area shown (in Map 5.2) is from Paris. A schematised representation of perhaps the most widespread dialectloss situation has lower-class communities where the most highly differentiated varieties are found in the speech of regional-language dominant bilinguals, who are succeeded by (at least) a generation of balanced bilinguals, these in turn followed by French-dominant bilinguals whose competence in the local language may be largely receptive. If regional-language dominant bilinguals used a fair number of substrate
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
156 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Map 5.2 Bilingualism in the autochtonous languages of France (Pottier, 1968)
features in their French (giving some justification to the term ‘dialectal French’), French-dominant speakers would be likely to avoid them. As will be apparent from a number of studies (Potte, 1977; Pooley, 2004; Hornsby, 2006b), the interwar period seems to mark a turning point in this respect. In this argument, if in the early part of the 20th-century substrate features were much in evidence in regional varieties, they had become far less so by the mid-century. Although these varieties also
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 157
contained generalised vernacular features, often cited in accounts of français populaire, they might also contain certain old-fashioned standard features largely absent in supralocal French. The regional features maintained are likely to be less markedly associated with a traditional regional language, although such features may assume greater prominence when the most stereotypical features have fallen into disuse. If therefore regional varieties may be described in Thelander’s (1982) phrase as ‘unique combinations of non-unique features’, one may ask why certain features divergent from supralocal French survive in traditional Oïl areas. Where they do, they are generally assumed to retain greater vitality at the lower end of the social scale. The extension and demographic weight of the supralocal French area as defined above (well over half the population and over half the surface area of Frenchspeaking Europe) entails the likely spread of the variety into the fringe non-Romance-speaking areas (Brittany, Lorraine and Alsace) and the northern parts of the Oc region (Limousin, Auvergne, Saintonge). We now compare this variety to those varieties used by speakers born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries known to contain at least comparatively unlevelled and indeed characteristically regional forms. Proceeding in increasing order of divergence, and to some degree moving back in time, we discuss firstly Martinet’s (1945) description of northern and southern male middle-class varieties; secondly, more locally emblematic varieties used largely but not exclusively by lowerclass speakers (Walter, 1982; Carton et al., 1983); thirdly, the traditional ancestral languages, particularly in the contiguous Oïl and Francoprovençal areas, evaluating, as far as possible, their degree of use, thus assessing the degree of homogenisation that has taken place over the 20th century. We then review, region by region, a range of phonological and sociolinguistic studies covering the supralocal French area as so far defined and supralocal French-resistant areas in historically Oïl regions, as well as the contiguous, ancestrally Oc areas to the south, and the non-Romance areas in the extreme east and west, before proposing a remapping of the supralocal-French area in the light of our synthesis. We then consider the regions where audibly southern accents can be still be heard, before sketching an overview of what this implies in linguistic terms.
5.3 Regional variation in middle-class Oïl usage in the early to mid-20th century It is perhaps a little unfair, given the circumstances in which the study was undertaken (an officers’ POW camp), to criticise the methodology
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
158 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
of Martinet (1945), although Durand, Laks and Lyche (2003) point out rightly that no present-day investigator3 should rely solely or even largely on the linguistic perceptions, as opposed to the production, of their subjects. Nor does it seem defensible to ask informants to make sophisticated phonetic judgments, such as whether they realised the distinction between /ø/ and /œ/ on the basis of length or quality or a combination of both. Regarding sampling, Martinet’s research site by definition excluded the dimensions of gender and social class to a large extent, since the army officers were exclusively male and drawn largely from the middle classes. More positively, the fact that the subjects were born over the period between 1880 and 1920 made possible some interesting observations about generational differences, and the use of over 400 questionnaires from men from all parts of France gave good regional representativeness, which although rather uneven in parts (e.g. there were few respondents from the northern Oc regions), was certainly better than any such study on France published before or since. The supralocal-French area was sub-divided into seven regions, as well as the other collateral-language area (Franco-Provençal). Oddly, Martinet felt no need to separate out the three areas where non-Romance languages were spoken, i.e. Breton-speaking Brittany, Germanic-speaking Alsace-Lorraine and Flemish-speaking Flanders, subsuming them under the labels of west, east and Nord-Picardie. It is also worth pointing out that Martinet was able to create a (regionally) ‘unclassified’ category from the perceptions of a number of informants having parents who moved house during their childhood, thus showing the effect of the kind of mobility that was to become commonplace by the end of the 20th century. What one might call the aggregate of a ‘highest-common-factor’ approach, the most widely noted form for each variable, gave what Martinet calls ‘le français non-méridional’, which is extremely close to the responses of both the Parisian and regionally unclassified subjects. A comparison of Tables 5.2a and 5.2b suggests that in the middle decades of the 20th century, middle-class speakers did not believe, by and large, that they neutralised /a/-/A/ and /e/-/E/ in open syllables or the other mid-vowels in closed syllables. The majority of Martinet’s respondents believed that they distinguished four nasal vowels, although for the brin-brun contrast, 57% of the Paris subjects claimed differentiation, compared to 79% for the non-southern area as a whole (Martinet, 1969: 168–90). Despite these high figures, Martinet saw the distinction as losing ground, as indeed was borne out by later studies, in particular Reichtein (1960); Deyhime (1967); Martinet and Walter (1973); Walter (1976) and Péretz-Juillard (1985).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 159
160 Social and Linguistic Change in European French Table 5.2a The middle-class non-southern vowel distribution (Martinet, 1945: 206)
front
central
back
i
y
u
e
œ
o
high mid
E low
A
a
Table 5.2b The middle-class non-southern vowel distribution (Martinet, 1945: 206) Close and non-final syllables front
central
back
i
y
u
high mid
e
e:
E
or
ø
œ(:) or ø:
O
o(:) or O:
E: low
a
a: or
A( :)
The latter scholar concluded on the basis of fieldwork carried out in 1979 that Parisian children did not have /œ/ ˜ in their phonemic inventory. Similarly, vowel-length distinctions, although solidly represented in Martinet’s data, were maintained mostly by speakers from eastern and western areas, with those from Paris, the centre and the north claiming to use them much less frequently (Martinet, 1945: 100–10). For consonantal variables Martinet (1945: 220) concluded that by and large, subjects from the south-east, east, Burgundy and the north lacked the palatal nasal /ñ/, using mainly dental [n] or [nj]. Word-final consonant devoicing, although a strong minority form, was claimed to be used more by respondents from the south than by those from areas such as Brittany, Alsace and the Nord, where substrate influence can more plausibly be argued (see Temple, 2001).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Open word-final syllables
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 161
Compared to Martinet, both Walter (1982) and Carton et al. (1983) used a finer-grained division of France to describe markedly localised and regional varieties. Carton et al. follow the divisions of the Atlas linguistique de la France par régions (ALFR), which split the Oïl area into ten regions and sub-divided the Franco-Provençal area into three, adding the urban dialect of Paris, which is not covered by the dialect atlases. Walter used roughly similar divisions but separated the Îlede-France-Orléanais region into its constituent parts, concentrating on Paris-terroir (rural Île-de-France) rather than Paris-Ville. It would appear (given her numbering system) that she also originally intended to divide the Franco-Provençal regions into two sub-areas (21 and 22) but finally amalgamated them. As regards the historically non-Romance areas, Carton et al. (1983) present examples from Alsace, Germanic-substrate Lorraine and Breton-speaking Brittany, to which Walter adds informants from Flanders. The data provided do not allow strict comparison of like with like. Walter provides thumbnail sketches of the range of phonological contrasts noted for two to five speakers for each region on the basis of a set of questions. Her analysis concentrates on vowels, listing a few localised consonantal features for most informants, with a select minority profiled somewhat more fully. Carton et al. present recorded extracts of one or two individuals from each region, highlighting the regional and vernacular characteristics they happened to encounter. One can hardly criticise these studies for lacking information their authors never set out to discover, but both have considerable drawbacks in a contemporary perspective. Walter’s presentation of the phonology of a few individuals tends to include all possible phonological contrasts without reference to their frequency or specification of the lexical sets in which the variants occur. What Martinet (1945) and Walter (1982) do show however is that there are, to use J. Milroy’s (1992) term, very few ‘large-set’ contrasts in French, i.e. variants which can occur in all or most possible phonological contexts. The systematic presentation of the vowel system in open and closed syllables highlights the fact that the greater part of variation in French is limited to what Milroy calls ‘small-set’ contrasts, which may be phonologically conditioned, occurring in open or closed syllables for instance, or lexically listable, like /o/-/O/ contrasts in closed syllables, as in sol-saule. Sociolinguists like Lefebvre (1991), schooled in Martinet’s functionalist approach, differentiated between phonetic and phonological contrasts. The results of
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
5.4 Marked regional varieties in the early to mid-20th century
Lefebvre’s own study on Lille suggests that it is the phonetic contrasts like [a]-[A] in open word-final syllables or [a]-[æ] in pre-rhotic position which often have greater sociolinguistic importance than the phonological variation of interest to the French functionalist school, and this seems to parallel the pattern found in varieties of Standard French. Against this, not much information on the lexical items concerned was given by Lefebvre. If the phonological presentation hides potentially interesting (but not necessarily contrastive) phonetic differences, the phonetic approach of Carton et al. (1983) lists a number of nonsupralocal French features which happen to occur in a given extract. While the most frequent features are likely to occur in a sequence lasting a minute or so (the typical length of Carton’s examples), clearly it is possible too that other interesting phenomena might not. While the strength of both studies is to give an overview of the possible range of variability in different parts of France, neither Walter (1982) nor Carton et al. (1983) give any consistent and reliable sociolinguistic information about their informants. They present the idiolects of men and women from different socioeconomic backgrounds born between the 1880s and 1950s, but with no indication of how the varieties were being used in their communities of origin. The Walter survey and the Carton et al. anthology provide nevertheless much useful information on individuals of generally low mobility and modest social status, whose speech was perceived either by locals or linguists who knew the region as being typical, and therefore constitutes a useful reference point, the sociolinguistic utility of which can be augmented by comparison with other data. The greater number of regional sub-divisions used by Walter compared to those of Martinet is indicative of the unsurprising fact that lower-class speech forms were more localised than middle-class varieties. The questionnaire used in Martinet (1945) excludes of course the possibility of bringing to light phonetic variation and substrate factors, both of which are sometimes apparent in Walter (1982) and Carton et al. (1983). The features listed in Carton et al. are by no means all locally marked and of low status, but may be characteristic of the generalised vernacular (français populaire) and even of old-fashioned Standard French. The main features shared by at least two of the varieties presented in Carton et al. are summarised in Tables 5.3 (vowels) and 5.4 (consonants) with notes on their geographical distribution in the right-hand column, based on indications given in Carton et al. and Walter. The variants can be classified into three major categories as follows, according
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
162 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 163 Table 5.3 Supralocal French-divergent vocalic features in regional varieties (Walter, 1982; Carton et al., 1983) Distribution
1. Presence of /a/-/A/ contrast
All regions
2. Non-southern use of mute-e
All non-southern regions
3. Use of /ø/ and /o/ in closed syllables, e.g. [pøK] peur and [moK] mort
(Paris) Nord-Picardie; Touraine; Lorraine
4. Absence of /e/-/E/ contrast (open syllables)
Île-de-France; Picardie; Breton-speaking Brittany
5. /A ˜ / raised and rounded towards [˜O]
Paris, Nord, Germanic Lorraine
6. Front /a/ raised to [æ]
Paris, Poitou; all Lorraine; Alsace; Franche-Comté; Breton-speaking Brittany; not in Centre
7. Diphthongs
Not in Île-de-France; marginal in Centre; Maine-Orléans; Romance Lorraine
8. Contrastive vowel length
Centre; Normandy; Burgundy; all Brittany; all Lorraine; Alsace
9. Four or more nasal contrasts
Not in Île-de-France; but occurs in Breton-speaking Brittany
10. Open realisation of /˜ E/ as [æ ˜]
Not in Paris; but occurs in Nord-Picardie; Cotentin
to the regions in which they occur: (a) those occurring in all regions; (b) those that occur in Paris; (c) those noted only outside Paris. The two variants that occur in all regions are back /A/ and the northern distribution of mute-e (defined in Armstrong and Unsworth, 1999). Both features are characteristic of all sociolectal varieties, with some variation. The use of backed variants varies considerably however, both in phonetic quality and lexical distribution. In many regions back /A/ is more strongly contrasted with the front variants than in old-fashioned Standard French, e.g. Burgundy, Lorraine, and may be pharyngealised (Alsace), velarised or rounded (Nord–Pas-de-Calais). The lexical distribution of /A/ may also differ. In some regions this variant occurs mainly in word-final open syllables (Nord), whereas in others it bears all the hallmarks of a lexically defined small-set variable as found in old-fashioned Standard French or Parisian vernacular. Schwa is not significant in differentiating between regional varieties outside the south, although its alleged deletion at
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Feature
higher rates in some regions, for instance in the Nord (Pooley, 1996) and Normandy (von Nolcken, 2002) may be a contributing factor to perceived fast speech rates. Among elements that are used in the Paris vernacular and in some other regions we can note: the use of close mid-vowel variants in closed syllables as in [pøK] peur and [moK] mort, i.e. (3) in Table 5.3; the neutralisation of the /e/-/E/ contrast (4); a tendency to raise and round / A ˜/ towards [˜O] (5); the raising of front /a/ towards [æ] (6). The main vocalic features shown in Table 5.3 which are not noted in Paris are: diphthongs (7) and vowel lengthening (8). The Parisian vernacular has no more than a three-term set of nasal vowels, certainly lacking /œ/ ˜ (9), with some indications of possible mergers between / A ˜/ and /˜O/ or even /˜ E/ (10), although we are far from the change from below that led to /˜ E/ merging with /œ/ ˜ (Hansen, 1998). Turning to consonants, although no variant listed in Table 5.4 is shared by all regions, two occur in Paris and can be considered part of the vernacular Parisian inventory, namely the pharyngealised and strongly fricative variant of /r/ and the palatalisation of stop+[j] Table 5.4 Supralocal French-divergent consonant features in regional varieties (Walter, 1982; Carton et al., 1983) Feature
Distribution
a. Strongly fricative /r/
Île-de-France, Centre, Maine-Orléans, Champagne, Nord, Cotentin, Breton-speaking Brittany, all Lorraine, Alsace
b. Palatalisation of stop + [j]
Paris, Flanders, Normandy, all Brittany, Burgundy
c. Weakening and elision of /r/
Romance Brittany, Touraine
d. Use of apical /r/
Centre, Champagne, Maine-Orléans, Normandy, Burgundy
e. Devoicing of word-final consonants
Picardie, Breton-speaking Brittany, Germanic Lorraine, Alsace
f. Presence of /h/
Maine-Orléans, Poitou, all Brittany, all Lorraine, Alsace
g. Aspiration of initial stops
Picardie, Breton-speaking Brittany, Germanic Lorraine, Alsace
h. Backing of /ű/ to [w]
Touraine, Lorraine
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
164 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
sequences. While pharyngealised /r/ is undoubtedly receding in favour of the more widespread uvular approximant, the palatalisation of stops, particularly apical and velar, is perhaps a stylistically conditioned feature more frequent in fast speech and in informal styles. The elision of /r/, particularly in frequent lexical items in rapid speech, e.g. [pask@] pa(r)ce que and [pu] pou(r) seems also to be an allegro-speech feature shared by most if not all varieties (see Lyche, 2010), although Carton et al. make specific mention of it for the Touraine speaker and Walter for Romance Brittany. The features listed in Table 5.4 not noted in Paris include: apical /r/ (d), a feature generally perceived as rustic even in certain forms of dialectal speech; word-final consonant devoicing (e), largely associated with vernacular varieties in northern and eastern France as well as Belgium, where it may be reinforced by contact with Germanic varieties; presence of /h/ (f), which is a dialectal feature characteristic of western France and a Germanic-influenced feature occurring mainly in Lorraine and Alsace; the aspiration of initial stops (g), noted in the historically Germanic and Celtophone areas, e.g. pendu [ph A ˜ :dy]; and the backing of /ű/ to [w] (h), a feature with a geographical distribution not dissimilar to that of /h/ noted by Carton et al. for Touraine and Lorraine, but also noted in Belgium (see Section 6.4). In the following sections we review region by region the available evidence for the maintenance of supralocal French-divergent features, beginning with Paris (5.5), before discussing the Nord–Pas-de-Calais and Picardie (5.6) followed by western (5.7) and eastern France (5.8), concluding with the evidence of the encroachment of supralocal forms in the northern Oc area (5.9). Sections 5.10 to 5.13 discuss the most southerly parts of France.
5.5 Vernacular Parisian as a regional variety We begin our review of regional vernaculars with Paris, firstly because of its crucial role in the diffusion of French throughout France in the 19th century, and secondly because it is rarely construed as a regional variety but rather, to use Bauche’s (1946) phrase as ‘le français populaire de toute la France’. The number of Parisian vernacular forms used by provincial speakers seems indeed too great for one to attribute the spread of French solely to the top-down efforts of the education system (Lodge, 1993: 229). Throughout the 19th century and until the end of World War I, military service for young men lasted between two and seven years. A deliberate policy was employed of mixing recruits from various
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 165
regions to encourage the use of French (Coveney, 2001: 4–5), although the exclusive use of French was not imposed until the Great War, at the beginning of which regional regiments were permitted only to be replaced by re-formed mixed units because of the heavy toll of casualties (Pooley, 1996, 2004). These casualties included a considerable number of regional-language (dialect) speakers and most of the nicknames like Chti (Nord) or Boyau Rouche (Pas-de-Calais) date from this period (Carton and Poulet, 1991). There is certainly a plenitude of reports of language shift by regional-language speakers after years of military service and particularly after 1918, when many went back to their communities having adopted a variety akin to generalised vernacular French or français populaire, more evocative of city than country. Curiously, however, Lodge largely limits the influence of this vernacular to lexical and syntactic factors, with pronunciation accorded lesser importance. Detailed study of accounts of vernaculars would, however, suggest that pronunciation did converge towards the generalised vernacular (as illustrated by items 1–6 in Table 5.3 and (a) and (b) in Table 5.4). For instance, Viez’s (1910) account of traditional Roubaix vernacular presents back /a/ as a phonetic feature in items like village [vilAZ/S] and pre-rhotic raised /a/ as an innovation, not least in clearly French items like rue des Arts [öydezæö]. The strongly fricative /r/ sometimes called r grasseyé is perceived by some to be so typical of Lillois speech, that it is referred to in the punchline of a song about the topic (Mon amie Françoise) by Raoul van Godesvarsvelde. Table 5.5 compares the non-supralocal French features of the exemplar of Parisian vernacular in Carton et al. (1983: 84) with the features studied by Armstrong and Jamin (2002) in the northern suburb of La Courneuve. The former was at the time (mid to late 1970s) a 22-year-old delivery driver from Drancy, a banlieue to the north of Paris, whose speech is given as typical of the cités and suburbs but not archetypically loubard. The latter are young people (15–25) and adults (30–50) from a multi-ethnic area of the banlieue and include speakers of metropolitan French, Maghrebian and other ethnic backgrounds. The table lists 12 non-standard features mentioned in the two studies, dividing them into: (a) those that were only noted by Carton et al.; (b) those mentioned in both studies; and (c) those studied by Armstrong and Jamin but not mentioned in Carton et al. It should be noted that in the La Courneuve study, all the features occurred variably and in a minority of cases, and were subject to marked age variation, being used considerably more by speakers in the 15–25 age band. In the comment column of Table 5.5 we note changes in status of the feature on the basis of evidence reviewed in Chapter 4 (for mainstream
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
166 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
167 Table 5.5 Comparison of Parisian vernacular in the 1970s and 1990s (Carton et al., 1983: 84; Armstrong and Jamin, 2002: 132) Feature
Example
Comment
(1) Unstressed /O/ fronted or lowered
joli fronted: [Zœli]; lowered [Zali]
Fronted variant entered mainstream
(2) Raised /a/ to [æ]
(a) Pre-rhotic Paris [pæöi]; tard [tæö]. (b) In items containing , e.g. quoi [kwæ]
Recessive but survives in some regions
(3) Backing of /˜ E/
Tends towards [æ] ˜ or even ˜ ]. [A ˜ ] e.g. copain [kOpA
Recessive
(4) Backing and rounding of /A ˜/
Tends towards [˜ O] as in ˜ ]. argent [æöZO
Noted in mainstream
(5) Weakening of intervocalic consonants
avoir [awæö].
Possibly a fast-speech feature
(6) Stress on penultimate syllable
café [ kA:fe].
Recessive but survives in some regions
(b) Features mentioned in both studies (7) Back /a/
(8) Palatalisation and/or affrication of dental/ velar stops (9) /r/ pharyngealised [KQ ]
1970s: Back /a/ strongly backed, occurs in items ending in , , , e.g. gaz [gA:z]; verdâtre [vEödA:t]. 1990s: Phonetic and variable: la table [la tab] ; c’est grave [sE göAv]. qui [kj i][kSi]; tiens [tSjE˜ ]; tu
dis [tSy di]
ta mère [tAmKQ ], variably realised with glottal reinforcement, e.g. ta mère [tA meKP]
Backed /a/ is a widespread regional feature
Entering mainstream
Alleged ethnic feature
(c) 1990s only (10) Raising of /O/ towards /o/
la mort [lAmoK]; la police [lApolis]
Marginal
(11) Closing of /E/ to /e/ before word-final uvular approximant
ta mère [tAmeK] ; je suis vert [Sűi veK]
Marginal
(12) Raising and lengthening of /œ/ to [ø:] before /ö/
j’ai peur [Ze pø:K]
Entering mainstream
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
(a) 1970s only
and potential mainstream features) or otherwise to be discussed in subsequent sections. The one feature that seems to have become clearly part of supralocal French is /o/ fronting, as in joli [Zœli], but other features such as the backing and rounding of / A ˜ / are also mentioned in studies of mainstream varieties (e.g. Hansen, 1998) and have a certain functional plausibility since the processes imply a merger of the back nasals, as has already happened with the front vowels /˜ E/ and /œ/. ˜ The raising of /œ/ to /ø/ in closed syllables already occurs in Reference French in meute [møt] and Meuse [møz] and forms like peur [pø:K] are not excluded from supralocal French. Palatalisation and affrication have been frequently noted in accounts of vernacular usage but have also been observed in more formal contexts like political speeches (Trimaille, forthcoming). The differing distributions of back /a/ (small-set lexically defined for the Drancy speaker; phonetic and variable in La Courneuve) seem to justify separation into two distinct variables. A third is a complementary distribution: [a] used systematically in closed syllables and [A] frequent in open, particularly word-final syllables, as noted in the Nord–Pas-de-Calais (Pooley, 2004: 364; Hornsby, 2006b: 74–6) and Brittany (Guézennec, 2003: 157). This distribution has not been observed in Parisian speakers, but it is the common thread linking the various backed realisations of /a/, now a highly vernacular feature used in various parts of northern France. Most of the other features, (2), (3), (6), (10) and (11), are invariably vernacular and have been noted in different regions. Pre-rhotic /a/raising as in poire was a widespread feature of Oïl vernaculars (Lodge, 2004: 64) and occurred in Paris (Gadet, 1992) at least as far back as the 16th century. This feature seems to be recessive and associated in some areas with local patois (Nord; Pooley, 2001) but is better preserved in the Pas-de-Calais (Hornsby, 2006b). Features (6), (10) and (11) occur in a number of vernaculars. Stress on the penultimate syllable of phrase-groups has been noted in nonstandard varieties spoken in most parts of the Oïl area. The use of close variants of /E/ and /O/ before /r/ is functionally parallel to forms like [pø:K], although socially far more restricted, but the two variants have been widely noted in the Nord–Pas-de-Calais by Carton et al. (1983), Pooley (1996) and Hornsby (2006b). Finally, one feature, the pharyngeal or glottally reinforced /r/ [KQ ], has become particularly associated with speakers of Maghreb descent, not only in the Parisian banlieue but in all cities with a sizeable population of Maghreb origin (see Pickles, 2001, who reports on Perpignan).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
168 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Parisian vernacular features spread no doubt through the face-to-face contacts created for example by military service, as the region of the capital would generally be the best represented in the ranks, and through migration, as up to the 19th century over two-thirds of migrants came from the close-lying Oïl areas (Île-de-France, Picardy, Normandy and Burgundy), although towards the end of the 19th century many were from Brittany and south-central France, including the Massif central (Lodge, 2004: 196–7). Unsurprisingly perhaps, studies of medium-sized cities like Caen (Ball, 1997) and Le Havre (Hauchecorne and Ball, 1997) show that vernacular speech there differs little if at all from that of Paris. As we have already argued (Section 2.3), the hypercephalic development of Paris as the industrial, political, cultural and administrative centre of France stunted the development of urban vernaculars except for a few cases, one of which was the Nord–Pas-de-Calais, the subject of the next section.
5.6 Lille and the Nord–Pas-de-Calais The overview that can be given of the sociolinguistic situation in Lille and the Nord–Pas-de-Calais is perhaps the most complete possible for any region of France. It covers the whole social spectrum (defined by education) for Lille (Lille-Métropole; Lefebvre, 1991); detailed studies of depicardisation among working-class speakers (or dialect shift; see Hornsby, 1996) in Lille (Pooley, 1996, 2002, 2004) and the mining town of Avion in the Lens urban area (Hornsby, 2006b) (Map 5.3). The latter research draws on earlier work carried out in a traditional dialectological perspective, drawing on atlases but using too a considerable amount of re-analysable material, in particular sound recordings of speakers born in the 19th century (Carton, 1972), together with detailed transcriptions in works like Viez (1910), Cochet (1933), Lateur (1951) and Carton and Descamps (1971), as well as an impressively detailed analysis of the structural and lexical distribution of phonetic differences for the whole picardophone region in Flutre (1977). The process of depicardisation (shift from Picard to French) can be retraced to some considerable extent by comparing the available data chronologically by the birth date of the speakers (ranging from 1850 in Viez; 1910 to 1990 in Pooley, 2008). Broadly speaking, for working-class speakers the features of the dialect mix can be usefully sub-divided as shown in Table 5.6 into: (1) distinctively Picard features; (2) historically Picard features which came to be perceived as French; (3) historically generalised French vernacular features sometimes construed as Picard
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 169
Map 5.3
The so-called pays des Chtimis
(or patois); (4) regional variants which remain after depicardisation (or more generally dedialectalisation); and (5) supralocal features. Hornsby (2006b) divides the distinctively Picard features into vestigial (only used occasionally by speakers of the most marked vernacular) and obsolescent (used mainly by older speakers of marked vernacular). Data from Lille (Pooley, 1996, 2004) show that these features were used much more by speakers born before 1939 (even that generation used them much
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
170 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 171 Table 5.6 The ‘dialect mix’
(2) Historically Picard features reallocated as French, e.g. absence of so-called /l/ mouillé as in travail [töaval]; word-final consonant devoicing (WFCD), as in sage [saS] (3) Generalised French vernacular features sometimes perceived as Picard, e.g. pre-rhotic /a/ raising as in tard [tæö] (4) Regional variants maintained despite the more or less complete depicardisaton of the vernacular, e.g. back a in word-final open syllables certificat [sEötifikA] (5) Supralocal features
less than earlier generations) and hardly at all by people born after 1952 (Table 5.7). Sections (2) and (3) of Table 5.6 highlight the key areas of dialect mixing, exemplifying features that are historically Picard but were clearly perceived as French by older speakers and generalised vernacular forms perceived as (or at least highly compatible with) Picard in the mid-20th century. Some such features, like the absence of so-called /l/ mouillé (yod) as in travail [töaval] or œil [œl] met the same fate as the distinctively Picard features and were hardly used by speakers born after 1945. WFCD and pre-rhotic /a/ raising were used as variable minority forms for another generation or two but have become at most marginal, even
Table 5.7 Chronological loss of Picard items in Lille (Pooley, 2004: 344) Corpus
Distinctive Picard items
Viez (1910) born 1850–60
used consistently
Carton (1972i) born 1874–1891
used variably
Carton (1972ii) born 1892–1896
used variably
L. Carton (1895) Carton (1972iii) + Carton et al. (1983) (informants born around 1910) Pooley born pre-1938
used variably
Pooley born 1938–1952
marginal
marginal
Pooley born 1953–1965
virtually absent
Pooley born circa 1980
virtually absent
Pooley born circa 1990
virtually absent
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
(1) Distinctively Picard features, e.g. diphthongisation of close /o/ as in qu’il est beau [kiebœ o]; Picard [˜ E] for French [A˜ ] as in manger [m˜EZe];
in the most highly vernacular output of Lille speakers born in the 1980s (Pooley, 2004) and 1990s (Pooley, 2008). In both respects, the usage of Lillois speakers differs from that of Lensois (or at least exemplified by Avion), since WFCD hardly occurred further away from the linguistic boundary with Flanders, whereas forms like [tæö] remain frequent. This leaves as the two major regional features back /a/ in open syllables, particularly word-final, and open /o/ in closed syllables in items where supralocal French has a close variant, as in rôle [öOl]. Lefebvre’s (1991) data, recorded in the late 1970s, covering a full social spectrum of people born betwen 1895 and 1963, suggest that some speakers still maintained distinctions characteristic of the prescriptive norm in a way she felt able to order according to degree of standardness, as shown in Table 5.8. The higher the contrast appears in the order given, the stronger the indication that the speaker is moving closer to mainstream norms. In other words, these phonological features are ordered so as to indicate the relative likelihood of neutralisation. The phonological sub-system is however less indicative of regionality than phonetic divergences from mainstream varieties. For Lefebvre these could be ordered according to vernacular prominence, as shown in Table 5.9. This list is potentially expandable since it contains only vocalic features. Its ordering is characteristic of an implicational hierarchy such that if speakers use only one regional feature, then that is likely to be back /a/, and if they use forms like [tæö], then they are likely to use all the other features listed. The backing of /a/, no doubt in part because of its frequency, is a highly distinctive marker of northern speech, but it shows sub-regional variation. In Lille the vowel may be slightly rounded ([A fl ], or unrounded [2] in Hornsby’s transcription), whereas a number of fully rounded variants [O, fi O, o fl, o] were observed in the Avion Table 5.8 The Lillois phonological sub-system. Phonological contrasts ordered according to likelihood of neutralisation (Lefebvre, 1991) Contrast
Example
1. /o/-/O/ in word-final closed syllables
paume [pom]; pomme [pOm]
2. /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/
brun [böœ]; ˜ brin [böE˜ ];
3. /œ/-/ø/ in final closed syllables
jeune [Zœn]; jeûne [Zøn]
4. /a/-/A/ in closed syllables
pattes [pat]; pâtes [pAt]
5. /o/-/O/ in non-final open syllables
beauté [bote] ; botté [bOte]
6. /e/-/E/ in final open syllables
été [ete]; était [etE]
7. /E/-/E:/ in final closed syllables
mettre [mEtö]; maître [mE:tö]
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
172 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 173
Contrast
Example
1. Back or velarised /a/ [A] in open and particularly word-final syllables
ça [sA]
2. Raised open /E/ in pre-rhotic position
père [peö]; bière [bjeö]
3. Use of low mid-vowel [œ] before [z]
heureuse [øöœz]
4. Use of high mid-vowel [ø] before [ö]
bonheur [bOnøö]
5. Lowered /o/ in closed syllables, principally before [z]
rose [öOz]
6. Pre-rhotic raising of /a/
tard [tæö]
data (Hornsby, 2006b: 131). Three of the variants (2, 4 and 6) are raised in closed syllables while /i/ may be centralised and lax, as in Lille [lIl]. Hornsby has suggested a kind of push-chain shift effect whereby [a] moves towards [æ], [E] towards [e], [œ] towards [ø] and [i] towards [I]. While this is phonologically plausible, the regional variants concerned are not particularly concordant in social terms. Lax variants of high vowels as in [lIl] and [bjeö] are shared with Belgian regiolectal and marked Picard varieties, pre-rhotic /a/ raising was a generalised vernacular feature, as is the (re-)distribution of the mid vowels as in [bOnøö] but this latter variant may be well on the way to mainstream respectability. The comparison of the three main regional variants [A], [æö] and [O] by level of education, as shown in Tables 5.10 and 5.11, suggests that in the late 1970s and early 1980s [A] and [æö] were used variably by at least half the informants of all social classes, with only [A] tending towards the classic social-class pattern for a vernacular variant. In Lefebvre’s study [O] displays a pattern typical of vernacular variants, with strong majority usage among those with only primary education and marginal usage among graduates. Pooley’s study, which concentrated on Table 5.10
Level of education and frequency of use of variants (Lefebvre, 1991)
Level Primary Certificat d’Etudes CAP BAC Graduate
Use [a]
Use [A]
Use [aö]
Use [æö]
Use [o]
Use [O]
23 36 44 52 51
76 64 56 48 49
46 55 48 52 50
54 45 52 48 50
7 6 22 40 63
86 44 44 20 2
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 5.9 The Lillois phonetic sub-system. Phonetic differences from the prescriptive norm ordered by vernacular prominence (Lefebvre, 1991)
174 Social and Linguistic Change in European French Use of [A], [æö] and [O] by level of education (Pooley,
Level
[A]
[æö]
[O]
+ BEPC : 1983 (33) − BEPC : 1983 (28) − BEPC : 1995 (15)
20 26 41
13 28 0.4
33 51 51
lower-class informants sampled by education (with and without BEPC),4 suggests that [A] and [O] are gaining ground, if from a lower base, but that [æö] has suffered a sudden and dramatic demise. More recent data, from 2005 (Pooley, 2009) confirm the demise of [æö] (and WFCD) in the speech of young working-class people (born around 1990) but show too that [O] is vigorous and [A] maintained. That regionality should be signalled by so few features is indisputably a measure of levelling, particularly considering the degree of divergence noted even in the 1970s and 1980s. Nonetheless, use of back /a/ has been shown to correlate significantly with an index of regional loyalty (Pooley, 2000, 2009). Along with a number of other features, people from the region seem to be generally aware of what elements make up a northern accent, as the perceptual studies of Landrecies (2001) and Eloy et al. (2003) demonstrate, summarised in Table 5.12. Some of the differences in the two studies can be explained by research site. Landrecies (2001) concentrates on Lille, whereas Eloy et al. (2003) cover the traditionally picardophone areas more broadly, hence the absence of pre-rhotic raised /a/ in Lille (concordant with Pooley, 2001) but its survival elsewhere (see Hornsby, 2006b). Other differences Table 5.12 Regional features specifically mentioned by informants in two perceptual studies (Landrecies, 2001: 207–8; Eloy et al., 2003: 207) Landrecies (2001)
Eloy et al. (2003)
Velarised or back /a/
Velarised or back /a/ [A]
Distribution/merger of /o/-/O/
Distribution/merger of /o/-/O/
Distribution/merger of /e/-/E/
Distribution/merger of /e/-/E/ Distribution/merger of /œ/-/ø/
Palatalisation, as in vendredi [vA ˜ dö@dZi]
Palatalisation/affrication [di]-[dZi] Pre-rhotic /a/ raising as in tard [tæö]
E/ towards [˜e] Raised variant of /˜
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 5.11 1996)
can be explained by the way in which the lists were compiled, Landrecies by his trainee-teacher informants and Eloy et al. on the basis of previous linguistic descriptions and their own observations. For the mid-vowels, the common underlying trend is for northern French to be closer to the loi de position than supralocal French. For /e/-/E/ there may well be convergence between the standard and local vernacular norms in favour of the high variant. In the case of /o/-/O/, forms like rose [öOz] and gauche [gOS] go against the supralocal norm, while the /œ/-/ø/ distinction affects too few items to be of salience. Palatalisation and affrication seem to be a generalised vernacular feature (see Jamin, 2005), although mentioned as a regionalism in Hornsby (2006b: 100). While, as the work of Pooley and Hornsby demonstrates, the Nordiste accent expressed or expresses working-class solidarity, its image in the wider community is highly negative, as the title of Landrecies’ study indicates: ‘C’est laid, mais ça fait rire’. Stripped of its community associations in the postindustrial era, an ugly, laughable accent seems likely to be increasingly avoided.5 While speakers from the Nord–Pas-de-Calais certainly lay claim to back /a/ as a regional feature, it is comparable in its social significance to close /o/ in closed syllables, and is shared with a number of other areas of France (Carton, 1987; Pooley, 2004). As will be shown in the following section, the backing of /a/ is perceived in other parts of northern and western France as indicative of regional pronunciation.
5.7 Brittany and Normandy While Martinet (1945) saw no need to differentiate between celtophone and Romance Brittany, more recent behavioural and perceptual studies have reported on localities from both regions. Boughton (2005) has a detailed account of a vernacular speaker from Rennes, inviting a comparison with Walter’s (1982) geographically closest informant from La Guerche de Bretagne, while Hoare (2004) studied perceptions of Breton-accented French by school students from the Gallo area. Guézennec (2003) investigated one of the remotest Breton-speaking areas imaginable, the Île-de-Sein, an island off the coast of Finistère. In all behavioural studies, back /a/ is the single most important feature that signals divergence from supralocal French, as exemplified in Boughton’s (2005) account of a speaker from Rennes, a city about 350 kilometres from Paris but firmly within the supralocal-French area. The subject in question, a middle-aged male born in the mid-20th century, was selected from all informants as best illustrating a localised accent.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 175
This speaker uses back /A/ in particular, frequently but variably in closed, non-word-final and word-final open syllables, as in âge [AZ], passer [pAse] patois [patwA]. A further point of interest is that syllables containing back /A/ had variable slight stress in penultimate position in a variety that is not otherwise different prosodically from supralocal French. This informant’s idiolect is considerably less distinctive than the ‘semistandardised Ille-et-Vilaine idiolect’ of an informant born in 1924 and studied by Walter, (1982: 141–4). He was from La Guerche de Bretagne, about 40 kilometres from Rennes (population around 4,000). The principal distinctive trait of this variety is the variable centralised realisation of some mid-vowels, as in fait pronounced [fE] or [fE˙ ], pot as [po] or [p¨O], both of which were construed by Walter as substrate features. Walter’s subject also consistently maintained the distinction between front (and sometimes raised) /a/ in items like moi, mal and village, while back /A/ in mois, mâle and âge was used consistently and seemed to be lexically rather than phonologically constrained, as in conservative varieties of generalised vernacular and Reference French. In her study of Île-de-Sein, an island off the coast of Brittany about 25 kilometres from Audierne (pop. 3,000 in 1982, but under 2,500 by the end of the 20th century), the largest town of the Cap-Sizun, with which it is linked by ship, Guézennec (2003) claims that certain features of the local variety of French are emblematic of a local identity. The two key variants are: firstly, back /a/ in word-final open syllables, particularly monosyllables such as là, ça and pas as well as the set with /w/ like quoi, fois and choix and in polysyllables like voilà and Barbara; and secondly, voicing assimilation, argued to be a Breton substrate feature. Apart from médecin all the other examples quoted are [zl] or [zj] sequences which are canonically [sl] or [s˚j], as in slip, islamique and socialisme. Assimila-
˚
˚ vernacular and informal speech, but few other tions like these abound in scholars have argued them to be indicative of a local variety. Guézennec reported age-related differences in the use of back /a/, with some of the heaviest users of the feature having an intermediate [5] variant, including the heaviest user of all. Guézennec suggests a comparison with Martha’s Vineyard in view of the Île-de-Sein’s small indigenous population (100), a distinctive industry (the manufacture of soda from marine algae), its struggle to maintain a fishing industry (only two boats employing four people in 2000), and the expansion of its population to around 3,000 with the arrival of summer visitors. People of 40 and over at the time of the fieldwork in 2000–2 (born around 1960) were the youngest Breton speakers. Islanders born since that period have been monolingual in French.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
176 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
The population is ageing and most young people, although they have since 1971 been able to go to school on the island until the age of 15, have to leave to earn a livelihood. The resident population has a strong sense of local identity based on endogamous marriage, the fishing tradition, the maintenance of Breton as a community language and Catholicism. Although the older informants born in the late 1920s now live all year round on the island, all subjects interviewed had spent several years on the mainland, in Audierne, Brest (population in the conurbation around 275,000), Lorient (some 186,000 in the conurbation) and Quimper (about 95,000 in the conurbation). Guézennec interprets this use of backed variants, or rather the central [5], as arising from a desire to assert island identity in the absence of many nonlinguistic elements, particularly for men unable to make a living in the traditional male profession and forced to work on the mainland. There are some factors in common with Martha’s Vineyard, but a more mundane interpretation of the data is possible. The younger speakers may be using non-standard forms acquired in the mainland towns where they work and where central [5] seems part of a wider ‘tendance jeune’ also noted by Girard and Lyche (2005), a finding corroborated by Pooley (2009) in Lille and by Hall (2008) in Normandy. Hoare’s (2004) perceptual study made use of the well-known matchedguise technique. She asked three women aged 35, 40 and 55 to make recordings in ‘unmarked’ (supralocal) French, Breton-accented French and Breton and submitted them to the judgment of French schoolpupils in traditionally Romance-speaking Haute-Bretagne (Rennes area) and traditionally celtophone Basse Bretagne. In their Breton-accented guise, all three speakers were perceived to be older, rural and yokel (‘plouc’) and for the most part friendly. A few older Rennes informants judged the speakers to be intelligent in their Breton-accented guise (and even more so in their Breton guise) because for them Breton was to be learned as an L2, and therefore was compatible with a lower chronological age, urbanity and intelligence – which unsurprisingly were also the perceptions expressed, with fewer qualifications, concerning their unmarked French guise. Both the unmarked French and Breton guises proved capable also of being construed as unfriendly. According to Ball (1997) the vernacular of the larger towns of Normandy – Rouen (population around 475,000 in the conurbation), Caen (population around 346,000), and Le Havre (about 290,000 in the conurbation) (Hauchecorne and Ball, 1997) – is very similar to that of Paris. A number of Bulot’s perceptual studies on Rouen (1998, 1999) reveal the representation of a vernacular ‘accent Rive-Gauche’ and
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 177
middle-class ‘accent Rive-Droite’ but offer no behavioural indicators. In the current century, largely thanks to the PFC project, phonological and sociolinguistic data on Normandy have increased considerably. The PFC project has produced two sets of studies on Normandy: one on the Domfrontais and Brécey (Girard and Lyche, 2003, 2005) and the other by Tyne (2003) on Cherbourg at the head of the Cotentin (Cherbourg peninsula). These studies are to be supplemented by data collected by Hall (2008), which is conceived along similar lines but with greater sociolinguistic detail. Hall studied two sites: one in the Rouen urban area, Darnétal, a largely working-class town to the east of RouenVille and a small village on the Cotentin (La Bonneville). Hall’s study contains a section on perceptions of accents, which is valuable since his data permit direct comparison with informant behaviour and somewhat less direct comparison with Von Nolcken’s (2002) perceptual/attitudinal work on a small village in the Orne called Sainte-Gauburge-SainteColombe (population about 1,200), which lies about 100 kilometres to the east of Domfront. It is worth pointing out that of these four areas, only the Cotentin lies to the north of a series of isoglosses known as the Joret line, an area where the most conservative Norman features were maintained for longer, understandably given its geographical isolation and intensified by the natural barrier of the Bocage (marshlands) in winter. Darnétal, Domfront, Brécey and Sainte-Gauburge-Sainte-Colombe in contrast all lie to the south in an area often held to be linguistically converged, although comparison of data from these various locations (Girard and Lyche, 2005; Hall, 2008) note both divergence from supralocal French and considerable internal differences. In all of these locations back /a/ emerged as emblematic of the local variety and by and large was consistently maintained as a lexicallydefined small-set variable, as in the prescriptive norm. The distinction was generally realised through difference of quality, although in the Cherbourg region (population 113,000; Tyne, 2003: 163), it was realised through length as in pattes-pâtes [pat]-[pa:t], or by quality and length as in the case of the older Domfrontais (population around 10,000, with about 4,000 in Domfront itself) as in génération [Zenera:sj˜O] and charrue [SA:ry] (with alveolar /r/). A centralised and lengthened variant [5:] was also noted, quite possibly the emerging form, corresponding to a ‘tendance jeune’ (Girard and Lyche, 2005). Hall (2008), relying almost entirely on instrumental analysis, notes a raising of both front and back /a/, which appears to be compatible with this trend. In four of the locations studied (Domfront, Brécey, Darnétal and La Bonneville), there is clear apparent-time evidence of ongoing but incomplete convergence
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
178 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
to supralocal forms. The older Domfrontais (b. 1920–1933) used a long backed variant [A:], where Domfrontais in the 45–50 age-range (b. 1953–1958) used this backed variant considerably less, although it occurred in both closed syllables, as in [pA:t] pâte, and open, where it was distinctive in certain pairs like toi [twa] and toit [twA] and boit [bwa] and bois (noun) [bwA]. The ‘tendance jeune’ towards [5:] was most marked among the younger informants (b. 1982–1986). In Brécey, Girard and Lyche’s analysis suggests greater convergence, since /a/ vowels showed only a two-way distinction, with the back variant centralised and lengthened as in pas [p5:] corresponding to two age groups only (39–81 and 17–20). Hall’s (2008) findings appear to confirm this, as in his perspective the raising of both front and back /a/ are bringing [A] closer to [5]. The other feature studied by Hall, the /e/-/E/ contrast in open final syllables in lexical items (including verb forms in -ez, but excluding grammatical items such as les and ses) is also noted by Girard and Lyche (2003) in Brécey. Hall suggests that for both variables, ongoing change towards merger is favoured by both up-levelling and down-levelling pressures. For /a/, this is suggested by the greater prevalence of /a/-/A/ in the so-called Formal Methods style of his urban data (word-list, reading passage etc). In contrast, the merger of /e/-/E/ in the contexts selected for study reflects both supralocal usage, more apparent in urban areas, as against traditional Norman usage. With regard to the use of back /a/, the effect of the Norman substrate could again be invoked, since all the Cotentin speakers distinguish /a/ from /A/, and the leaders in this respect are younger lower-working-class males, which in terms of the classic sociolinguistic gender pattern would suggest stable variation. The stability of the distinction has however to be weighed against the demonstrable changes in its realisation, namely raising. In Hall’s data, not all intergenerational comparisons show a uniform pattern of intergenerational change. A number of curvilinear distributions suggest that people born between 1936 and 1981, particularly from the higher social classes, tend to conform more to prestige norms. Generational changes in the realisations of other variables suggest that a Norman substrate is highly plausible in the usage of older speakers, but one that is not resisting pressure to advergence for younger speakers, as Table 5.13 indicates for the Domfrontais. For the four regional features selected, the sharp contrast between the pre- and postWorld War II generations suggests that the period of the conflict, of which the region was one of the major theatres, contributed to a loss of local accents. These clear findings contrast with the perceptions of Von
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 179
180 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Generation
1920–1933
1953–1958
1982–1986
Generally close variants of mid vowels
usual
marginal, loi de position
loi de position
Diphthongisation
usual
marginal
not used
Vowel length for gender, e.g. é-ée
usual
marginal
not used
Apical /r/
usual
marginal?
not used
Nolcken’s (2002) informants, who consider Domfront to be a bastion of traditional Norman speech forms. Time lags between perceptions and behaviour are not unusual, although as Hall suggests (2008), they do change across generations. In particular, Darnétal informants were very highly aware of the emblematic character of the speech of the Pays de Caux (cauchois) (see Bulot, 2005) except for the younger generation, who did not indicate it as an area with a marked regional accent in a draw-a-map style perceptual study. Broadly speaking, the Darnétal, La Bonneville and the Sainte-Gauburge-Sainte-Colombe informants all have more nuanced perceptions of their own area than of more distant regions. In Darnétal and La Bonneville, speakers from the lower social classes, who would have been thought to have the most marked accents, whether social or regional or both, are the least aware of them in others. This is understandable if the relation between working-class origin and lesser mobility still holds. Subjects in the higher social groups showed greater freedom in their comments, though without being able to pinpoint any particular features. This is in contrast to the findings of Von Nolcken, whose informants particularly noted the use of back /a/.
5.8 Eastern regions of France Backed realisations of /a/ are also prominent in accounts of regional varieties in eastern France. They are crucial in Arnaud’s (2006) study of a small town in the Jura, Saint-Claude, close to the Swiss border, where a strongly backed variant mentioned in Carton et al. (1983: 42), [O:] as in abreuvoir [aböøvwO:ö], still persists. Arnaud elected to study only men, who he divided into two age groups (20–35 and over 55). While generally speaking use of regional varieties correlated, as noted in other locations, with age, this is countered in Saint-Claude by network factors, i.e. degree of involvement in the local community.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 5.13 Intergenerational changes in Domfront (Girard and Lyche, 2003)
The two main cities studied are Dijon (Tifrit, 2003) and Besançon (Rittaud-Hutinet, 2001). Studies on Lorraine and Alsace in each case show the speech forms used as adverged towards supralocal French, as shown in Armstrong’s (1993, 1996) work on the small town of Dieuze and Boughton’s (2005) on Nancy. Gardner-Chloros (pc)6 believes that younger Alsatians, for reasons to do with identity and covert prestige, still use features of a broad regional accent of the kind mentioned in Carton et al. (1983): the aspiration of initial stops in stressed syllables as in pendu [ph A ˜ :dy] and the pronunciation of word-initial [h] as in haut [ho] (cf. Walter, 1982; 117–9). This calls however for systematic verification. Tifrit’s (2003) study of Dijon, based on PFC methodology, concentrates on non-spontaneous styles, comparing the two reading styles (minimal pairs and word list) of four university-educated younger informants (born between 1970 and 1977) and a primary-school teacher born in 1915. Although all five informants had strong Burgundian roots, they had all equally experienced some mobility both within and without Burgundy and the Dijon area. The speech of the octogenarian informant retained features described in Martinet (1945), Walter (1982: 160–2) and Carton et al. (1983: 45), in particular vowel-length contrasts, which she used far more extensively than the younger speakers, realised in combination with qualitative contrasts frequently neutralised by younger speakers, e.g. ras-rat, rauque-roc. Tifrit’s data suggest a rather marginal use of length distinctions, particularly to achieve the /a/-/A/ contrast in the series mal, malle, mâle, of which the latter pair were differentiated by a combination of length and vowel quality by three of the four younger speakers. The 85-year-old was alone in using length to differentiate /o/ vowels, as in paume-pomme, rauque-roc. The presence of supralocal-divergent forms in the speech of the younger subjects is perhaps surprising in view of their high level of education and the formal speech styles recorded. Rittaud-Hutinet’s (1991a, 1991b, 2001) work on Besançon French suggests that at the time of her fieldwork, around the mid to late 1960s, local accents were strong and well preserved even among middle-class speakers. Her 13 main informants were two children born in 1957 and 19627 and 11 adults born between 1912 and 1947, from a variety of middle and median-class backgrounds. Rittaud-Hutinet’s work is unusual in relating various regionally characteristic intonation patterns to segmental phonology in a clear fashion. Besançon phonology, which is interpreted as polylectal, consists of three fundamental systems labelled trochaic (long syllable-short syllable), spondaic (long-long) and pre-iambic (short-long). There is some
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 181
suggestion that the trochaic represents a pronunciation characteristic of older or old-fashioned speakers and that pre-iambic is rather closer to Reference French. If one interprets stressed and unstressed as ‘long’ and ‘short’, then the Besançon studies exemplify the widespread phenomenon of old-fashioned accents having stress on the penultimate syllable, noted in regions as far separated as Brittany (Hoare, 2004) and Nancy (Boughton, 2005). The pre-iambic pattern with stress on the final syllable of the tone group is of course close to that of supralocal French. The intermediate spondaic pattern is presented as the most widespread in Besançon, but not as a local norm of which the inhabitants are clearly aware. The system is characterised, as is the case for a number of other varieties, by the placement of stress on the penultimate syllable of a rhythm group, although Rittaud-Hutinet emphasises that this pattern may not be realisable with certain lexical items. Consequently, speakers are obliged to adjust their intonation and several of the basic intonation patterns presented as illustrations are shared with mainstream varieties (Rittaud-Hutinet, 2001: 104). In segmental phonology the realisation of nasal vowels in these three systems appeared to be undergoing changes towards supralocal French. In the trochaic system, long vowels are longer than in mainstream varieties with the exception of /A:/ and / A ˜ :/, which may be diphthongised. Nasal vowels are also always partially denasalised. In the spondaic system, long vowels remain long, but diphthongisation is highly recessive, and partial denasalisation becomes restricted to closed syllables. In the pre-iambic system long vowels are still long but never diphthongised. Nasals vowels are fully nasalised. The mid-vowels appear rather more complex. The trochaic system contrasted a series of three long close vowels with three short open vowels, e.g. /e:/-/E/ in penultimate syllables: tairai- terré, traînais-Trenet, baignais-beignet; and in final syllables: fée-fait, pré-près-prêt, thé-taie tait. Examples of the /ø:/-/œ/ contrast in penultimate syllables are: jeudi-je dis; and in final position: jeu-je, jeûne-jeune, veule-veulent. The /o:/-/O/ contrast is exemplified in penultimate syllables by beautébotté and in word-final syllables by maux-mot, paume-pomme, côte-cote, heaume-homme. The mid-vowels of the spondaic and pre-iambic systems consist of a three-term opposition in word-final open syllables, i.e. /e:/-/E:/ or /E::/-/E/. This means that sets like pré-près-prêt; thé-tai-tait; mes-maismet and j’ai-j’aie-jet may be pronounced differently. All informants had phonemic length differences in the close and open vowels, as shown in Table 5.14.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
182 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 183 Table 5.14 Distinctive length differences in close and open vowels in Besançon French (based on Rittaud-Hutinet, 2001) Examples
/i:/ /y:/ /u:/ /a:/ /˜ E :/ /A ˜ :/ /˜O:/
scierez amie lie émue juge n. secouerez bouge n. caillais tas tinté plains santé sang bon
Variant /i/ /y/ /u/ /a/ /˜ E/ /A ˜/ /˜O/
Example cirez ami lit ému juge v. secourez bouge v. cahier ta teinté plein sentez cent bon!
All consonants were pronounced with a backed articulation compared to mainstream varieties. The trochaic system was most highly distinctive, having long aspirated stops, resulting in partial devoicing of /b/, /d/ and /g/. Fricatives and approximants also tended to finish with a near complete closure with strong friction and in some cases devoicing as a result, particularly in the case of /s/ and /z/ and to a lesser extent /v/ and /l/. In the trochaic system, the difference in articulation of consonants in stressed and unstressed syllables was considerable, but rather less in spondaic and virtually absent in pre-iambic. Thus although speakers with very marked regional accents were analysed, there were clear indications that convergence towards supralocal French had set in by the 1960s and in the absence of properly documented evidence to the contrary, one can wonder whether the system of length distinctions which has been largely neutralised in most other varieties would be found in speakers born after 1965.
5.9 The northern Oc region and southward spread of supralocal French The assumption of the recent spread of supralocal French into the most northerly parts of the historical Oc area, the Auvergne and the Limousin, though plausible, is hardly supported by a large body of accountable evidence.8 But from the data presented for Auvergne in Carton et al. (1983: 69) and for the Saintonge, Auvergne and Limousin in Walter (1982: 163–9), the varieties exemplified do not show the two most widespread southern characteristics, the presence of nasal consonants after partially denasalised vowels and the southern distribution of mute-e. On the contrary, the Auvergnat speaker in Carton et al. has full nasalisation, though
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Variant
with vowel qualities reminiscent of Auvergnat: very open realisation ¯ tourment and of [˜O], a fronted and raised variant of [ A ˜ ] as in [tuömæ] diphthonged realisations of both as in [öeZjOõ] région and [sølmæ ˜ A] seulement. The authors state moreover that ‘le E caduc suit sensiblement les mêmes règles qu’en français standard’ (Carton et al., 1983: 71) exemplified by [töwasmEn] trois semaines. Given the absence of a strong southern substrate and of a large regional centre capable of providing a social focus, or indeed of any other relevant social factors, there seems to have been little to prevent these northern Oc areas from being absorbed into the supralocal region, particularly since migration from rural Auvergne and south-central France was an important part of the late 19th and early 20th century exode rural (Pustka, 2007: 96). Among the locations in the Auvergne and northern Oc area that have been studied in a sociolinguistic perspective are Limoges (Gueunier, Genouvrier and Khomsi, 1978) and Glaine-Montaigut (Potte, 1977). Although Limoges was selected as a research site in one of the earliest variationist studies of European French (Gueunier et al., 1978), the study was largely restricted to variation between /e/ and /E/, where, as with most southern varieties, one would expect greater use of the close variant than in standard usage. Potte (1977) conducted a detailed study of the thinly populated and rather remote commune of Glaine-Montaigut (Puy-de-Dôme) in the Massif Central. It remains to date one of the few studies of its type on a northern Oc area. In the 1975 census Glaine-Montaigut was recorded as having 352 inhabitants scattered over 32 hamlets, with 63% of the population living in settlements of 22 inhabitants or fewer. According to Potte (1977: 191) ‘la réalité dialectale est encore vivante’ and a number of its features could be heard in local varieties of French. The two features chosen for analysis by Potte were the alternation between alveolar and uvular /r/ [r]-[ö]; and the realisation of /l/ either devoiced [l], typical of the local Oc variety, or as a palatalised variant charactersitic˚ of localised French [lj] or [lj ] as opposed to supralocal [j] as in filleul, tilleul. All of the 26 subjects selected in Potte’s study were born locally, between 1898 and 1958, either at Glaine-Montaigut itself or within a ten-kilometre radius. No informant born in 1945 or later could speak the local variety of Occitan, and the use of [ö] and [j] was nearly categorical in every speaker born after 1931 and was strongly dominant among speakers born in the 1920s, with localised forms only dominant among speakers born before 1912. The generational factor seems to have been of greater weight than any others. While gender appears not to be significant, informants born before 1930 were almost all engaged in
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
184 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
agriculture, with those born between 1931 and 1945 divided between paysans and ouvriers paysans; no subject born after 1950 worked in this part of the primary sector. Increasingly, young people could not expect to gain their livelihoods within the boundaries of the commune, and this was reflected in the ageing population, of which 34% were over 60 (born before 1917) and 60% were 46 or over (born before 1931). Moreover 23% of the houses in the commune were secondary residences and the large towns of Thiers (21km) and Clermont-Ferrand (27km) were increasingly within commuting distance. All these social factors favour convergence either to generalised vernacular or supralocal French, reflected in the mutation of the two variables selected for study.
5.10 Overview of non-southern French The overview given above has brought some nuance to the picture of the geographical spread and phonological uniformity of the variety or set of varieties describable as levelled or supralocal French. The implication is that in France, over an unusually large area, in European terms at least (Map 5.4), the usual colloquial speech form used by the vast majority of French citizens born since 1965 contains no regional element in its phonology that is readily recognisable, at least by ordinary speaker-hearers. This supralocal variety has spread beyond the historic boundaries of the Oïl and Franco-Provençal areas into the northern Oc regions, e.g. Puy-de-Dôme (Potte, 1977), leaving a number of peripheral regions with speakers, particularly from the lower social classes, who diverge from this norm in only a small number of features. The salience of divergent features currently used by speakers born since 1965 varies from region to region, and variable awareness appears to correlate with social-class differences. Awareness seems not to go beyond a fairly immediate radius, and representations of vernacular speech within larger regions, such as Normandy and the Nord–Pas-deCalais, show a considerable time-lag in relation to recently documented behaviour, such that patois or marked regional accents are believed to show greater vitality than they actually do, as for instance in Domfront. Apparent-time indicators point unmistakably to a reduced number of distinctive features, few of which are exclusive to any given region. A unique combination or lexico-phonological distribution of nonunique features may, however, be perceptually striking, as in the case of backed variants of /a/ in the Nord–Pas-de-Calais compared to Paris vernacular or Normandy. The variants showing vitality are or were heard in Parisian vernacular and appear to conform to a ‘city-hopping’ model,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 185
Map 5.4
Documented spread of supralocal French in France
reaching Lille before the Pas-de-Calais, Rouen before the Cotentin and no doubt Quimper before the Île-de-Sein. In some instances, up-levelling and down-levelling pressures coincide, as in the case of /e/-/E/ in Normandy, or may be sociolinguistically ambiguous as in the case of back /a/, which is a socially split variant9 characteristic both of oldfashioned Standard French, northern, and with increasing exclusivity, vernacular French.
5.11 Southern France (i): the traditional situation The area where accents readily identifiable as southern may commonly be heard and have been documented in fairly recent phonological and
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
186 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
sociolinguistic studies is sketched in Map 5.5. It comprises the départements abutting the Mediterranean coast and Pyrenean borderlands and the immediately contiguous inland regions. The map indicates all localities studied using comparable approaches, including Brun (1931) for Marseille and Séguy (1951) for Toulouse, as well as the home areas of the subjects in Walter (1982) and Carton et al. (1983). Behavioural sociolinguistic work covers the Béarn (Diller, 1978); Fos-sur-Mer (Chauvin, 1985); Pézenas (Durand, Slater and Wise, 1987); Aix-en-Provence (Taylor, 1996); Carcassonne and Lézignan-Corbières (Armstrong and Unsworth, 1999); and Perpignan (Pickles, 2001). Researchers working under PFC auspices have studied Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the Basque Country (Aurnague and Durand, 2003); Douzens (Durand and Tarrier, 2003); Rodez and Salles-Curan in the Tarn (Sobotta, 2003; Pustka, 2007); and Lacaune (Meisenberg, 2003). Also of interest are the perceptual studies on Salses and Sigean (Wanner, 1993); Provence (Kuiper, 2005); and Marseille (Binisti and Gasquet-Cyrus, 2003; Woehrling and Boula de Mareüil, 2006). This wide range of localities covering several of the more southerly sub-regions contrasts markedly with Martinet’s two-part division of the region into the Midi, defined as the traditional Oc region (as shown in Map 5.5) minus a comparatively small area which he called the south-west (the Bordelais and the Périgord), which in terms of professed pronunciation was southern rather than northern but considerably less
Map 5.5 Southern France showing localities investigated in a sociolinguistic perspective
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 187
marked than the Midi. Thus 58% of south-western informants claimed to pronounce word-final schwa in laque compared to 90% in the Midi and 21% in the non-meridional areas. There are grounds for supposing considerable over-reporting of nonsouthern features, as these claims are largely undermined by available behavioural evidence. Some traditional contrasts of the prescriptive norm were widely claimed: 41% for /a/-/A/ (patte-pâte), 53% for /o//O/ (saute-sotte) and 60% for /e/-/E/ piqué-piquait. Other claims inspire greater confidence, in particular the maintenance of the /œ/-/ ˜ ˜ E/ contrast (89%) and the use of a nasal consonant appendage, as in chanter [San te] (58%). The summary of Martinet’s findings brings together all forms claimed by over 50% of his subjects, as shown for oral vowels in Tables 5.15a and 5.15b. This system goes along with four nasal contrasts, pronounced with weaker nasalisation and the possibility of a consonantal appendage, as well as high rates of mute-e realisation in salient contexts, e.g. wordfinally in laque, word-medially in Catherine (distinct from Catrine) and in sequences of frequent monosyllabic words consisting of C@, like je and me. This vocalic system, labelled the Dominant Southern Pattern Table 5.15a Claimed middle-class southern oral-vowel distribution in the 1940s (Martinet, 1945: 208) Open word-final syllables front
central
back
high
i
y
u
mid
e
œ
o
E low
a
Table 5.15b Claimed middle-class southern oral-vowel distribution in the 1940s (Martinet, 1945: 2008) Closed and non-final syllables front
central
high
i
y
mid
e
ø
back u
O
o
E low
a
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
188 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
(DSP) by Pooley (2007: 42), is used throughout the Midi without stigma, and has been argued by some (e.g. Pustka, 2007: 86) to be akin to a norme d’usage, widely referred to in non-specialist terms as the accent du Midi by locals and the accent du sud by some non-locals (Pustka, 2007), in contrast to terms like français méridional and français d’Oc (Mazel, 1975, 1980), used only by specialists. The DSP may be considered a southern supra-regional form, particularly if, as behavioural evidence suggests, the loi de position applies to the mid vowels /o/-/O/ and /e/-/E/. For consonants it is somewhat harder to claim comparable supraregionality. Martinet (1945) did test for several consonantal features, including word-final consonant devoicing (20% claimed); geminate /r/ for orthographic in word-medial position distinguishing parage and barrage (apart obviously from the initial consonant: 46% claimed); gemination of other medial consonants (48%); the maintenance of the /nj/-/ñ/ contrast; diaeresis in items like lion [li˜O] (72%); and realisation of initial (10%). From other studies two further features can be added, firstly apical /r/, also capable of occurring with gemination, and secondly a palatal variant of /l/ [L] as in travailler [töavaLe]. It seems plausible that these consonantal features, along with variations in the realisation of the consonant appendage to nasal vowels, are now recessive. The selection of informants by Walter (1982) and Carton et al. (1983) was certainly designed to show any sub-regional variation within the Midi. Walter (1982) analysed the speech of informants from eight areas (Provençal-Alpin, Guyenne, Gascony, Languedoc (including one speaker from the Tarn), (Provence Maritime, Niçart, Pays Basque and Roussillon) in contrast to four (but effectively three since we have argued in Section 5.9 for the ‘absorption’ of the Auvergne into the supralocal area) by Carton et al. (Provence, Languedoc and Gascony), who followed the regional sub-divisions of the dialect atlases. The Carton et al. informants were born between circa 1910 and 1940, whereas the birth years of Walter’s subjects stretch from 1887 to 1951. Brun’s (1931) study of Marseille is based on the observation of speakers born in the early 20th century and that of Séguy (1951) on Toulouse, on people born between 1920 and 1947. Unusually, Brun chose to concentrate on the usage of women, since he believed they were at the time less mobile, less exposed to and less inclined to adopt features of generalised vernacular French (français populaire; p. 15), although he shows awareness of broad-brush correlations between socio-economic status and the localisation of the features of interest. Brun also comments on the considerable degree of convergence towards generalised
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 189
vernacular norms, compared to an account published nearly a century earlier (Gabrielli, 1836, cited on p.46 of Brun, 1931). Marseille and Toulouse can be assumed to be major poles of attraction and diffusion for generalised vernacular as well as for the development of a marked urban dialect, particularly given the reputation (in the perception of outsiders) of the ‘accent de Marseille’, which locals sub-divide into the ‘true’ accent of the old port area, middle-class Marseillais and the so-called accent QN based on the Quartiers Nord, where substantial numbers of migrants live (Binisti and Gasquet-Cyrus, 2003). We have chosen therefore to discuss the accounts of the consonant system in comparison with the descriptions of mostly small-town and country accents furnished by Walter (1982) and Carton et al. (1983). We propose then to apply the same procedure to mute-e and the vowel system. Tables 5.16 and 5.17 allow of some comparison with early 20thcentury Marseille and Toulouse speech against the three southern informants in Carton et al. (1983) from Gascony, Languedoc and Provence, as well as the three subjects profiled in detail by Walter from the HautesAlpes, the Tarn and the Gers (Table 5.17). Table 5.17 provides some indication of the significance of the empty cells in 5.16, being based on all positive mentions of any feature listed in the profiles of all Walter’s 27 southern informants. The two tabulations strongly suggest that apical /r/ was better maintained in Toulouse and the south-west compared to Marseille and the south-east as well as Guyenne, where uvular variants were more prominent. The contrast betwen the two major cities is striking, exclusively uvular /r/ in Marseille, and exclusively apical /r/ in Toulouse. Séguy notes early indications of change from a roll to a tapped variant, and that the shift to the uvular variant was further advanced in the more northerly city of Agen. Consonant gemination (CC in Table 5.17), whether of /r/ or other consonants, was at most marginal in the big cities and a minority form elsewhere. The palatal lateral was still used in Toulouse and by a minority of speakers in other geographically scattered locations. WFCD is noted only in Toulouse and the Gers. The /nj/-/ñ/ contrast survived reasonably well in the big cities and a number of other regions. The realisation of intial /h/ was already a minority feature that occurred only in the south-west, including Toulouse. Two features were noted only in Marseille, diaeresis in items like lion and viens, as were the confusion of mute and non-mute orthographic final consonants, perhaps an indication of a hypercorrect desire to conform to Standard French norms in an era when only a small proportion of the population went beyond primary school.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
190 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Feature
Brun (1931)
Séguy (1951)
M
T
Gasc
L
P
H-A
T
Gers
1. Use of apical /r/
−
+
+
+
±
±
−
+
2. Uvular /r/
+
m
3. Use of geminate /r/
−
4. Other geminate consonants
−
±
5. Palatal lateral [L]
−
±
6. Word-final consonant devoicing
−
±
7. /nj/-/ñ/contrast
±
±
8. Disyllabic pronunciation of lion
+
9. Initial /h/
− ±
11. Realisation of standardly mute , as in porc
±
Walter (1982)
±
m
10. Muting of pronounced final C, avec
Carton et al. (1983)
± ±
±
±
±
− ±
− −
−
−
m
Key: M = Marseille; T = Toulouse; Gasc = Gascony; L = Languedoc; P = Provence; H-A = Hautes-Alpes; T = Tarn; m = used marginally; ± = variable.
191
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 5.16 Use of southern consonantal variants by speakers born 1900–1950 (Brun, 1931; Séguy, 1951; Walter, 1982 (detailed profiles); Carton et al., 1983)
192 Social and Linguistic Change in European French Table 5.17 Use of consonantal variants in Walter (1982): all southern speakers CC
[L]
[ ñ]
5/5
1/5
1/5
3/5
2/2
1/2
1/2
2/2
5/6
1/6
[r]
1. Guyenne (5)
2/5
2. Provençal Alpin (2)
2/2
1/2
3. Gascony (6)
4/6
2/6
4. Languedoc (4)
1/4
3/4
5. Provence maritime (3)
1/3
2/3
6. Niçart (3)
3/3
7. Pays Basque (1)
1/1
8. Roussillon (3)
2/3
2/3
/h/
WFCD
3/6 3/4 1/3
3/3
1/1
1/1
1/1
1/3
2/3
2/3
1/1
The realisation of mute-e is a strong majority form in virtually the whole of the four data sets in question.10 Brun notes phonetic differences in its realisation: [@] word-medially, [œ] word-finally and in many frequent items such as the C@ monosyllables. Often in word-final position, schwa is backed and variably rounded to [6], a form also noted by Taylor (1996). With regard to the vowel system, the DSP is clearly dominant, being matched point by point in Séguy’s (1951: 16) account of Toulouse, but elsewhere the majority of speakers tend to use one or other of the possible variants, or the loi de position applies. Front /a/ is used exclusively in closed syllables by all speakers and only one speaker (from Gascony) made the /a/-/A/ contrast variably in open syllables. For the mid vowels, Walter’s data show a strong tendency towards the loi de position, which is far from confirmed by Carton et al.’s exemplars. The Provence speaker used only close /e/ and open /o/, while the Gascony speaker used only open /e/, as did 5/6 of Walter’s Gascony informants, and open /o/, whereas Walter’s subjects followed the loi de position in the majority of cases. The Languedoc speaker in Carton et al. followed the loi de position for /e/ but used only a close variant of /o/. The usage of the Provence speaker in Carton et al. from an outlying area of Marseille with regard to /e/ is largely confirmed by Brun’s account, qualified only by the observation that a more open variant tended to occur in syllables closed by a voiced consonant, as in cher, clair, belle and remède. Brun noted the dominance of [œ] in all contexts for the /œ/-/ø/ contrast, for which Carton et al. provide no data. Most speakers in the sources under discussion have a four-term set ˜ ˜ of nasal vowels, variably realised as ORAL V+N, V+V+N or V+ORAL
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
[rr]
[K]
Region
V+N. The latter sequence was used only by the oldest speakers studied by Walter, who were all born before World War I (1887–1909). The ˜ majority form in Brun, Séguy, Carton et al. and Walter is V+V+N, with N homorganic with any following oral consonants and regional variation in word-final consonantal elements. In word-final and pre-pausal position the consonantal nasal is generally velar in Provence and Gascony, e.g. pain [pEE˜N ], but usually bilabial or dental in Languedoc, e.g. pain [pEE˜m ] or mettons [metOO ˜ n ]. The /˜ E/-/œ/ ˜ distinction is maintained although the former is pronounced with a relatively close realisation such as /˜e/ or /fi E˜ / as well as a weaker degree of nasalisation. Similarly / A ˜/ is relatively front ([ã]) and /˜O/ relatively open. A further divergence from supralocal pronunciation is the raising and fronting of / A ˜ / as in mange [m˜eZ@], also observed in Marseille.
5.12 Southern France (ii) the results of more recent studies While the descriptions of marked regional varieties spoken by people born between the late 1800s and the mid-20th century suggest subregional differences, work on the speech of informants born since 1965 incline one to follow Martinet and consider the Midi as a single region. This approach can be justified for three principal reasons: firstly, the difficulty experienced by outsiders in identifying the precise geographical origins of southern speakers. Thus a recent study carried out using PFC data (Woehrling and Boula de Mareüil, 2006) suggests very strongly that while southern accents of various degrees of broadness are consistently recognised as southern in contrast to northern (Normandy and Vendée) and Swiss (Vaud), sub-regional varieties could not be readily distinguished by a panel of young well-educated Parisian judges. This was despite the fact that they were asked to choose between three specifically named southern accents (Basque Country, Languedoc, Provence) exemplified by PFC informants of all ages, including the very oldest speakers, who retained some of the most locally marked features already discussed. On the second point, one particular variable has probably been studied more than all the others combined, namely the variable retention of mute-e. Despite the wide range of research sites, attempts to localise the various phonetic realisations of the variant have been largely limited to anecdotal observations, of less precision than the observations of Brun in interwar Marseille. For instance, Coquillon (1997) suggests that schwa tends to be longer in Toulouse than in Marseille (Brun, 1931; see also Section 2.7) and Durand and Tarrier (2003) hold the view that Toulousain French is more ‘conservative’ in this respect.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 193
Such comments have never been tested using variationist techniques, which have been applied only to the retention or deletion of mute-e11 in various contexts, which, as Armstrong and Unsworth (1999) point out, is of social significance. Thirdly, few if any potentially salient subregional differences have been investigated, presumably because they are highly recessive. For instance, the regional differences in the consonantal element for nasal vowels in word-final pre-pausal position (bilabial in Languedoc, velar in the south-west and Provence) noted by Carton et al. (1983), in more recent work show strong signs of levelling towards the velar. Our review of behaviourally based studies of southern French will therefore be based on the salient pan-Midi variables: (a) mute-e, (b) nasal vowels, (c) oral vowels, (d) consonants. We complement this survey with some observations on perceptions. A number of studies confirm the continuing variable retention of mute-e, but in every case frequencies of occurrence are reported to be decreasing in correlation with a variety of social factors. Firstly, speakers with higher levels of education have lower realisation rates than their less well-educated counterparts, as shown by Diller’s (1978) study of older speakers (born c. 1905–1920) from a small village in the Béarn. Secondly, speakers from the higher social classes delete mute-e more than those from the lower strata (Chauvin, 1985; Taylor, 1996). Among 11- and 12-year-olds in Fos-sur-Mer and Martigues, Chauvin noted the effect in tension of social class and geographical mobility. While locally born middle-class children tended to have the supralocal pattern of mute-e deletion, working-class subjects born outside Provence had the local, heavily mute-e pronouncing pattern. Taylor’s detailed (1996) research in Aix-en-Provence found use of marked local mute-e variants (e.g. [6] and [5]) to correlate broadly with retention rates. Speakers showing highest retention rates and using the broadest regional variants were overwhelmingly older manual workers with the fewest educational qualifications and were often able to speak Provençal, from which some of the backed and rounded realisations derive. Thirdly, there are clear indications that mute-e realisations are diminishing down the generations, in parallel with the decreasing use of ancestral languages: Durand, Slater and Wise’s (1987) study of the small Languedoc town of Pézenas found decreasing mute-e retention among four generations of female speakers from the same family. Pickles’ (2001) work on Perpignan reports far lower rates of realisation among his teenage informants born in the mid-1980s, compared to a speaker born in the early 1960s taken as a model of a local accent. Sobotta (2003) and Pustka’s12
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
194 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
(2007) study of three groups of Aveyronnais found retention to be greatest among the over 60s who were fluent in Occitan. Pustka’s study draws attention to two other factors, the first of which might be called the town-village divide. Realisations of mute-e were more frequent in the small village of Salles-Curan (population 1,100) than in the larger town of Rodez (town 23,000, urban area 61,000). Other PFC research suggests that even the inhabitants of tiny villages are significantly affected by the levelling factors, as is the case of Douzens (Aude) (Durand and Tarrier, 2003), where the most markedly regional consonant variants also appear recessive. Some investigations suggest greater stability. Aurnague and Durand (2003) suggest that retention rates in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the Basque Country are comparable with those reported by Walter (1982) for her informant from Hasparren, but this apparent stability perhaps needs to be weighed against demographic differentials: Hasparren (population 5,303) is a small town and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (population 1,417) rather a village. Pustka’s work also underscores the importance of migration, by showing that Paris-based Aveyronnais delete mute-e more than their counterparts from Rodez or Salles-Curan. Pickles notes a considerable difference in realisation between adolescents of local origin, and others from a different ethnic or geographical background (Catalonia, Maghreb, nonsouthern France). It is unclear whether the non-assimilation of nonsouthern speakers in Perpignan, compared to Fos-sur-Mer/Martigues a generation earlier, is an indicator of ongoing levelling or whether Pickles’ subjects were from the median classes. Armstrong and Unsworth’s (1999) study of students in Aude identifies two other factors: gender and regional loyalty. In this study four contexts were identified, which do not fully correspond to those defined by Martinet: (1) Medial schwa in polysyllables or compounds, e.g. fortEment, l’ordrE du jour; (2) Post-pausal pre-consonantal use of monosyllabic pronouns with initial fricative #Z/s_C(C), e.g. #jE crois; # cE qui se passe; (3) Word-final pre-pausal schwa VC_#, e.g. c’était PierrE; (4) Word-final phrase-medial schwa, VC_C, e.g. toutEs sortes, la semainE prochaine. Students from two towns in Aude were investigated: LézignanCorbières (population around 8,000) and Carcassonne (population around 44,000). Methodological difficulties prompted the exclusion of
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 195
196 Social and Linguistic Change in European French Table 5.18 Schwa deletion among school students by gender and social class (conversational style) (Armstrong and Unsworth, 1999) Females
Males
MC
WC
ALL
MC
WC
ALL
2. Post-pausal monosyllables
37.1
34.9
36.4
20.7
21.3
21.0
3. Word-final pre-pausal
44.1
43.3
43.7
23.2
13.8
18.5
4. Word-final phrase-medial
61.0
66.2
63.4
45.9
34.7
40.4
context (1) from the analysis, but a clear pattern for schwa retention in the three remaining contexts emerges, as can be seen in Table 5.18. As seen from the table, girls deleted schwa considerably more than boys in every context studied and sometimes differences achieved statistical significance. By comparison, social-class differences are not significant. This pattern of females leading change in the direction of supralocal (but not necessarily prestige or standard) norms echoes findings in the UK, for instance in /t/-glottalling on Tyneside (Milroy et al., 1994) and Cardiff (Mees and Collins, 1999). The gender differences overlap significantly with an index of regional attachment, based on a series of five questions with possible scores ranging from 0 to 15. The female index scores were significantly higher than those of the males (7 as against 3.75), whereas differences based on social class proved to be minimal. Pickles’ (2001) findings in Perpignan take on considerable interest in the light of what is known to be occurring elsewhere in the south. His ‘local’ informants out of the 37 from seven schools reveal similar deletion rates in phrase-final position to those shown above for Lézignan-Corbières/Carcassonne. In word-final phrase-medial position, the overall rate in Perpignan is nearly identical to that of the Aude girls (around 63%), whereas the boys from the same area delete much less in that context. Both Taylor (1996) and Armstrong and Unsworth (1999) refer to pre-pausal ‘schwa-tagging’ but do not see it as affecting the speech behaviour of southern speakers at the time that their corpora were gathered (1980s for Taylor and 1990s for Armstrong and Unsworth). Curiously, word-final pre-pausal position is not only the most favourable environment for schwa in the southern varieties, but it is also the context where schwa-tagging occurs in Paris and other northern areas. Most commentators on southern varieties point out, however, that schwas generally correspond to orthographic <e>, whereas this is not necessarily the case for schwa-tagging, which may be intrusive, as in
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Context
bonjour [b˜OZuö@]. Finding no examples of an intrusively realised schwa, Armstrong and Unsworth hypothesised that their informants may be shifting towards a more conservative form of the supralocal variety. PFC-inspired studies confirm the consistent realisation of four distinct qualities of nasal vowels in Salles-Curan (Aveyron), Saint-Jean-Pied-dePort (Basque Country) and Douzens (Aude). In all three locations, / A ˜/ is generally fronted towards /ã/, and in Douzens /˜ E/ is raised towards [˜e] (Durand and Tarrier, 2003). The bilabial and dental/alveolar consonantal elements, as in pain [pEE˜m ] or mettons [metOO ˜ n ], noted by Carton et al. for the exemplar selected for the Languedoc from Gaillac (Tarn), appear to have been regionally levelled in favour of a velar, as noted by Meisenburg (2003) in Lacaune in the same département and in Douzens (Durand and Tarrier, 2003) and Rodez and Salles-Curan (Pustka, 2007). Taylor (1996) presents a detailed analysis of Aix-en-Provence nasal vowels, focusing on degree of nasalisation and the presence and character of the nasal appendage. Table 5.19 shows that canonical nasals in the very broadest regional accents may occur without nasalisation or any consonantal element at all. Marked regional accents are or were characterised by oral vowel + full nasal consonant sequences, while nasals in what Taylor calls the regional standard generally have a weaker consonantal element, often a consonantal appendage, with possibly a degree of vowel nasalisation. Indeed, a fully nasalised vowel followed by a slight offglide, she claims, is more highly regarded than the fully nasalised (‘pointu’) vowel of standard varieties. The broadest regional forms are again used mainly by the least well-educated speakers, and those in manual occupations. Subjects educated to Baccalauréat level might use regional standard forms, and those with higher qualifications tend towards supralocal norms. The most adverged forms were associated with business executives having the most contacts outside the region, particularly with Paris. Older speakers (born 1905–1920) tended to use the broader regional features the most, while use of the velar nasal emerged as a strongly masculine feature. Other regional identities (e.g. Provençal, pays d’Aix, the traditional maritime variety of Marseille), although sensitive to gender differences, also correlated with the broader regional varieties.
Table 5.19
Nasal vowel realisations in Aix-en-Provence (Taylor, 1996: 88)
Broadest regional VN ,
V ff or VN
Regional VN ,
N
VN or V
Regional standard
Supra-local
˜N VV
˜ V
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 197
The nasal vowels are given a different treatment by Pickles (2001), whose analysis focusses on two parameters: presence or absence of a non-nasalised vowel followed by a nasal consonant and ‘nasal-vowel modification’, particularly the realisation of / A ˜ / as [˜ E], as in [peöpinj˜E] Perpignan. His data suggest that the vowels occurring most frequently in the corpus are most likely to be realised by localised V+N sequences. The modified nasal, however, proved to be a highly marginal variant with a mean of 3% for both locals and Maghrebians and a range of 0%–8%. Regrettably, given that the two regional variants discussed do not cover anything like the majority of cases, the study does not make it entirely clear which forms the school pupils used most of the time. With regard to oral vowels, four of the shibboleth minimal pairs of the prescriptive norm are generally not realised (e.g. Durand and Tarrier, 2003: 119): /a/ is generally front, /e/ generally high, /œ/ generally high and /O/ generally low. Several researchers (Taylor, 1996; Meisenburg, 2003; Durand and Tarrier, 2003; and Aurnague and Durand, 2003) note the pertinence of the loi de position, although the phonetic difference between the vowels is less marked than in supralocal French, and a number of exceptions have been noted. The most problematic context is what Taylor calls ‘pseudo-closed’ syllables, those which would be closed in supralocal French but in southern varieties are followed by a syllable whose nucleus is mute-e, as in mère, belle. For this context Taylor tentatively claims variability. Durand and Tarrier (2003: 119) suggest that the realisation of schwa may cause syllables of this type to behave as if closed, as in fête [fEt@], paume [pOm@], jeûne [Zœn@] and bêtement [bEt@mã]. Taylor’s findings (1996: 103ff.) regarding the variable phonetic characteristics of the front and back mid vowels /e/-/E/ and /o/-/O/ according to socio-regional variety are shown in Tables 5.20 and 5.21. For the E archiphoneme, the broadest regional accents are characterised by close variants (which may be as close as [e fl]) which many speakers use categorically. A slightly more open variant, which Taylor calls ‘emphatic’, as in c’est vrai! [sevKfl e], occurs in varieties classed as Table 5.20 Realisations of /e/-/E/ in Aix-en-Provence (Taylor, 1996: 105–11) Broadest regional
Regional
Regional standard
Supralocal
Word-final open syllables, e.g. lait, chantais [e fl] or [e]
[e] or [e fl]
[e], [e fl] or [E]
[e] or [E]
Word-final closed syllables, e.g. mer, sel [e]
[e], [e fl] or [E]
[e fl] or [E]
[E]
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
198 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 199 Realisations of /o/-/O/ in aube, robe in Aix-en-Provence (Taylor,
Broadest regional
Regional
Hyper-corrective Regional Standard
Supralocal
/6/
/6/-/O/
/6/-/o/
/o/-/O/
[6b@] [K6b@] [6b@] [K6b@] [6b(@)] [K6b(@)]
/o fl/-/O/
[o flb(@)][K6b(@)] [ob(@)][KOb](@)]
regional, if not of the broadest type. Variable use of [E], on the other hand, occurs only in the most standardised forms. In non-final closed and open syllables, Taylor (1996: 68) speaks of ‘free variation’, although certain sub-sets, e.g. items containing the clusters /ks/ and /gz/ like excuse and exemple were consistently pronounced with close variants. In word-final closed syllables, the raised variant [e fi] does occur and open variants are variable in regionally marked accents. For back-mid vowels in non-final open syllables, [o] is clearly the dominant form (Taylor, 1996: 72–3), but some influence of the supralocal variety can be seen, since items which have /o/, such as beauté, are realised with a greater proportion of close variants overall (89.6%) than items like botter which has /O/ in mainstream varieties (75.5%). In word-final closed (and pseudoclosed) syllables, open realisations of [O] or closer ([6]) were used in 90% of cases overall in contexts where /O/ would occur in standard varieties, e.g. robe. In items where standardised varieties have [o], such as aube, 81.3% of realisations were more open than standard /o/. The most marked regional variant, [6], is used across a considerable part of the community in the aube set, but only in the broadest regional accents in the robe set. In the more standardised varieties, the distribution of the variants is comparable to that of standardised varieties, although the close variant is variably lowered somewhat [o fl] in relation to such varieties. Curiously, Taylor’s data point to hypercorrections in the robe [Kob(@)] but not in the aube set. In items containing syllables closed by /z/ like chose, in which only the close variant occurs in standardised varieties, the main variants were [S6z(@)] (56%) and [SOz(@)] (34%), and again the broadest regional variants were associated with males, manual workers and Provençal speakers. The hypercorrect forms mostly correlated with claims of a town identity, and the usage of women. The consonantal features identified as southern by Martinet (1945) do not figure very prominently in recent sociolinguistic work, often meriting only cursory mention. Word-final consonant devoicing was observed in a minority of cases among a group of middle-class
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 5.21 1996: 76)
informants from Bordeaux (Temple, 2001: 157–8). Apical /r/ was consistently used only by the oldest speakers in Douzens (Durand and Tarrier, 2003), Salles-Curan (Pustka, 2007) and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (Aurnague and Durand, 2003), with middle-aged and younger speakers using only uvular variants. A strongly fricative variant of /r/ is noted in Perpignan (Pickles, 2001) This variant is shown to be a strong minority feature, with ‘locals’ showing 0% to 18% usage and the heaviest user, a Maghrebian, scoring 42%. Use of the palatal nasal /ñ/ is also losing ground to the sequence [nj], e.g. in Douzens (Durand and Tarrier, 2003), although its (possibly imminent) demise may simply parallel a change that has occurred in supralocal French. Diaeresis in items like nier and lion are noted in PFC studies, particularly in the speech of the oldest informants, in Lacaune (Lonnemann and Meisenburg, 2006), Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (Aurnague and Durand, 2003) and Douzens (Durand and Tarrier, 2003). The glottal fricative /h/ is much rarer, with only a single occurrence from the oldest informant from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in a reading passage, in the item le hasard [løhazar]. The lateral fricative, noted in Carton et al. (1983) and Walter (1982), but not by Martinet, occurs in the usage of three (older) subjects in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (Aurnague and Durand, 2003) in both reading and conversational styles, distinguishing pairs like étriller [etriLe] and étrier [etrije]. Unsurprisingly, the younger generations of this family do not use it. Unlike other regions of France, accents evoking the south are less stigmatised than those perceived as typical of other regions. Indeed, attenuated middle-class accents may be more highly rated than mainstream varieties (Taylor, 1996), and even those typical of perhaps the median classes are not automatically regarded as despised social dialects (Blanchet and Armstrong, 2006). That should not, however, be taken to imply all absence of stigmatisation. In Chauvin’s (1985) evaluative study, based on the judgements of local teachers on speech recordings of 11- and 12-year-old pupils in Martigues and Fos-sur-Mer, for example, pupils of Provençal origin received lower scores and were judged more negatively by locally born judges than their incomer classmates. Moreover, these ratings were matched by parallel negative ratings on two character traits: diligence and intelligence, on the basis of which the locally born pupils were less highly rated than their peers and more severely judged by teachers of local origin. Perceptions of ‘localness’ correlated strongly with word-final schwa, which also proved to be a highly sensitive social-class marker. Among middle-class
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
200 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
pupils Chauvin observed some shift towards supralocal schwa-deleting norms, whereas outsider working-class students shifted towards local norms through increased retention. Kuiper (2005) reports on a study in perceptual dialectology in which Parisian and Provence informants were asked to rate regional accents according to various criteria. For both Paris and Provence judges, Parisian French rated most highly for correctness, whereas the Provence accent was rated only 20th by the Parisians and 17th out of 24 by the judges from Provence. The other southern accents (Languedoc, Rhône-Alpes, Gascony) were by and large rated in the middle ranks (11th–17th by the Provençals and 8th–16th by the Parisians), below those of the northern regions (Centre, Touraine, Champagne, Burgundy, Normandy) but above those of eastern France and Belgium and Switzerland. With respect to pleasantness, on the other hand, the southern accents filled the top four places for the Provençal judges and were rated by the Parisians between first and 9th. Of all the regional accents, that of Marseille/Provence was the one of which Paris respondents believed they were most aware, and proved to be the one that the greatest number were prepared to imitate, or attempt to. This stereotypical otherness of Marseille speech finds support in much anecdotal evidence. Skimming French joke books by, for instance, Coluche (2000) and Jean Roucasse (1996), it is clear that the Marseillais is by far the most common regional stereotype, as proved to be the case for studies in perceptual dialectology carried out in Lille (Pooley, 2004), where the ‘accent de Marseille’ was mentioned by several informants, even when being questioned about varieties of Picard! High levels of migration to the south are no doubt an important factor in promoting levelling, but it may also be true that locally born young people are also converging towards supralocal norms. Wanner’s (1993) study of two small villages in the traditionally Catalan-speaking (Salses, Pyrénées-Orientales) and Occitan-speaking areas (Sigean, Aude) is highly suggestive in this respect. In response to the question: ‘Le français tel qu’on le parle dans le Languedoc-Roussillon est-il différent du français parlé à Paris?’, the highest proportion of positive responses came from the oldest respondents. This corresponds to their own linguistic practices, for in Wanner’s words (1993: 81) ‘Déjà les jeunes parlent souvent un français parisien presque parfait’. Kuiper (2005: 46) offers similar observations for his younger Provençal informants. These testimonies suggest strongly that among the generations born in the 1980s convergence towards supralocal norms has moved on apace, with middle-class and more highly educated young adults leading the way.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 201
202 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
What we have called the Dominant Southern Pattern (DSP) shows considerable vitality, although there are many indications that it is starting to recede, as younger and better educated speakers increasingly converge towards supralocal norms. This tendency is further promoted by many northerners moving south and showing little inclination to adopt southern norms, particularly in the middle or higher strata of society. However, it may be that working-class youngsters are more likely to be assimilated to the DSP (Chauvin, 1985), although new large-scale industries attracting large numbers of people from other parts of France are rare. The DSP concerns only vocalic features, with the possible exception of the velar nasal element in nasal vowels, and southern consonantal traits are heard only in the speech of the elderly, mostly living in small villages. Linguists have made much of the southern oral-vowel distribution, and the truism that most speakers conform variably to the loi de position, with close variants in greater favour than in mainstream varieties, is very largely borne out by the evidence. Some traditional varieties, like the Marseille speech described by Brun (1931) and exemplified by the Provence speaker in Carton et al. (1983), continue to show a degree of divergence, but the vitality of the pagnolesque ‘real Marseillais’ features (Binisti and Gasquet-Cyrus, 2003) is hardly confirmed even by a study now three-quarters of a century old. Indeed, Brun noted a considerable degree of continuing convergence towards the supralocal variety, an observation that can only be reinforced by more recent evidence. The dominant nasal-vowel variants seem to be slightly more weakly nasalised than is usual in supralocal French, possibly with a slight nasal off-glide, which is generally velar even in rural areas, where bilabial and dental variants were noted a few decades earlier. Southerners still pronounce more schwas than their counterparts in the rest of the country, although they are doing so to a lesser degree than in the past, with median or middle-class, younger and female speakers leading the change. While some scholars have hinted at sub-regional differences in the pronunciation of schwa, such detailed indications as are available, like Taylor (1996), suggest that local variants are indicative only of the broadest accents. It should be borne in mind that the realisation of schwa as a rounded central mid vowel [œ] or [ø] may well be a feature shared by most varieties of French. Martinet’s (1945) study of middle-class men born between 1880 and 1920 showed that at that time many southerners perceived their speech
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
5.13 Summary of the situation in southern France
to be closer to the prescriptive norm than the DSP on many points, like the /a/-/A/ distinction (31% or 44%) and realisation of nasal vowels without nasal consonant (42%). Perceived deletion rates for schwa were low, but the study showed variability. In contrast to this considerably converged vowel system, Martinet’s informants professed high use of regional consonant variants: apical and geminate /r/ (46%) and diaeresis in words with standard yod (72%), which recent studies have shown to be relic features. It is tempting to draw a parallel with what has occurred in northern England over the past few decades. Supralocal consonantal features like th-fronting have spread to the whole of England (Britain, 2005) while generalised northern vocalic features are displacing more localised variants (Watt and Milroy, 1999). If convergence towards supralocal norms affects consonants first, as Séguy’s (1951) description of Toulouse speech already suggested more than half a century ago, the dominance of the DSP in the middle decades of the 20th century (Séguy, 1951; Walter, 1982) would point to the equally plausible inference that broad regional norms (southern French, northern English) had emerged in the vowel system, such that speakers may be recognisably southern but not recognisably Provençal, Gascon or Languedocien for most outsiders (Woehrling and Boula de Mareüil, 2006). This is in line with one aspect of the levelling hypothesis we have been examining here.
Notes 1. There is, however, little recent documented evidence for this. Martinet (1945) did not designate a separate area for Alsace as different from eastern France more broadly understood. 2. The importance of the military garrison, which brings in residents from all parts of France, may mean that it is somewhat atypical. 3. The historical preponderance of perceptual studies unsubstantiated by behavioural data in French sociolinguistics, although now partly redressed, is nonetheless regrettable. 4. Brevet d’Etudes du Premier Cycle. Examination taken at the end of the collège, around the age of fifteen. 5. The success of the film Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008) has made imitating a Ch’ti accent fashionable but only in jest. 6. Gardner-Chloros (1991) quotes unpublished work by Bicker-Kaufmann. There is, as yet, no published analysis of PFC data from Strasbourg, Mulhouse and Boersch (www.projet-pfc.net). 7. These years of birth assume the latest possible date, i.e. 1968, given that the fieldwork was carried out between 1965 and 1968. 8. There is, as yet, no published analysis of the PFC data from Clermont-Ferrand. 9. A UK English example is the use of the standard vowel of door /O:/ in items which usually take the vowel of got /6/ e.g. off, Austria, Australia,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Levelling of Regional Varieties in France 203
characteristic both of highly conservative RP (the speech of Queen Elizabeth II) and broad Cockney (represented by the Alf Garnett stereotype). 10. The only exception is Walter’s informant from the Hautes-Alpes, who used it in only 38% of possible cases in word-final position (Pooley, 2007: 44). 11. In contrast to northern French, we assume the base form of southern French to include mute-e. 12. Elissa Pustka née Sobotta. These two studies are therefore by the same person.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
204 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Regional Vernacular Varieties and Language Levelling in Belgium and Switzerland
6.1 Overview In this chapter we discuss the evolution of vernacular varieties in francophone Belgium and Suisse romande since the 1960s and 1970s. As both territories are administratively federal with different substrate varieties, we propose a presentation based on broad regional divisions. This procedure exposes rather starkly that the available evidence has variable value, whether of fieldwork methodology, recency or geographical coverage. For Belgium, separate sections are devoted to the major territorial divisions of Brussels (with its traditional sociolinguistic divisions) and Wallonia, which can be sub-divided according to either the distribution of the traditional endogenous varieties or more recent perceptual accounts. For Switzerland, the fullest accounts (in geographical coverage) are based on perceptual studies carried out in the 1970s and 1980s, while more recent studies (perceptual and phonological) are heavily concentrated on one canton, the Vaud.
6.2 Brussels vernacular Apart from Hambye’s (2005) discussion of a single sociolinguistic variable, the realisation of /r/, our account of Brussels vernacular is based on what one can call the classic descriptions of Baetens-Beardsmore (1971, 1979), Walter (1982) and Francard (1989a). According to BaetensBeardsmore (1979: 227), the sociolinguistic profile of Belgian nationals in Brussels in the 1960s can be characterised in terms of bilingualism and diglossia (see Table 6.1). Baetens-Beardsmore notes four categories of monolinguals and two of bilinguals. Firstly, well-educated (cultivé) or middle- or upper-class 205
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
6
206 Social and Linguistic Change in European French Table 6.1 Sociolinguistic profile of Belgian nationals in Brussels in the mid-20th century
1. Educated, Brussels-born francophone monolingual 2. Working-class Brussels-born francophone monolingual 3. Brussels-born bilingual
Diglossia
Bilingualism
− (+)
−
+
+
4. Working-class Brussels-born Flemish monolingual
−
−
5. Flemish in-migrant
+
+
6. Walloon in-migrant
(+)
−
French speakers (Row 1 of Table 6.1), (as exemplified by the usage of JMB (Walter, 1982, discussed in Section 4.8), many of whom traditionally did not learn Flemish, and whose French differs in only minor ways from the supralocal variety; secondly, working-class French monolinguals (Row 2) who speak a marked local form of French, but may be able to switch to a more standard variety (hence the parenthetic + in the diglossia column). Walloon migrants who spoke their local endogenous variety were not considered bilingual – although they might well be today – but were deemed to make active use of H and L varieties in a diglossic situation. Monolingual French speakers who were in constant contact with working-class bilinguals might well use features prompted by language contact while retaining a recognisably native variety free of interference phenomena (Baetens-Beardsmore, 1979: 228). Row 4 lists working-class monolingual Flemish speakers who use mainly, if not exclusively dialectal Flemish, rarely using an H variety of Netherlandic. At the time of the fieldwork (1964–67), this group was ageing and in numerical decline. Neither Flemish nor Walloon migrants (Rows 5 and 6), nor indeed the certainly considerable number of commuters from Flanders and Wallonia, were perceived to exert a decisive innovative influence. All three accounts (Baetens-Beardsmore, 1971, 1979; Walter, 1982; Francard, 1989) focus on Category 3, Flemish L1 bilinguals (Brussels Brabançon variety) who readily code-mix and frequently code-switch. Baetens-Beardsmore also notes (1971: 58) the wide variety of pronunciation features in the speech of working-class bilinguals, ranging from relatively neutral accents to those bearing strong marks of Flemish influence. It is however these latter which are either described or exemplified in the
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Category
studies under review here and which also form the basis of the so-called Belgian accent reflected in the perception and mimicking of other francophones. By the time of Baetens-Beardsmore’s fieldwork, in contrast to migrants from Flanders, who maintained H and L varieties, speakers were observed to be abandoning the local Brabant dialect in favour either of a more standard variety of southern Netherlandic or French (BaetensBeardsmore, 1979: 242). In the 1950s Vekemans (1963: 6) had already observed language shift taking place, older people possessing the local variety of Flemish actively and younger people only passively, having French as their L1. Most of them, however, learned standard Dutch at school and spoke it rather haltingly while showing influences of the local Brabançon variety. Most Belgians are aware too of a mixed urban variety called Marollien, named after Marolles, one of the older working-class quarters of Brussels. The mythology surrounding this archetypal working-class variety was still showing sufficient vitality for Pohl (1953) to list its linguistic features and for Baetens-Beardsmore (1971: 53; 1979: 230) to discuss it, although he found no difference between the local French of Marolles and other areas of the city, while many of the features listed by Pohl are not exclusive even to a putative basilectal Marollien. Hennig (1926: 38) states that the variety had died out before 1914 and the fact that popular works of dialectology were being written in the mid-19th century by authors with comic pseudonyms such as Coco Lulu (Lefèvre, 1862), is highly suggestive of a variety already in decline and hence becoming stereotyped. One of Vekemans’ informants called this variety Bargoensch (derived from ‘baragouin’), seemingly in its origins the Dutch equivalent of the Parisian slang used by the criminal fraternity, with however most long-surviving words passing into more general usage, like tof ‘chic, beau, épatant’ and maf ‘fou, cinglé’. This implies the variety is not exclusive to Brussels or even Belgium. Flemish influence is readily audible in traditional L2 vernacular Belgian French in the realisation of the vowels, which in general are more open and lax than in Reference French. There is also clear influence of the stress timing of Netherlandic, causing vowels in stressed position to be lengthened or diphthongised and in unstressed position to be weakened to schwa or elided altogether (Table 6.2, drawing on Baetens-Beardsmore, 1971: 77; 1979: 234). The descriptions of Walter and Francard based on data gathered some fifteen to twenty years later (Tables 6.3 and 6.4) still show considerable Flemish influence, but in
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 207
208 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Front unrounded
Front rounded
Back
I/Ij
Y
U
øj
fiO
e/e
j
E/E
j
A/6
æ
Table 6.3 Oral vowels in open stressed syllables by working-class Brussels speaker (born 1896) of Flemish background (Walter, 1982) Front unrounded
Front rounded
Back
i:/I
y:/y
u:/U
j
e /e
E
ø
ou
O˛ a:
a
Table 6.4 Oral vowels in unstressed and closed syllables by working-class Brussels speaker (born 1896) of Flemish background (Walter, 1982) Front unrounded
Front rounded
Back
i: or ij /I
y
u:/U
e˛ or E
a
ø
ou
O a or a:
the later corpora the relative absence of vowel gradation (weakening to schwa), may with due caution be construed as pointing to convergence towards more widely distributed varieties. The following is a synthesis of marked Brussels vernacular as characterised by Baetens-Beardsmore, Walter and Francard. BaetensBeardsmore’s informants were of mature age in the 1960s and thus
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 6.2 Realisation of vowels in stressed position among working-class Brussels bilinguals in the 1960s (Baetens-Beardsmore, 1971: 76)
closely contemporary with VD (Walter) a woman born in 1896 (aged 80 at the time of the interview), a semi-skilled manual worker’s daughter who had worked as an embroiderer and later as a cleaner at Brussels city hall. Both her parents spoke Flemish, and she frequently switched codes. Francard’s (1989a) exemplar, named Eugène, can be assumed also to be from a modest background and to have been born a generation or so later (between 1915 and 1920). In their usage all three front vowels /i/, /e/ and /E/ tended to be lax in non-final stressed syllables and diphthongised or lengthened in word-final open syllables. High front /i/ was variably realised by the lax, slightly centralised vowel [I]. In certain lexical items, particularly those with , the vowel was variably lengthened, as in vie [vI:], and diphthongised in open final syllables, as in Paris [pAöIj ]. In unstressed syllables as in publicité, Baetens-Beardsmore, like Warnant (1997), noted vowel gradation and cases of variable elision typical of stress-timed languages, yielding [pYblIs(@)tej ]. The lax realisation of /e/ caused it also to be more open, roughly half-way between /e/ and /E/. In word-final position diphthongisation was frequent, as in elles sont fâchées [El s˜O fASej ], année [anej ] and [pej ] (Brussels vernacular for ‘bloke’). Weakening of open /e/ to schwa or elision were frequent, as in [b@tI;z] bêtise or [söYö] serrure. A raised variant was observed in non-final syllables of polysyllabic items, as in procession [pöfi Osesj˜O]. Diphthongisation was variable in word-final open syllables, as in la craie [lA krEj ], as was nasalisation before /n/, as in semaine [sm˜ E;n]. For open /e/, Eugène’s usage again differed from that of the other two accounts, as he used a long variant of /E/, as in [bE:t] bête. In many contexts the distinction between /a/ and /A/ was variably neutralised, as in lame and l’âme. For VD and Eugène, the contrast was realised by length rather than quality and was variably neutralised through an intermediate realisation. In certain specifiable contexts, e.g. before /r/, /a/ was variably raised to [æ] as in tard [tæö] and raised and rounded to [6] before postvocalic /l/, which was generally velarised, as in familial [fAmIlj6ì]. While pre-rhotic raised /a/ is a well-documented feature of generalised vernacular French, its occurrence here, as with velar /l/, seems clearly attributable to contact with Flemish, since [æ] was noted in other phonological contexts like blague [blæk]. Diphthongised variants also occurred, as in tijd [tA@ t] ‘time’, although the example quoted is a part of a clear code-switch: on a beau aller au lavoir chic’t was tijd. In unstressed syllables, /a/ had variable centralisation to [@] as in [ö@p@öe] réparer.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 209
The front close rounded vowel /y/ was realised with a lax [Y] variant in stressed syllables, as in une [Yn], and weakened to schwa in unstressed ones, as in culotte [k@lfi Ot]. When followed by <é>, /y/ was variably diphthongised, as in tué [tyw ej ]. Some variation across speakers was noted, in particular the tense realisation with possible length distinction of /y/ by VD, whereas Eugène’s most frequent realisation was lax, as in [rY] rue, [Zej zY] Jésus and [fIgYK] figure, where a lax variant of /i/ also occurred. The mid-vowel distinctions /ø/-/œ/ and /o/-/O/ were variably neutralised. In the examples quoted by Baetens-Beardsmore (1971: 73), the loi de position observed in most French varieties is reversed, with close variants in closed syllables [Zøn], as in jeune and jeûne, while the open variant was capable of being diphthongised in open syllables, e.g. feu [fœj ] or heureux [œrœj ]. In contrast, VD used a vowel of intermediate quality in all cases, whereas the reverse obtained for /o/-/O/, neutralised towards a sound of intermediate aperture transcribed as a raised variant of the open vowel of mainstream varieties [fi O] akin to the Flemish sound, as in: D’abord des files d’autos de reporters [dAbfi Oö de fIl dfiOtfiO d@ ö@pfiOötœ;ö]. VD and Eugène distinguished /o/ from /O/ quite clearly in items like beau [bou ]. Like /E/, [fi O] was variably nasalised before /n/, as in bonnes [b˜ Ofin]. Finally /u/ tended to be realised with a lax pronunciation, most audibly before dark /l/ as in foule [fUì]. All three descriptions note four nasal-vowel distinctions, as in principe [pöE˜sIp], wallon [wAl˜ ˜ and France [fö A ˜ s]. None of fiO], un [œ] Baetens-Beardsmore’s transcriptions indicate vowel lengthening, while Warnant’s (1997) description suggests it is far from uncommon. As the examples cited indicate, schwa resulting from vowel gradation was susceptible to elision, as in naturellement [nAtöElm A ˜ ] or procureur [pöfi Oköœ;ö]. Word-final sequences canonically characterised by obstruent + liquid + schwa were variably subject to metathesis to [@] + liquid, as in marbre [mArb@r] or article [ArtIk@l]. Intrusive schwa between consonants is frequent in Flemish, as in melk ‘milk’ [mEl@k]. The main characteristic of the consonants of marked Brussels French is the devoicing of canonically voiced consonants, particularly in wordfinal position, as in Antibes [ A ˜ tIp], merde [mErt], réserve [rezErf], gueuze [gœ;s] and belge [bElS]. Since Flemish, like most varieties of Netherlandic, has no voiced velar stop in its phonemic inventory, French /g/ may be realised with its voiceless correlate, as in Camargues [kAmArk]. Sometimes the voiced velar fricative [7] characteristic of Flemish may occur, in any of the main phonological contexts, word-finally as in fatigue [fAtI7], word-medially as in magasin [mA7Az˜ E] and initially as in grave [7öAf]. Sequences of /sk/ tend to be pronounced with a markedly backed fricative as in scandale [sχ A ˜ dAì].
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
210 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Devoicing is not restricted to word-final position, and word-medial assimilations may occur, e.g. ontvangen [fi OtfAN@], échevin [ESf˜E] and confiserie [k˜Ofs@öI]. In Netherlandic, pairs such as /p/ and /b/ can be differentiated by the greater degree of tension in the voiceless variant. That said, canonically voiced or voiceless consonants may be realised by an intermediate sound capable of interpretation as voiced by a French listener, e.g. [bAö A ˜ ] parent. Hypercorrect voiced forms are not uncommon, e.g. [z A ˜ dwIS] sandwich and [tK A ˜ sIzj˜O] transition. As the transcriptions cited suggest, there are three main realisatons of /r/: firstly an apical rolled variant [r] typical of most varieties of Flemish; secondly a uvular approximant characteristic of both Standard Dutch and mainstream varieties of French [K]; and thirdly a strongly fricative uvular variant, often described as ‘guttural’, transcribed as [ö] by Baetens-Beardsmore but possibly tending towards a strongly fricative [χ ] or pharyngeal variant [è]. As already mentioned, /l/ is realised by an apical (clear) variant pre-vocalically and a velar variant post-vocalically as in l’Hôtel Colbert [lfi OtEì kfiOìbE;r]. The velar variant, as cited above, favours a rounded realisation of back /a/ as in local [lfi Ok6ì] and a lax variant of /u/ as in foule [fUì]. Liquid consonants that become word-final through the elision of schwa are often elided after obstruents, as in rendre [ö A ˜ t] and or capable [kapAp]. The obstruents themselves, as in the examples, may be devoiced. Another characteristic shared with Picard-influenced varieties in Wallonia and northern France is the occurrence of /l/ where mainstream French varieties have /j/; this is because [L], the so-called ‘l mouillé’, did not develop in the northernmost marches of the Romance domain. This results in forms like [bUìwAö] bouilloire and [Aìjœ;ö] ailleurs. Although the traditional Flemish dialect of Brussels has the palatal nasal /ñ/, it varies with [nj] before /e/ in the French of these speakers, as in panier [pAnjej ] and accompagner [Ak˜OpAnjej ]. As the contact variety has no /h/, Brussels French unsurprisingly has none. As with most varieties of French spoken in Belgium, the marked Brussels pronunciation has only two glides, with [w] replacing the front /4/ of Reference French.
6.3 Regional varieties in Wallonia – substrate and perceptions Although Oïl varieties enjoy greater vitality in Wallonia than elsewhere, they are undeniably recessive as social practices. The rather sanguine
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 211
estimates of Kloss, McConnell and Verdoodt (1989), based on data gathered in the 1970s and early 1980s, suggested that 59% of the population had knowledge of the endogenous languages, compared to figures cited barely a decade later by Fauconnier (1998) and Francard (1999b), which put the proportion at around 30% to 40%, reduced further to between 15% and 30% by Lemaire (2009: 3). Francard underlines the large generational differences: 70%–80% for the over 60s (birth year up to around 1930) compared to around 10% of ‘young people’ (born since 1960, say). Any such vitality might be thought to maintain language contact, with the result that regional accents within Wallonia should be differentiated along the lines of the substrate dialects, shown in Map 6.1. Two of the varieties, Gaumais (Lorrain) and Champenois, are both geographically and demographically marginal and the most markedly recessive (Francard, 1999b: 21). The dialectal divisions defined by Lechanteur (1997: 85) as between Picard, West Walloon (Wallo-Picard), Central (Namurois), Eastern (Liègeois) and Southern Walloon (Wallo-Lorrain)
Map 6.1 The traditional dialect regions of Wallonia (Rossillon, 1995: 57; Lechanteur, 1997: 85)
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
212 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
find no clear reflection in the mental geography of French accents in Belgium. Some scholars like Francard (1999b, 2001) argue that accents are emerging around a small number of large urban areas, particularly Brussels, Liège and Charleroi, where between 40% and 50% of francophones live, and to a lesser extent Mons, Namur and possibly Tournai. Perceptual studies by researchers in Mons have shown that Belgian informants can reliably distinguish Belgian from French accents (between 89% and 95% of ‘correct answers’; Moreau and Brichard, 1999), although these figures are considerably higher than those quoted by Brichard (1991), (56%–67%). As regards the identification of regional accents within Belgium, correct answers dropped dramatically to between 6% and 7.8%. Older subjects proved more capable of identifiying regional accents than younger, men than women and middle-class than working-class subjects (Bauvois, 1996). A study by Bauvois and Diricq (1999) took recordings of twenty informants from each of five cities (Brussels, Liège, Charleroi, Mons and Tournai) evenly divided by age and gender. The recordings, stripped of regionally marked lexis or other references, were played to 120 judges from Mons having three educational levels (lower-secondary; upper-secondary/tertiary; university) over four age groups (15, 21, 30–40, 65–75). The judges were asked to locate the speakers in relation to Mons according to cardinal points of the compass and to fourteen towns and cities shown on a map. Overall, they identified the urban area of origin correctly in around one case in four. The score for broad regional identification was slightly lower, but would have risen to close to one in two had the regions been deduced from the names of cities in the responses given (as was the case in Bauvois, 1996). The judges evaluated other accents in relation to Mons, suggesting broadly that they perceived three regions: west of Mons (Tournai, Mouscron); east of Mons (Charleroi, Liège, Namur); north of Mons (Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, Ostend). Charleroi was perceived as relatively similar to Mons, despite its different substrate (Map 6.1). The overall results are far from clear. For Mons the proportion of correct responses varies little, whether one takes the proportion of all responses or all responses where the city is mentioned (32.8%–33.2%). Compared to the other cities, however, the difference is considerable, since by the first criterion Mons is the most reliably identified origin and by the second, fourth out of five. In other words, when one of the three other cities was mentioned (Liège, Tournai, Brussels), the rate of correct answers was higher.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 213
This picture, based loosely on the perceived varieties of large urban centres, receives some confirmation through the relative absence of Oïl substrate features in vernacular varieties. Of 32 ‘dialect’ features (22 of which are phonetic and ten morphological) listed by Remacle (1972), only three can be claimed to be widely noted in regional varieties of French. These are: word-final consonant devoicing (WFCD); a long open variant of /i/ which may be diphthongised, e.g. vie [vij] or [vEj]; and use of /h/ in the ‘aspirate h’ set exemplified by hêtre [hEtö]. It is arguable that WFCD is more widespread in French than in Walloon, since l’Atlas linguistique de la Wallonie (Remacle, 1953: 62) shows considerable variability, with speakers from certain areas, notably in the south of the arrondissement of Dinant and the southerly part of the province of Luxembourg, and those from locations near the national border with France not using the feature (Hambye, 2005: 131). Like WFCD, long, lax and sometimes diphthongised variants of vowels, including /i/, are common to both Brussels and eastern Wallonia. Use of /h/, on the other hand, is restricted to eastern Wallonia.
6.4 Descriptions in the 1970s and 1980s In this section we summarise the descriptions of Walter’s (1982) lone Walloon informant and four of the exemplars from Francard (1989a), comparing their findings with those of the wealth of inventories of Belgian vernacular features: Grégoire (1956); Remacle (1969); BaetensBeardsmore (1971, 1979); Piron (1979, 1985); Pohl (1983, 1985, 1986); Reuse (1987); Warnant (1997); Ball (1997); Klinkenberg (1999, 2000a, 2000b); Pöll (2001); Francard (2001) and Hambye, Francard and Simon (2003). Most of the listings (exceptions to this are Grégoire, whose aim is to correct ‘les vices de la parole’, Baetens-Beardsmore, who of course focusses on Brussels, and Reuse who concentrates on Charleroi) are descriptive in intent, and attempt to cover the whole of francophone Belgium, perhaps encouraging a more unitary perspective than the discourses to do with regional identity previously noted might suggest. Walter’s informant, MLL, from la Roche-en-Ardenne, born in 1923, was a French-Walloon bilingual whose parents spoke only Walloon, although they understood French. The daughter of a farmer, married to a carpenter, she had received limited secondary education and had followed her mother by working from home as a seamstress and later as a hotel chambermaid. Although Francard (1989a) contains sequences recorded by speakers from Verviers, Charleroi, Namur, La Calamine (German-speaking area), Bastogne, Mons and Mouscron, we discuss here only the first four.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
214 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
The other three were for various reasons of limited use for our current purposes: the Bastogne extract focusses on two elderly men speaking Walloon who, however, switch briefly to regionally accented French when speaking to the primary-age grand-daughter of one of them; the Mouscron sequence illustrates a range of phenomena – the influence of local varieties of Flemish, from the immediately adjacent part of Flanders, the influence of Picard as well as a relatively unmarked accent; and the Mons exemplar is an Italian woman, who, having lived for decades in Mons, is cited as an example of a well-integrated migrant whose foreign accent is claimed to new add colour to the already varied linguistic palette of Belgium. The non-supralocal French features are listed in Table 6.5 in descending order of likelihood of occurrence. While some caution is required Table 6.5 Features of marked accents in five locations in Wallonia (based on Walter, 1982; Francard, 1989a) R-en-A
Verv
Char
Nam
La Cal
Word-final consonant devoicing
+
+
+
+
+
Lax realisations of /i/ /y/ /u/
+
+
+
+
+
/œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ distinction realised
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
Nasal vowels realised long
+
+
Long or diphthongised /e/ or /E/
+
+
+
Long [a:] for /A/
+
+
+
Long /œ/
+
/wi/ as in lui
+
Disyllabic pronunciations
+
Incomplete nasalisation
Orthographic ie realised long [i:]
+
Realisation of /h/, as in hêtre
+
Nasal vowels fronted or raised
+
Backed realisation of /r/
+
+
+ +
+
+
+
Close /o/ before /r/
Neutralisation of /o/-/O/
+ +
+
Long /o/
+
+ +
+ + + +
Key: R-en-A = La Roche-en-Ardenne; Verv = Verviers; Char = Charleroi; Nam = Namur; La Cal = La Calamine.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 215
in interpreting the tabulation as an implicational hierarchy, given the possibility of chance gaps, comparison with the numerous overviews listing Belgian regional and vernacular features suggests that with some exceptions, discussed below, items occurring in three or more of the sequences can be considered characteristic of most Belgian vernacular varieties, while features occurring in only two columns may be considered regionally restricted, and the two features occurring in only one column appear to be more supralocal, but not generalised in the speech of the selected subjects, largely because of a number of lexical restrictions. Some of these features, notably WFCD, the maintenance of the /a/-/A/ and /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ contrasts, diaeresis in items like scier and the absence or restricted distribution of /4/ have already been shown to be compatible both with prestige varieties (Section 4.8) and vernacular Brussels accents (Section 6.2). In some cases the features need to be more narrowly defined to show acknowledged regional or social differences. With regard to geographical restrictions, a velarised realisation of back /a/ is likely to be heard in western Wallonia (Picard substrate) or Brussels. Weakened realisations of vowels in polysyllables, such as téléphone [tEl@fOn] are characteristic of both Brussels and eastern Wallonia. The fronting of / A ˜ / to [˜a] and the raising of /˜ E/ towards [˜e] seem to be characteristic of eastern Wallonia (La Roche-en-Ardenne, La Calamine), as is the realisation of /h/ as in hêtre (La Roche-en-Ardenne, Verviers). Diaeresis carries much more social marking if reinforced by a glide, as in scier [sije], tuer [tywe] or louer [luwe]. Vowel-lengthening can justly be described as an old-fashioned standard feature if it marks masculine-feminine distinctions, as in fumée [fyme:] and amie [ami:], but not if reinforced by a glide as in [fyme:j] or [ami:j]. Cases where vowel-lengthening occurs without phonemic contrast as in [pöOblE:m] problème, [aöE:n] arène, [E:l] aile and [lE:s] laisse, are generally construed as vernacular. Similarly, while lax realisation of high vowels has been shown to be compatible with Brussels middle-class usage (Walter, 1982), lax realisation of mid-vowels tends to be more marked, e.g. téléphone [tElEfOn] crapule [köapøl], except in the case of common monosyllables such as les, mes, ces pronounced e.g. [lE], where they can be interpreted as old-fashioned standard. The neutralisation of /o/-/O/ may be taken as a sign of levelling rather than divergence from supralocal French, since historically the distinction could occur in open syllables, permitting differentiation of sot and seau. Not only do such pronunciations run counter to the loi
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
216 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
de position, but other forms are also divergent, such as fosse [fOs] or restaurant [öEsto:ö A ˜ :], both of which can occur in generalised vernacular French. Lengthening is widely noted for the nasal vowels, but not the rather weak nasalisation which seems to emerge from analysis of the exemplars in Francard (1989). The traditional stigmatisation of marked Walloon accents can be encapsulated in the term wallonner as characterised by Remacle (1969: 70): Pour caractériser en général la manière dont les Wallons prononcent le français, on peut dire qu’ils “wallonnent”, ou, en d’autres termes, qu’ils parlent avec une lourdeur pâteuse. Remacle adds that the impression of slow speech-rate is largely conveyed by vowel lengthening, but this has been shown to be sociolinguistically complex, ranging from realisations compatible with the prestigious to the highly stigmatised. This is not to say that stigmatisation is an automatic precursor to loss, as Thiam’s (1995) study of apical /r/ in the Borinage demonstrates (Section 6.6). The distinction between prestigious and generalised vernacular Belgian features is nevertheless far from clear-cut, as three mnemonic sequences show. Pohl (1985) proposed L’ourse brun pâle est enrouée [luKsbKœpa ˜ : lE t A ˜ Kue:] where WFCD and realisations such as [lwi] lui are not exemplified, in contrast to Hella’s model sentence (1991, quoted in Francard: 2001: 266) Ces huit Belges n’aiment pas les sots [sEwibElSnEmpalEsO], which also features open /o/ in an open syllable. An earlier sequence used by Pohl (1979: 36), huit chaînes trop larges [wiSE˜ntKOlaKS], widens the sociolinguistic spectrum further by adding nasalised vowels. As will become apparent from the following sections, recent variationist work is insufficient both in quantity and scope to clarify many of the questions raised by the classic descriptions of Belgian French, since it focusses understandably on a rather limited subset of the items discussed in this section, as well as on a number of widely occurring vernacular forms.
6.5 Variationist studies The sites selected for study (Table 6.6) in a variationist perspective only partly reflect perceptions of the regional distribution of accents, and cover only a fairly narrow range of variables (six in total, if only those
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 217
218 Social and Linguistic Change in European French Table 6.6 The locations of recent sociolinguistic studies in Belgium
Mons arrondissement ville
Population
249,878 91,196
Borinage Brussels
142,196 67,844
Liège arrondissement ville
594,597 188,907
∗
WFCD, WFPOLD (Bauvois, 2001, 2002a, 2002b) + other variables listed in Table 6.11 Apical /r/ (Thiam, 1995)
1,031,215
Tournai arrondissement ville
Gembloux
Variables studied
22,074
/r/ (SAV), ∗ (Hambye, 2005, 2008) WFCD, /r/(SAV∗ ), schwa (Hambye, 2005, 2008) Vowel length, /r/ (SAV), schwa (Hambye, 2005, 2008) WFCD, /r/ (SAV), schwa (Hambye, 2005; 2008)
strongly articulated variant
studied in conversational style by Bauvois (2002a, 2002b) are taken into account). In addition to this rather restricted linguistic range, only apical /r/ in the Borinage and vowel lengthening in penultimate syllables in Liège can be interpreted as regional features within Belgium, the others having social-class value (schwa, WFPOLD, strongly articulated variants of /r/) or WFCD, which is pan-Belgian but also occurs in Switzerland and certain regions of France, where its social meaning is radically different from Belgium. Given the small number of studies under review and the significant differences in methodology, we have chosen to discuss the Borinage in Section 6.6, Mons in 6.7 and Hambye’s PFC-inspired study in 6.8, before reviewing those aspects of perceptual studies focussing on regional vernacular usage (6.9).
6.6 The Borinage (Thiam, 1995) Thiam’s (1995) study of the use of a traditional dialectal feature in the local Borinage pronunciation of French, alveolar /r/, shows it to possess continuing vitality among speakers of all social classes, although it is recessive. Thiam depicts the community as post-diglossic, with few subjects expressing themselves spontaneously in the local variety of Picard, although in the 1960s, Ruelle (1981) noted a substantial minority of Picard speakers, even among children. Apical /r/ is the most frequently cited feature of local speech (77.6% of the sample).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Location
Map 6.2 Mons-Borinage
Despite having a remarkably strong sense of identity, the Borinage is ill-defined territorially, although Quaregnon is seen as its heartland (other communes are Jemappes, Frameries, Dour, Hornu, Wasmes, Boussu and Pâturages). Crucially, contrary to the current administrative arrangements shown in Map 6.2, the area is or was felt to be separate from Mons. The traditional economic mainstay of the region, coal-mining, fell into terminal decline after a short-lived post-World War II boom, leaving by the 1960s an area in crisis as the pits closed. Despite this demise of the main industry, the local sense of identity remained strong, so much so that even local politicians had been known to use alveolar /r/ to connect with their voters. According to Thiam (1995: 91–2), the use of this local variant is part of a package signalling a ‘true’ Borain, imbued with proletarian values typical of mining communities, whose
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 219
members see themselves as open-hearted, hard-working, plain-speaking and fun-loving. The sample divides into four age groups (35 subjects aged 10–12; 30 aged 18–25; 30 in the 30–50 range and 25 over 55) and three levels of education, (the 10- to 12-year-olds were too young to fulfil the educational criteria): A (Higher), having completed secondary education and possibly some higher education; B (Intermediate), with four years of secondary education; C (Lower), having left school without the leaving certificate, the traditional target qualification for pupils from workingclass backgrounds. Subjects were recorded in a three-part interview in which they were firstly asked set questions about what it meant to be a ‘true Borain’; secondly the reading of an encyclopaedia article defining the territorial limits of the area; and thirdly, a phase of conversation. Use of data was quite selective in that the first occurrence of seven key words, such as Borinage, Quaregnon and Dour was counted in each phase of the interview, giving 21 tokens for each of the 120 informants. This restricted character of the lexical data might well have encouraged greater use of the local variant, since local toponyms could be focal points of identity and be pronounced in traditional ways more readily than other vocabulary items. That said, Thiam reported considerable style shift between the reading task (with higher use of uvular variants) and spontaneous conversation. In conversation, the figures in Table 6.7 still point to a decline in the use of alveolar /r/, which is used by only a minority of speakers under 50, as against the majority of subjects over 55, in both cases cutting across level of education used as a social-class index. The one puzzling feature of Table 6.7 is the higher proportion of [r]-users among the youngest age group, compared to the 30–50 year olds. The analysis by gender shown in Table 6.8 suggests that alveolar /r/ is becoming a strongly masculine feature. That conceded, the Table 6.7 Proportion of sample using alveolar [r] and uvular [ö] or both variants [ö±] in the Borinage, by education and age (Thiam, 1995: 83) 18–25
Higher Inter Lower
30–50
Over-55s
[ö]
[r]
[ö±]
[ö]
[r]
[ö±]
[ö]
[r]
[ö±]
60.0 60.4 30.0
40.0 33.8 65.2
0 5.7 4.7
70.0 44.7 20.0
21.9 43.8 75.2
8.1 11.4 4.7
36.3 29.1 25.0
57.7 61.7 75
5.9 9.1 0
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
220 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 221 Table 6.8 Proportion of sample using alveolar [r] and uvular [ö] or both variants [ö±] in the Borinage, by education, age and gender (Thiam, 1995: 84) 30–50
Over-55s
[ö]
[r]
[ö±]
[ö]
[r]
[ö±]
[ö]
[r]
[ö±]
Higher M F
40.0 80.0
60.0 20.0
0 0
60.0 80.0
32.4 11.4
7.6 8.6
21.4 51.2
75.0 40.5
3.6 8.3
Inter
M F
60.0 60.9
40.0 27.6
0 11.4
29.5 60.0
59.0 28.6
11.4 11.4
14.3 44.0
73.0 50.0
6.1 5.9
Lower
M F
20.0 40.0
80.0 50.5
0 9.5
0 40.0
90.5 60.0
9.5 0
25.0 25.0
75.0 75.0
0 0
point of age differentiation for women seems to be around 55, with an identical proportion of women using [ö] in both younger age groups for each of the three levels of education. The scores for the 10- to 12-yearolds show comparable gender differences (56.9% for boys and 41.3% for girls). It would be interesting to see whether the same informants, particularly female, now in their 20s, have maintained this behaviour into adulthood. For men the situation is somewhat less clear-cut. For those having four years of secondary education, Table 6.8 shows a decline across the generations, with three-quarters of the over-55s and only 40% of the 18–25 group using [r]. Among the least well-educated males, the proportion of [r] users remains high and more of the under-50s use it than the over-55s. Among the men with the highest level of education, the alveolar variant shows a dipped pattern, with more of the youngest group using it than the 30–50s, though without a return to the proportions among the over-55s. It would appear that a shift to the uvular variant led by the women with the highest level of education has been halted and to some degree reversed. The apical variant symbolising local identity tends unsurprisingly to be a masculine feature, while still being used by some women from each of the socio-economic categories. The study looks of course only at people who have stayed in the area, and one can ask whether the school pupils would be so firmly attached to the region once they realised the restricted job opportunities available. Moreover, all but three of the adult informants had mining connections in their close family. The three ‘outliers’ did not share the same sense of local identity professed by the others. The maintenance of the local variant appears to be a conscious act of resistance against levelling norms
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
18–25
222 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
working through the nearby urban centre of Mons, perceived as a ‘ville de riches’ where people ‘fransquillonnent’.
The work of Moreau and Bauvois (1998) and Bauvois (2001, 2002a, 2002b) is sociologically innovative in seeking not only to analyse the speech of people from all social strata, but in attempting also to go beyond the functional or linear model of Anglo-American variationist studies to reflect the French sociological tradition, as exemplified in the work of Bourdieu which sees individuals rather in a multidimensional social space. These scholars nevertheless defined social class in a largely Labovian manner, using a combined index covering educational achievement, income and professional status (‘prestige professionnel’). This last was based on a four-point scale derived from the classification of Chambaz, Maurin and Torelli (1998) on the basis of 3,600 responses covering 122 occupations. This study set out to show the increasing premium placed on job security and worker autonomy, to the relative detriment of paper qualifications, although level of remuneration remains a key element of professional status. The researchers felt obliged to adjust upwards the scale of educational achievement (Table 6.9) to reflect the fact that people are now spending longer in full-time education and going to university than a few decades ago.1 Bauvois attempted to factor in other elements used by Trudgill (1974) to define social class, such as area of residence and type of housing, by devising a four-point scale of local taxation rates (‘revenu cadastral’). She also extended Labov’s social mobility index by taking into account the mother’s profession as well as the father’s. Given the criticisim levelled at Labov and Trudgill for classifying married women not in paid employment according to their husbands’ occupation, Bauvois added a category for all informants, both female and male, classifying them Table 6.9 Four-point scale of levels of educational achievement used in Mons studies (Bauvois, 2002a, 2002b) 4. Diplôme universitaire 3. Diplôme de l’enseignement supérieur de temps court 2. Diplôme de l’enseignement secondaire ou technique 1. Diplôme primaire ou professionnel ou moins
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
6.7 Mons (Moreau and Bauvois, 1998; Bauvois, 2001, 2002a, 2002b)
according to their spouse’s profession. Social mobility was measured, as in Labov’s study, by any difference in social prestige and qualifications required between the subject’s first job and his or her current occupation. More interestingly, Bauvois adds a subjective evaluation of her informants’ social status, potentially different from the results of the ‘objective’ criteria. While readers interested in the detailed breakdown of the results are referred to Bauvois (2002a: 89–301) or the appendix in Bauvois (2002b: 233–52), what emerges is that the individual factors making up the social-class index are no more discriminating than the combined index, with which of course they overlap. Some, such as levels of local taxation, are secondary, providing few additional insights. The study is commendable for the number of informants covered: no fewer than 96, divided equally by gender and spread evenly over the four social classes defined by the combined index similar to Labov’s. But it is fairly unsurprising that the initial selection criteria proved the most crucial. With regard to social mobility, father’s occupation was a more reliable predictor than that of the mother, possibly because the father’s profession tends to determine the level of family income over a long period, against the career breaks more typically taken by women. The subjective evaluation suggested that women were more likely to overrate and men to underrate their social status in relation to the objective factors presented above. The informants were chosen for their local origins; all were born in Mons (including Frameries and Quaregnon, Figure 6.2) and had spent on average 80% of their lives in the area. Bauvois deliberately eliminated the age factor by selecting informants over a relatively narrow range, between 33 and 42. They were interviewed individually at the researcher’s home. Some were better known to the researcher, and/or more at ease in her presence. Bauvois took the view that these reactions were quite disparate in relation to the informants’ social characteristics, and therefore did not in any way distort the overall results. Table 6.10 lists the variables studied, only two of which, WFPOLD (5) and WFCD (6), were analysed in conversational style, based on informants’ response to the investigator’s request to recount the most important event of their lives. Otherwise, subjects were asked to perform two tasks: firstly a Definition task (D), in which informants were asked to offer a word on the basis of a dictionary definition or, if necessary, a gap-filling exercise, e.g. case defined as ‘dans les pays tropicaux, habitation en paille, en branches d’arbres’ or if a further prompt were needed,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 223
224 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Variable
Examples
1
Affrication: [dj]-[dZ]; [tj]-[tS]
dieu, étudiant, radio, Thierry, quartier, tiers
2
Diaeresis in sequences containing glides plus vowel in supralocal French [j˜O]-[i˜O]; [ue]-[uwe]; [4e]-[ye]
lion, ciel, souhaiter, avouer, buée
3
Reduction of [lj] sequences to [j]
escalier, milieu, million
4
Addition of ichlaut (voiceless palatal fricative) to word-final vowel [i]-[ix]
merci
5
WFPOLD: Liquid dropping (/r/and /l/) after obstruent in word-final position, e.g. centre [sA ˜ t]; siècle [sjEk] or [siEk]
propre, disciple, encre, miracle, chiffre, gifle
6
Word-final consonant devoicing (WFCD); [b]-[p]; [d]-[t]; [g]-[k]; [v]-[f]; [z]-[s]; [Z]-[S].
jambe-rampe; cède-sept; bague-bac; bave-baffe; case-casse; sage-sache; brigue-brique
7
Schwa after voiced consonant
8
Average difference in vowel length before voiced and voiceless word-final consonants.
9
Silence before word-final consonant
10
Vowel lengthening in orthographic sequences , and <ée> compared to , and <é>, potentially followed by an orthographic consonant
lit-lie, bout-boue, cru-crue
La _____ de l’Oncle Tom; secondly, a Reading Exercise (R), using 100 sentences containing key words, often in final position.3 Two variables, (8 and 9), were analysed instrumentally. The results are presented in Table 6.11. The range of percentage frequencies given in the right-hand column of Table 6.11 is assumed to reflect variation across social-class differences. Perhaps the most significant result is that diaeresis emerges as a strong majority variant even in the formal tasks, in contrast to the other variants, with the exception of schwas before a voiced consonant, which are clear minority forms. The stylistic variation between the definition and reading tasks is by no means consistent, although some variables, particularly the reduction of [lj], correlate strongly with social class (SC4 reducing very little and SC1 considerably more).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 6.10 Variables selected for study in Bauvois (2002a, 2002b)2
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 225 Table 6.11 Overall percentage frequencies of occurrence in Mons study (Bauvois 2002a, 2002b) for Definition (D), Reading (R) and Conversation (C) tasks for seven variables D
R
C
Affrication Diaeresis Reduction of [lj] Ichlaut WFPOLD WFCD Schwa after voiced C
27 81 20 4 6 18 45
26 79 6 4 3 20 38
38 38
Range 4–59 (R) 72–87 (R) 0–18 (R) 6–25 (R) 10–66 (C) 19–61 (C) 12–58 (D)
The conversational data suggest that low scores in the formal tasks (as is the case for WFPOLD) do not necessarily imply that the variants concerned are marginal or confined to older speakers from the lower social classes, especially if one also bears in mind the overall mean of over 22% for WFCD in a different sample of Montois university students (Moreau and Bauvois, 1998). In Table 6.12 the cross-tabulation of all social categories with gender, the principal focus of the Bauvois studies, produces some curious results. At the higher and lower ends of the social spectrum, the patterns of stratification are as would be expected – Social Class 4 using considerably more prestige variants than SC1 and women scoring higher than men of equivalent social status. For SC2 and SC3, the patterns Table 6.12 Frequencies of use of two variables across three styles by gender and social class (Bauvois, 2002a) Definition
Reading
Conversation
men
women
men
women
men
women
67 12 20 6
51 28 12 2
62 24 24 1
51 30 18 1
60 36 34 20
61 52 21 19
29 2 1 0
13 1 0 0
11 3 0 0
11 0 0 0
60 27 10 29
66 45 27 15
WFCD SC1 SC2 SC3 SC4 WFPOLD SC1 SC2 SC3 SC4
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Variable
are rather patchy when correlated with gender. For instance, women in SC2 drop more liquids and devoice more than their male counterparts, whereas SC3 displays a more traditional pattern. When one looks at each gender separately, however, far clearer patterns of social stratification emerge, particularly if apparent irregularities turn out not to be significant. Taking the results for the conversational style, men from SC1 use the vernacular forms considerably more than their counterparts from the higher social classes. For WFCD, men from SC2 and SC3 behave similarly, with frequencies intermediate between those of SC1 and SC4. The low score for liquid deletion by men from SC3 requires some comment. This socially odd distribution is replicated in the graph showing correlations to the professional status of the spouse (Bauvois, 2002a: 157) and the combined educational attainments of both parents (p. 161) but it is not replicated for annual income (p. 154), the father’s (p. 160) and mother’s level of education (p. 158), their professional status (father, p. 162; mother, p. 159) or indeed by any of the subjective evaluations (p. 167). Women, on the other hand, show a much more graduated stratification across the social range with SC1 and SC2 and SC3 and SC4 relatively similar to one another and each pair dissimilar from the other. In an earlier study, Bauvois (2001) conducted a series of three experiments focusing exclusively on WFCD, using only completion and reading tasks. In all three studies, the informants were students, with an average age of 20. As in the study already described, the informants were from Mons, and had lived at least 80% of their lives in the area. In the first study 80 students were following courses of socially differentiated status, in ascending order: ‘professionnel’, ‘technique’, ‘graduat’ and ‘universitaire’. In the second, 60 students training for three different professions, nursing, primary-school teaching and youth work, were asked to perform the tasks described above. In the third experiment, the focus was on the effect of the researcher. Four interviewers (two male, two female, two French, two Belgian) interviewed a total of 96 higher-education students (both university and non-university) evenly divided among the four researchers. The results show significant social stratification with consistent but not statistically significant gender differentiation. Unexpectedly, the women informants devoiced more than the men. In terms of social mobility, calculated by the difference in the number of years of study between the subject and his or her father or mother or a combined score for both parents, it was the intermediate of three levels of mobility, which included the women,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
226 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
who devoiced the most and the men the least. With regard to the effect of the interlocutor, informants devoiced more with the female interviewers than the male and with the Belgian more than the French investigators. Bauvois’ results gave some confirmation to the findings of a previous study by Lafontaine (1986) on primary-school teachers suggesting that in this highly feminised profession which serves nonetheless as a linguistic role-model, men tend to use more standard forms than their female colleagues, as if they believed that greater effort was required of them. On the other hand, in another highly feminised profession, nursing, gender differentiation was not significant, although the men devoiced more in the completion test. For both genders, trainee nurses devoiced the most, followed by the youth workers, with the primary-school teachers devoicing less than the other two groups. The differences between the three groups proved to be significant only for men (2001: 31). What is more significant is the considerably greater levels of vitality of WFCD compared to those observed in Lille by Pooley (1996, 2004), where informants born before 1938 devoiced in about one case in four with scores of younger speakers dropping to well below 10%. Among the youngest speakers studied in Lille (born around 1980), even though they were all from the equivalent of SC1, WFCD had been reduced to marginality, a finding confirmed with subjects born around a decade later. Levels of liquid deletion, however, were maintained across the four generations studied in Lille-Métropole at a higher level than in Bauvois’ conversational data, i.e. consisently over 80%. If Bauvois’ data are considered equivalent to Pooley’s (1996: 285) interview style, i.e. one-to-one conversaton with an investigator, then the overall average of around 60% is not greatly different from SC1.
6.8 Brussels, Gembloux, Liège and Tournai (Hambye, 2005) This highly ambitious and in many ways insightful study follows the methodology of the PFC project, designed to focus primarily on phonology and only secondarily on sociolinguistic issues. The corpus consisted of 48 speakers, 12 from each of four locations – Brussels, Liège, Tournai and Gembloux – evenly divided by gender. Informants were selected to cover the full adult age range, and informants’ social-class profiles were retrieved post hoc. In the corpus overall and even in sub-samples from two or three locations, speakers proved fortunately to be representative in level of education and social mobility (Table 6.13). Differences in educational level used in the calculation
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 227
228 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Age
Education
Social mobility
AGE1 19–28
SCOL1 no HE
MOB-1 Lower level of education than father
AGE2 36–50
SCOL2 HE non university
MOB0 Same level of education as father
AGE3 54 and over
SCOL3 graduate
MOB1 Education 1 level higher than father. MOB2 Education 1 or 2 levels higher than father; or 1 level higher AND profession more prestigious than father’s MOB3 Education 2 or 3 levels higher than father; or 2 levels higher AND profession more prestigious than father’s
of social mobility were based on a six-point scale, which was simplified to five as shown in the table. Following standard procedures agreed by participants in the PFC study, informants were asked to read a list of 94 words and a continuous passage of 331 words, take part in a guided conversation with an unknown investigator and a free conversation with a known researcher. The four corpora were selected from a much larger number sampled in Belgium, including the two largest francophone cities (Brussels and Liège), as well as an area of western (Tournai), central (Gembloux) and eastern Wallonia (Liège). Hambye chose to study four variables, but not in all four areas (Table 6.14). The structural definition of WFCD used by Hambye differs slightly from that of Pooley and Bauvois, since he added a seventh pair, /N/-/nk/, to the six studied by the other investigators. Unlike Pooley, Hambye did not consider cases of WFCD which arise following liquid deletion after an obstruent, as in possible [pOsip]. Table 6.14 Location and variables studied by Hambye (2005) Variable
Location
1. Word-final consonant devoicing (WFCD) 2. Vowel lengthening 3. /r/ 4. Schwa
Gembloux; Tournai Liège Brussels; Gembloux; Liège; Tournai Gembloux; Liège; Tournai
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Table 6.13 Social profile of speakers
Along with the higher overall rates of devoicing in Gembloux particularly and Tournai, compared to those in Roubaix and Mons, another structural factor emerges as significant for the occurrence of WFCD, namely occurrence before a voiceless consonant. What is more remarkable is the consistent difference in the behaviour of speakers from the two towns. The Tournaisiens devoice mainly before voiceless consonants, which they do more than the Gembloutois. The only other context where WFCD occurs frequently in Tournai is pre-pausally (around one token in four). In all other contexts, i.e. before sonorants (nasals, liquids and glides), vowels and schwas, WFCD rates were around 40% in the conversation data from Gembloux. Only before vowels was WFCD a marginal variant (around 5%). The Tournaisiens devoiced fricatives (/v/, /z/ and /Z/) more than stops, whereas the Gembloutois devoiced both types. Table 6.15 shows considerably greater variation in the Gembloux data in regard to the age and level of education of the informants. In Gembloux it is the speakers aged 54 and over who devoice significantly more than the under-50s, and those with graduate education who devoice the least of any of the 12 groups in the table, with non-graduates devoicing at over 40%. In Tournai, on the other hand, the similarity of frequencies (between 21% and 25.9%) across the age range and social categories is quite remarkable, suggesting that WFCD is a stable but not marginal minority variant that is not strongly stigmatised. A cross-tabulation of gender, social mobility and location produces no significant differences (Table 6.16). In Gembloux WFCD emerges as a significant minority variant (at around 40%) with a remarkably
Table 6.15 Overall rates of WFCD in Conversation in Gembloux and Tournai by age and level of education (Hambye, 2005: 151) Gembloux AGE3 55.0
AGE2
AGE1
SCOL1
SCOL2
32.6
31.2
47.6
41.4
SCOL3 19
Tournai AGE3 23.7
AGE2
AGE1
SCOL1
SCOL2
SCOL3
25.9
21.3
21.0
22.9
25.9
Key: AGE3: 54 and over; AGE2 36–50; AGE1 19–28.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 229
230 Social and Linguistic Change in European French Table 6.16 Overall rates of WFCD in Conversation in Gembloux and Tournai by gender and social mobility (Hambye, 2005: 151)
Women
Men
MOB0/1
MOB2/3
42.1
36.8
39.6
39.4
Tournai Women
Men
MOB0/1
MOB2/3
21.7
25.1
25.2
15.7
even distribution across categories. The Tournai figures show no great difference between the genders but some indication that more upwardly mobile speakers devoice less often. Assuming that the Tournai results were reproducible over a more robustly representative sample (the Tournai informants are better educated than their Gembloux counterparts), they can be interpreted as having sociolinguistic significance in a number of ways. Firstly, it should be borne in mind that phonologically favourable contexts do not automatically mean that the occurrence of a favoured variant is not socially significant; secondly, the social make-up of the samples would lead us to expect lower rates of WFCD in the usage of the Tournaisiens compared to the Gembloutois; thirdly, the results bear striking similarities to those from Mons (especially Moreau and Bauvois, 1998), where similar overall rates of devoicing occur, mainly with fricative consonants; fourthly, as Tournai becomes part of a cross-border Lille-Métropole agglomeration, the maintenance of WFCD by young graduates at levels comparable with those in marked working-class varieties used mainly by older speakers only a few miles away over two decades earlier (1983 Roubaix corpus used in Pooley, 1994), suggests socially significant differences on both sides of the national border. The overall charting would lead us to confirm an approximate geographical distribution as follows. Firstly, WFCD has become at most marginal in Lille and in France in general (unless new evidence were published from Alsace, say); secondly, in western Belgium the set of variants is stable, used by all social classes and apparently not stigmatised; thirdly, WFCD is more frequent in more easterly parts of Wallonia, where it shows a more socially skewed distribution of variants
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Gembloux
being most used by older and less well-educated speakers, but also by socially more favoured speakers at rates similar to those noted in Mons and Tournai. Comparable scores derived from cases of devoicing in very different phonological contexts may nevertheless prompt different perceptions of the speech of Tournai and Gembloux (or western and eastern Wallonia), although this is one factor only in a complex structural system. The data suggest that relatively heavy use of WFCD (40% or more) marks a stigmatised variety, but a score of around half that level obeying certain structural constraints seems not to be particularly frowned upon. Lower frequencies of use and occurrence in a narrowing range of contexts are generally indicative that a variant is recessive. The data from Tournai, and possibly Mons, suggest that any such recession has slowed considerably and that there is good reason to believe that Belgians of all social backgrounds will continue to use WFCD as a socially significant minority variant. Hambye (2005: 178) chose to investigate cases of vowel lengthening construed as a vernacular variant by examining the phenomenon in the penultimate syllable of intonation groups. Apart from the clarity of phonological definition, there are cogent sociolinguistic reasons for selecting this environment. It is noted in a number of descriptive studies, such as Francard (2001: 256), as particularly salient for both Walloon and Brussels accents. In Hambye’s data, however, the phenomenon proved not to be generalised across the four locations studied. It was highly marginal in three cities, with Liège standing out as the exception. In Liège, a realistic initial hypothesis would have been that vowel lengthening in penultimate syllables occurred mostly in the speech of older speakers from the lower social classes. Hambye (2005: 189) also took into account stylistic variation, effectively between guided conversations (with an unknown investigator) and free (with a known researcher). The overall frequency of occurrence turned out to be very low (3.3%) and the data show another clear sign of the obsolescence of the feature, referred to as lexicalisation by Pooley (1996), such that the feature occurs at high rates in a few frequent lexical items, such as ici, maison and vraiment. Moreover, two vowels /e/ and /E/ are responsible for a high proportion (38.6%) of the total number of occurrences. In terms of its social distribution, Hambye’s results produced no surprises. Older speakers with the least formal education lengthened vowels in penultimate position the most and had the least stylistic variation, even compared to younger speakers of comparable social status. For all age groups, both indicators
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 231
of higher social status, educational level and social mobility, correlated with greater use of short vowels. Hambye argues nonetheless that despite its relative infrequency the vowel-lengthened variants are highly salient. This salience, along with their relative marginality and their historical reputation (cf. Remacle, 1969), suggests that the variants are tending towards the stereotypical. Hambye’s painstaking analysis identified nineteen variants of /r/. Twelve of these variants are voiced-voiceless pairs: uvular fricatives [K]-[X]; pharyngeal fricatives [Q]-[è]; uvular trills [ö]-[ö]; intermediate ˚ irregular taps) variants (fricative trills, describable as trills with rather ˇ ]-[ö ˇ ]; alveolar trills [r]-[r]; alveolar fricatives [ˇô]-[ˇô]; uvular flaps [ö˘ ]-[˘ [ö ö]; ˚ flaps [R ]-[ «R ]; and ˚ ˚ ˚ two vowel-like approximant alveolar variants, which are either uvular [K fl ] or alveolar [flô]. A final variant was deletion of /r/. The variants were context-sensitive; for example, devoicing and deletion were highly likely after a voiceless obstruent, as in lettre, and most variation was observed in word-final and word-initial position. Certain kinds of variation, like the difference between fricatives and trills, did not seem to be socially significant. Alveolar articulations proved rare, used indeed by only one speaker, and this was taken as indicative of recession. For Hambye the variants that stood out perceptually were not necessarily markedly back, but they were strongly articulated (‘renforcé’) and he chose therefore to report on the results of the Reading Tasks and twenty tokens from the free Conversation. Three structurally sensitive contexts were found to be significant in the Reading Task. They are listed as follows, and the results summarised in Table 6.17: (a) intervocalic position or adjacent to a voiced stop; (b) word-initial position after pause, post-vocalic position at the end of an intonation group and occurrence adjacent to a fricative; (c) adjacent to a voiceless stop. These results suggest, perhaps unsurprisingly, that adjacency to a voiced sound i.e. Context (a), is likely to result in a voiced correlation of /r/ and least likely to favour strongly articulated variants (SAVs). Context Table 6.17 Most frequently occurring variants of /r/ by percentage for Reading Tasks for 47 speakers from Brussels, Gembloux, Liège and Tournai Variants of /r/ Voiced Strongly articulated (SAV) Fricatives
Context (a)
Context (b)
Context (c)
67.2% 6.7% 46.9%
24.8% 14.1% 59.2%
3.3% 30.8% 53.2%
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
232 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
(b) is relatively neutral and Context (c), adjacent to a voiceless stop, is most favourable to SAVs, which are nonetheless a minority form. These structural constraints were broadly confirmed in the free Conversation data, which showed that SAVs are more likely to occur in stressed syllables. Moreover, SAVs proved less frequent in Conversation than in the Reading Task, suggesting that they are prestige variants (Hambye, 2005: 230–1). The breakdown by age and standard of education shown in Table 6.18 shows clearly that the younger university-educated speakers (28 and under), who also have the highest index of social mobility, although this is not specifically indicated, use SAVs much more than their older and less well-educated and less mobile counterparts. Regional origin shows a curious pattern which, as with WFCD, has the Tournaisiens manifesting stable variation as against the apparent change elsewhere, if at different rates, suggested in Table 6.19. Cross-tabulation of age and locality masks the fact that the Tournaisien speakers emerge as the highest users of SAVs. Dividing speakers into the younger (28 and under) and older (36 and over) age groups Table 6.18 Percentage use of SAVs in Reading Task and Conversation for 47 speakers, by age and education AGE3
AGE2
AGE1
Word List Frequency of SAVs
9.8
12.3
29.3
Conversation Frequency of SAVs
7.1
11.3
21.8
SCOL1
SCOL2
SCOL3
Word List Frequency of SAVs
13.3
Frequency of SAVs
10.5
13.0
25.8
Conversation 10.0
20.1
Table 6.19 Percentage frequency of SAVs by speakers from four locations, by age (Hambye, 2005: 237)
36 and over Under 28
Brussels
Gembloux
Liège
Tournai
7.5 27.8
8.0 15.0
4.7 41.1
22.6 23.7
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 233
points to a stable level of use across generations in Tournai with sharp increases in the two largest cities, Brussels and Liège. The use of SAVs rises in Gembloux but they remain strongly minority variants. These results suggest that far from being a vernacular feature characteristic of the lowest social classes, SAVs are emerging as prestige variants used in formal styles. Hambye’s analysis of schwa tends to disconfirm some descriptive accounts (e.g. Pohl, 1985, 1986; Grégoire, 1956: 74) claiming that Belgian speakers insert schwa less than their French counterparts in certain contexts. Hambye argues that these rates are indicative of stylistic variation and similar to all non-southern French varieties. We focus on four major variable contexts that were analysed in the reading passage and the two conversational styles. Relevant schwas in the orthography are underlined: (1) (2) (3) (4)
V#C_C, e.g. va venir V#C_#C, e.g. joue le match C#je#C, e.g. donc je parle $je#C je parle (post-pausal)
The results show unsurprisingly that schwa is realised more frequently in reading than in conversation, and more in guided than free conversation. Moreover, the two contexts with je emerge as the most favourable to schwa realisation, at least among older speakers. Indeed, the age patterns are the most consistent, with speakers aged 36 and over inserting schwa most frequently in all four contexts, with a particularly sharp rise for $je#C (Table 6.20). For speakers aged 28 and under, graduates Table 6.20 Frequency of use of schwa in combined conversational styles for four contexts by speakers from Gembloux, Liège and Tournai, by age and level of education (Hambye, 2005: 320–3) Context V#C_C V#C_#C C#je#C $je#C OVERALL
OVERALL
AGE3
AGE2
AGE1
28.9 20.0 52.6 56.1 32.0
23.6 29.0 55.6 63.4 31.8
15.4 13.0 28.0 15.5 15.6
SCOL1
SCOL2
SCOL3
27.1
29.6
20.7
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
234 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 235 Table 6.21 Geographical and age distribution of overall schwa realisation in conversation style (Hambye, 2005: 325)
36 and over 28 and under
Tournai
Gembloux
24.8% 7.8%
33.6% 31.3%
Liège 37.1% 6.8%
insert the least, with level of education having no significant effect for speakers of 36 and over, although a higher index of social mobility corresponds to higher frequencies of schwa realisation, particularly among the older generations. Comparing age patterns with geographical origin suggests that the tendency to delete variable schwa in the two larger cities is further advanced than in the small provincial town of Gembloux. Undermining this is the fact that there are fewer graduates among the 28 and under group in Gembloux (Table 6.21). Hambye interprets these results in terms of speakers’ orientation to the norm. Young graduates style shift quite markedly, and Hambye suggests further that the style-shifting by this group is indicative of mastery of the norm and hence confidence in their competence acquired in the education system, a confidence which gives them the freedom to deviate from it, showing what Bourdieu (1979) referred to as ‘désinvolture’ or absence of tension in spontaneous speech. Table 6.20 certainly suggests that younger speakers are extending variable schwa insertion across phonological contexts to one which is partially governed by the three-consonant rule (Context 3).
6.9 The findings of perceptual studies and summary of the Belgian situation It seems likely that the greater confidence just referred to regarding the norm among younger well-educated people in particular is part of a number of changes occurring also in France, given the apparently increasing conformity with supralocal French norms in other respects, like the loss of the /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ distinction and use of /4/ (Francard, 2001: 257; Section 4.8) It may well be that behavioural changes are starting to emerge of which respondents to some of the major perceptual studies of the 1980s and 1990s could not have been fully aware (Lafontaine, 1986; 1988; 1991; 1997; Garsou, 1991; Francard, 1993; Moreau and Brichard, 1999a,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Age
1999b). These studies show a rather unenthusiastic recognition of the extraterritorial norm and at the same time a recurrent assertion (if not by an overwhelming majority) that Belgians speak as well as French people. Direct contact with French speakers, as Bauvois (2001) shows, tends however to lead to accommodation to French norms rather than a conscious embracing of ‘belgitude’. A number of indications suggest that the least linguistically secure Belgian francophones come from the higher social classes and that they are most aware of exogenous norms. Francard’s (1989b) study of Lutrebois showed however, contrary to the findings of the pioneering study by Gueunier, Genouvrier and Khomsi (1978), that subjects in a diglossic situation, regularly using Walloon, were relatively secure. But since that study, more recent perceptual work suggests that respondents may express pride in a regional language or accent as part of their cultural heritage, without necessarily maintaining either as a social practice. By and large, despite the striking counterexample of the Borinage, strongly local identities seem to be receding, without a strong collective Walloon or francophone identity emerging. A survey conducted by the newspaper Le Soir in 1997 found that barely 4% of respondents defined their identity by reference to Brussels or Wallonia. Francophones can use regional features without fear of stigma, provided that their speech is not too strongly accented. They tend however to be less aware of the features in their own speech than in others’, and to be generally less judgemental while showing inconsistencies in their evaluation of stigmatisation. Both behavioural and descriptive studies point to the persistance of a number of non-supralocal French features which are rather illdefined in their sociolinguistic significance. They occur both in Brussels and Wallonia. Perceptual studies (e.g. Bauvois and Diricq, 1999) affirm the recognisability of Belgian voices, but without being able to locate them reliably. As Klinkenberg (1999: 515) suggests, many Belgians may be trying to effect a compromise between the perceived snobbishness of French usage (often associated with Brussels) and the stigma of traditional contact-induced vernacular forms.
6.10 The Francoprovençal substrate in Suisse romande Turning now to the Swiss situation, in general the traditional Francoprovençal and Oïl languages spoken there can be said to be in as weak a position in terms of their social practice as in many parts of France, and much weaker than in Belgium. Language shift had occurred in the large Protestant cities by the 18th century, and in the four officially Protestant
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
236 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
cantons (Bern, Genève, Neuchâtel and Vaud) only 1% of the population claimed in the 1990 census to speak the ancestral language. In the Jura, the proportion was 3%, although Lehmann (1995) and Kristol (1998) argue that the age of the speakers (all over 60) suggests the percentage could be construed as a sanguine view of the language’s vitality, particularly as a pre-World War II study by Keller (1937) in the south of the canton portrayed it as being on the cusp of extinction. In the Catholic cantons self-reported levels of use were higher: around 4% in Fribourg and 6% in the Valais, but this according to Matthey (2003: 93) merely implies that in these areas people consider the traditional tongues to be part of their heritage, in contrast to the Protestant areas. Against this, there is at least one well-documented case of a variety of Francoprovençal being transmitted to children, in the remote mountain commune of Evolène du Val d’Hérens (Valais) (Pannatier, 1995; Maître and Matthey, 2004: 380), where more or less every child in the six villages of the commune in the 1970s and around a third in the 1990s were speaking the local form at home when they started school. Despite these pockets of vitality, Matthey (2003: 93) takes the view that the regional French of Switzerland shows few if any traces of Francoprovençal influence (Knecht, 1985; Matthey, 2003). The most striking feature was in prosody, the tendency to stress the penultimate (paroxytonie) rather than the final syllable of a phonic group (oxytonie) as in supralocal French,4 although this occurs in a number of other regions. It is arguable too that contact with German has exerted some influence, although on the other linguistic levels there has in recent decades been strong resistance to germanisms. For Matthey (2003: 94), the distinctiveness of Swiss French is characterised by the maintenance of certain archaisms or old-fashioned standard features, such as the continued use of /œ/ ˜ and phonemic vowel length, which she regards as the most distinctive trait in Swiss varieties.
6.11 Regional varieties (Geneva, Neuchâtel, Valais) According to Singy’s (1996: 234–8) Vaudois informants, Geneva (33.6%) and Neuchâtel (29.7%) are the reference points most frequently cited as the places in Suisse romande where the best French is spoken. We have already referred to our own informal observations on Geneva, and other informal comments (Voillat, 1971; Singy, 1996) go in the same direction. Other factors, such as the international character of Geneva and its being part of a trans-frontier urban area (cf. Tournai in Section 6.7) favour advergence to supralocal French. The studies available, by Métral
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 237
(1977) and Schoch et al. (1980), give only fragmentary indications of advergence; in particular, the /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ merger has advanced furthest there (Schoch et al.1980: 10) and the /o/-/O/ alternation in final open syllables as in peau-pot does not occur. Behavioural data on the canton of Neuchâtel are slightly less scarce; these include Walter’s (1982: 194) profile of a speaker from La Chauxde-Fonds (population 37,000) and a recent study of vowel lengthening by Grosjean et al. (2007) plus a preliminary report of a PFC-inspired study (Racine, Bühler and Andreassen, 2009). Walter’s subject (LL) was a primary school teacher (b. 1922) who spoke Francoprovençal and took an active interest in folkloristic activities. Contrary to the observation of Métral (1997: 168) that the Neuchâtelois merged /a/-/A/, LL distinguished them quite clearly. The data presented by Grosjean et al. strongly suggest that phonemic vowel lengthening in pairs distinguished by ‘feminine’ orthographic <e>, as in aimé-aimée; ami-amie; bu-bue; clou-cloue, are still differentiated phonologically by vowel length. Against this, LL distinguished these four pairs only in open final syllables, with /i:/ diphthongised to /ij /, whereas the mid-vowels /φ:/ and /o:/ and low vowel /A:/ plus the nasal /œ˜:/ were variably lengthened in closed syllables. LL had diaeresis in scier, buer and bouée, with glide insertion in the first item: [sije]. He used a velar but not a palatal nasal and his variants of /r/ were uniformly uvular. A preliminary analysis of data collected using the PFC protocol (Racine et al. 2009) confirms the maintenance of length distinctions, the /a/-/A/ contrast (but relying more on quality rather than on length and quality, as in Nyon) and the /o/-/O/ distinction in open syllables. Informants from the Valais present a rather confused picture. Schoch et al. (1980) who questioned school pupils from Saint-Maurice (around 4,000 inhabitants) present in some respects a relatively conservative variety, with the majority of informants claiming that they maintained the /a/-/A/ and /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ distinctions and /o/-/O/ in open syllables rather more than the Suisse-romande mean. Métral found that the Valais informants claimed a high percentage of phonemic vowel length for vit-vie (95%), slightly above the overall mean but below the main norm-setting cantons of Geneva, Neuchâtel and the Vaud. The rates of professed distinctions for cru-crue (62%) and armé-armée (73%) were considerably lower, and again lower than for Geneva, Neuchâtel and the Vaud, but still above the Swiss average, mainly because the rates of neutralisation in Fribourg were extremely high. Diaeresis in scier was claimed by about a third of informants and realisations of en haut with /h/ by only a tiny minority. The comparison of Walter’s (1982: 195–6) three informants
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
238 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
from the canton yields a less coherent picture, as shown in Table 6.22. Her informants were: MP, a woman from Orsières (population 2,736), born in 1899 who spoke her local variety of Valaisain and had worked as a hotel chambermaid; CAZ, a man from Sierre (population 16,355) born in 1921 who spoke his local variety of Francoprovençal and made a living as a farmer and market gardener; and AF, a man from BotyreAyent (population 3,365) born in 1952, who also spoke his local dialect and at the time of the fieldwork was head of the local tourist office. Table 6.22 shows that apart from /h/, the non-supralocal French consonantal features are common to all three speakers, as is the peau-pot distinction. The youngest of the three maintains vowel-length distinctions for all six high and mid-vowels in both contexts. For the others, particularly the oldest informant, the variation is context-dependent and quite restricted. In other respects the older informants show greater variation, particularly in the nasal-vowel variants, with fronted variants of / A ˜ / and raised ones for /˜ E/. AF, born more than half a century later, was particularly attached to his local roots. Table 6.22 features
Comparison of Walter’s Valaisain informants with regard to key Swiss
Orsières 1899
Sierre 1921
Botyre-Ayent 1952
1. Vowel length: high vowels
Only [ij ] in open syllables
Only in open syllables
In all contexts
2. Vowel length mid vowels
Only [ej ] in open syllables
Length distinctions except for /ø/ in open syllables
In all contexts
3. /a/-/A/
Quality distinction Length or quality reduced; length in syllables; by attenuated /A/ or /A;/ quality in checked syllables
Attenuated in open open syllables; by length or quality in checked syllables
4. /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/
4 nasals; /˜ E/ raised to /˜e/; /A ˜ / fronted to /˜a/ or centralised to /˜e/
E/-˜e/; 4 nasals; /˜ /A ˜ /-/˜a/ used variably
4 nasals; variable use of /õ/-/˜ O/
5. peau-pot
YES
YES by length
YES
6. scier [sije]
YES
YES
YES
7. /h/
NO
YES
YES
8. Palatal nasal
YES
YES
YES
9. Velar nasal
YES
YES
YES
10. Labialisation of YES /S/ i.e. /Sw /
YES
YES
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 239
CAZ from Sierre maintained the /a/-/A/ pair fully, while the other two informants attenuated either the quality or length distinctions. There is no clearly defined pattern by age or size of town. The personal profiles of the informants suggest that the fact of MP’s working in a service occupation may have encouraged accommodation, leading to the loss of some distinctions, whereas the local rootedness of AF would encourage affirmation of ‘Swissness’. It should be borne in mind, however, as is demonstrable from data on the Vaud discussed in the next section, that intra-cantonal differences may be greater than inter-cantonal.
6.12 The Vaud: behaviour and perceptions Within the Vaud, the data gathered by Schoch et al. (1980) allow comparison of informants from the cantonal capital Lausanne (pop. 193,463) and the upcountry town of Moudon (12,501), placed by Singy (1996) among the intermediate peripheral zones of the area. Tables 6.23 and 6.24 suggest that in some respects at least, the Lausanne subjects
Table 6.23 Percentage proportions of claimed mergers among Swiss secondaryschool pupils in selected lexical items for /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/(Schoch et al., 1980: 10) Item
brin-brun empreinte-emprunte N
Region Geneva
Lausanne
St. Maurice (Valais)
Moudon (Vaud)
Fribourg
35.9 66.9 142
10 26.2 130
16.5 35.1 97
9.9 38 71
11 34.3 73
Table 6.24 Percentage proportions of Swiss secondary-school pupils accepting douze-douce and vide-vite as acceptable rhymes (Schoch et al., 1980: 14) Item
douze-douce vide-vite N
Region Geneva
Lausanne
St. Maurice (Valais)
Moudon (Vaud)
Fribourg
16.9 30.3 142
20 24.6 130
13.4 22.7 97
26.8 33.8 71
5.5 9.6 73
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
240 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
differed more from their Moudon counterparts than they did from Genevans or Neuchâtelois. The Moudon informants were unusual in a number of ways. Not only were they most tolerant of WFCD (Table 6.24), but they also claimed neutralisation of /ñ/ and /nj/ to the greatest extent, while best maintaining the rat-ras contrast and a phonemic distinction between / A ˜ / and / æ/ in pairs like répandra-dépendra. Turning to behavioural data, we now compare the speech of Walter’s Vaudois informant (1982: 195) with that of the subjects of Andreassen and Lyche (2003) and Andreassen (2004, 2006). Walter analysed the speech of AG, a male informant who was relatively well educated (to Baccalauréat) and highly skilled (an electro-mechanic for Swiss Rail), born in 1935 in the small village of Villars-sous-Chambon (population 282). The social profiles of Andreassen’s informants, who were all from Nyon and the surrounding areas (Gland, Begnins and Prangins), are shown in Table 6.25; 12 adult informants in all, aged 30 to 70 and recorded in 2001–02 using the PFC protocol. Andreassen’s oldest informant is actually three years older than AG, and the 23-year gap (1978–2001) between the two sets of recordings
Table 6.25 Sex
Profiles of informants interviewed by Andreassen (2006: 116) Year of birth
Place of birth
Residence
Profession
1
F
1972
Lausanne
Prangins
Employée de bureau/mère au foyer
2
F
1971
Lausanne
Prangins
Secrétaire
3
F
1956
Nyon
Begnins
Secrétaire municipale adjointe
4
F
1950
Nyon
Nyon
Secrétaire
5
F
1937
Founex
Gland
Mère au foyer
6
M
1971
Nyon
Prangins
Ebéniste
7
M
1970
Nyon
Nyon
Secrétaire municipal
8
M
1970
Prangins
Prangins
Plâtrier peintre
9
M
1957
Nyon
Gland
Employé de commerce
10
M
1946
Bex
Nyon
Ingénieur chimiste
11
M
1943
Begnins
Nyon
Fonctionnaire de police retraité
12
M
1932
Vallorbe
Gland
Docteur en science retraité
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 241
might be thought to yield some evidence on changes occurring in Vaudois French. The picture emerging from Andreassen’s data is in fact little different from the Suisse-romande koiné that Métral considered as most consistently manifested in the Vaud. In several respects, Andreassen’s speakers are more conservative than AG, in particular in their maintenance of the /a/-/A/ contrast by both length and quality. They consistently distinguished not only pattes and pâtes, as do most Swiss speakers, but also rat and ras and mal and mâle, where the distinction is increasingly neutralised. In a number of cases, i.e. before sibilants or liquids, where the distinction is neutralised, back variants are used in contrast to most other varieties, e.g. sondage, impasse, fédéral and picard. Tables 6.26 to 6.28 suggest greater conformity to the koiné in the more recent data, and maintenance of older standardising features Table 6.26 Comparison of Vaud speaker (Walter, 1982: 195) with PFC data (Andreassen and Lyche, 2003; Andreassen, 2004, 2006) for oral vowels in open syllables Front unrounded
Front rounded
Back
Walter
PFC
Walter
PFC
Walter
PFC
i/ij
i/i:
y/y;@
y/y:
u/u;@
u/u:
j
e/e:
o
o
Oˇ /¨O
O
a/a;
A/A:/Aj
e/e
ej/e:j
E/E: a
ø
ø
a
Table 6.27 Comparison of Vaud speaker (Walter, 1982) with PFC data (Andreassen and Lyche, 2003; Andreassen, 2004, 2006) for oral vowels in checked syllables Front unrounded
Front rounded
Back
Walter
PFC
Walter
PFC
Walter
PFC
i
i/i:
y
y/y:
u/u:
u/u:
E/E:
e
ø/œ;
ø:
o:
o:
E/E:
œ
œ/œ:
O/o
O
a:
A/A:
a
a
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
242 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 243 Table 6.28 Comparison of Vaud speaker (Walter, 1982) with PFC data (Andreassen and Lyche, 2003; Andreassen, 2004, 2006) for nasal vowels
E˜
œ˜ a˜ @˜
PFC
O˜
E˜
œ˜
O˜
a˜ A ˜
now largely lost in supralocal French, in particular the more consistent signalling of /a/-/A/ and length distinctions in the high vowels. While AG tended to realise these distinctions by weak diphthongisation, e.g. /i/-/ij / in open syllables, the Nyon informants use vowel length in both open and closed syllables. The Nyon subjects, however, use diphthongised variants of /e/, as in année [a.nej] or tournée [tuK.nej] and /A/ as in noie [nwAj]. AG showed clear indications of neutralisation of /a/-/A/, indeterminate quality (indicated by italics) and attenuated length distinctions, e.g. [a;]. Both samples showed a four-term set of nasal vowels (Table 6.28) and variable use of fronted realisations of / A ˜ /, as in artisan [aK «.tiz˜a], but only AG used the raised centralised variant [˜@]. Considering the position of Nyon in the Bassin lémanique, as much in the orbit of Geneva as of Lausanne, this consistent maintenance of a classic koiné-like variety is somewhat surprising, given the prestige of Geneva French and the oft-quoted (and now firmly historical) observations of Voillat (1971), largely corroborated by Singy (1996) with regard to widespread convergence towards supralocal French norms in Suisse romande.
6.13 More recent perceptions of marked varieties in the Vaud (Singy, 1996) Singy’s perceptual study of the Vaud is remarkably thorough. There are 606 respondents with an even male–female split, three age groups (40 and under, 40–65, 65 and over), four social classes (higher, new middle, traditional middle, lower) conflated on the basis of cogently presented arguments from the division into socio-professional categories used by the Office Fédéral de la Statistique. Respondents were divided into four areas of residence on the argument that Lausanne and its immediate suburbs was the central reference point (Zone 1; Table 6.29) and that other areas of the canton were relatively peripheral: other towns with more than 9,000 inhabitants were classified as Zone 2, the
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Walter
244 Social and Linguistic Change in European French Table 6.29 Towns and districts of the Vaud studied in Singy (1996) listed by zones Population (2004)
Lausanne
Density per km2
193,463
2,281
13,897 16,321 21,831 10,435 17,267 25,252
377 6,857 653 3,172 2,531 2,245
35,674 6,535 21,449 46,090 14,614 4,506 12,000 6,151 10,519
82 92 108 223 124 24 284 38 72
11,754 21,449 21,405 23,626 55,946 12,501 10,557 19,468 20,497
77 108 160 251 536 104 139 94 337
Zone 2 – Town with 9,000+pop Morges Vevey Montreux La Tour-de-Peilz Nyon Yverdon Zone 3 – Peripheral districts Aigle Avenches Grandson Nyon Payerne Pays d’En-Haut Rolle La Vallée Yverdon Zone 4 – intermediate peripheral districts Aubonne Cossonnay Echallens Lavaux Morges Moudon Oron Orbe Vevey
most peripheral districts excluding the major towns as Zone 3, and intermediate peripheral districts as Zone 4. While Lausanne is taken as the norm-setting reference point within the Vaud, it is a poor third in perception (12.7%) behind Geneva (33.6%) and Neuchâtel (29.7%) in Suisse romande as a whole, even in the eyes of the Vaudois themselves. There is a somewhat reluctant recognition of the double extraterritoriality of the norm, firstly, within francophone
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Zone 1 – District of Lausanne
Europe (France and Paris are perceived as norm setters) and secondly, within Suisse romande. Within the Vaud on the other hand, Lausanne scored highest (63.2%), followed at a great distance by Montreux and Nyon (3.6% and 3.3% respectively), although the number of ‘don’t knows’ (25.7%) is uncomfortably large. The Lausannois are perceived as having ‘less accent’ and as using fewer Vaudois words than their fellow Vaudois, around half of whom believe that the inhabitants of the regional capital think they speak the best French, while just over a third (36.3%) believe that residents of Lausanne also make negative judgements about them as non-Lausanne residents (Singy, 1996: 248), as do the French and Parisians. Other Vaudois recognise with reluctance the exterior prestige of Lausanne, but express few positive feelings towards the French spoken there, compared to their own. Someone from the peripheral areas of the Vaud (exemplified by Payerne, Zone 3) is in the majority view (75%) on an equal footing with a Lausannois. These results appear to constitute a less than whole-hearted endorsement of Lausanne as a centre of reference for the region, save perhaps by default, since it is the main urban centre with around six times the population of its nearest rivals, Yverdon-les-Bains and Montreux. While respondents were, for the most part, reasonably comfortable with the way they spoke, they manifested clear signs of linguistic insecurity when their speech was compared to that of the French. The least secure groups are the highest social class and women. In contrast, the least insecure groups are the over-65s, those living in peripheral zones and members of the lower and traditional middle classes. The relative security of the latter is bolstered by the fact that these categories contain many independent, self-employed business people, who enjoy a relatively protected and stable place in Swiss society. This suggests that linguistic insecurity increases with international contact among francophones. The higher social classes are by and large subject to more contact, compared with older people from a generation who travelled less, and with self-employed tradesmen who largely work in internal markets. Within the comparative security of Switzerland, respondents were mainly positive about their French, and arguably perceive themselves as speaking ‘un français régional de bon aloi’, which excludes lexical dialectalisms and germanisms but not what would be regarded in France as old-fashioned standard forms, such as the masculine-feminine length distinctions
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 245
and the /œ/∼/˜ ˜ E/ contrast, which rather like septante may be regarded as at least equally and historically more ‘correct’ than the supralocal form. It is curious that while the recent data show clear signs of the maintenance of phonological distinctions characteristic of older standardising norms, they show few, if any, phonetic distinctions that are most often socially marked. In lexis, these trends are confirmed by Manno (2003), who argues that Swiss French is undergoing dedialectalisation but not deregionalisation, since the majority of Swiss neologisms noted over the course of the 20th century were innovations.
6.14 Conclusion Belgian and Swiss francophones both recognise the prestige of French norms (often in their perception Parisian), but take considerable pride nevertheless in at least some of their divergences from them. Both are likely nonetheless to modify their speech towards supralocal norms in direct interaction with a French person, being no doubt intuitively aware of the attitudes expressed in Kuiper’s study (2005: 38–42), in which Swiss and Belgian accents were placed 23rd and 24th, below those of each of the 22 regions of France in regard to correctness and pleasantness, as well as degree of difference from the Parisian norm. Within their own countries, the majority would however admit to a certain pride and pleasure in the use of forms associated with either national or more narrowly local identities. In both territories, it is the higher social classes, most exposed to interactional contact with French speakers, who are the least linguistically secure. The perceived greater degree of security among the lower ranks of society and older persons is undoubtedly due in part to a lower level of awareness of external norms combined with lower mobility, and in part to social pressures not to speak in too ‘pointu’ a fashion. At the same time, dialectically marked speech is heavily stigmatised and avoided, even if, particularly in Belgium, the traditional endogenous languages are more highly valued than in the past. In a recent piece (2008) Hambye provides a useful broad summary of the Belgian situation. The main title of his paper, ‘Convergences et Divergences’, refers to ongoing changes in practice as well as in attitudes towards Standard French. Hambye suggests, on the basis of data drawn from actual behaviour as well as elicitation of the ‘linguistic imaginary’,
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
246 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
that standard Belgian varieties are converging with each other as well as diverging from the French of the Hexagon. The qualification ‘standard’ is important. From the mass of linguistic detail presented above emerges a fairly complex pattern of continuing social differentiation, expressed in part through allegro forms such as /l/ deletion in words like milieu. These seem not to be localised. At the same time, social-regional differentiation finds expression in localised forms like vowel lengthening, though this dimension of differentiation appears to be receding. Convergence to an endogenous norm, functioning in parallel with divergence from supralocal French, is signalled perhaps most notably by WFCD. We can perhaps characterise all this as a form of levelling, in the sense used here. The socio-historical and cultural factors that have shaped Belgium, and the linguistic expression found there, cannot be thought about without taking into account the looming French presence across the border. Nor should the importance of Flemish-Walloon tensions be underestimated. The result is ‘levelling’ construed in a perhaps rather negative or reactive sense; the obverse of the positive sense of identity just mentioned. Perhaps the most striking distinctive feature of the Swiss situation is the wide reach in the broadcast media of ‘legitimised’ (to use Bourdieu’s term) or supralocal discourses, as Thibault in particular suggests (1998). These may however be in contradiction to everyday practice. Thus while the most recent behavioural studies (Racine, Bühler and Andreasse, 2009) point to maintenance of the koiné, this does not wholly fit with the norms of public discourse as illustrated by our study of the TSR evening news. In Belgium, comparable public discourse on RTBF news is more divergent from supralocal French norms, suggesting that a range of features is compatible with prestige pronunciation. This is despite the lack of agreement as to the existence, or even recognition of the specific features, of the Belgian variety. While in both countries, perceptual studies provide strong indications of regional differences, this is not borne out by recent behavioural evidence, at least in the case of Belgium, where a good deal of data is available. It is possible that for Switzerland, concentration on the Vaud distorts the overall sociolinguistic picture, whereas in Belgium the fuller behavioural evidence points to the vitality and general lack of stigma attached to some non-supralocal forms shared by Walloons and Bruxellois, in particular the most studied feature, WFCD.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Regional Varieties & Levelling: Belgium and Switzerland 247
248 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
1. This suggests that people who left the Borinage to pursue higher education tended not to return to the area. 2. The sub-title of Bauvois (2002b) mentions twelve variables rather than ten. Two more sub-divisions result from separating Variables 8 and 9 according to whether the following consonant is voiced or voiceless. 3. E.g. (9) : ‘Ne reste donc pas là à ne rien faire, lève-toi et bouge !’ which focusses on the possible [Z]-[S] alternation in bouge. 4. Stress placement was potentially phonemic in Francoprovençal, e.g. [tsan"ta] chanter and ["tsanta] chante!
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Notes
Social Factors: Bringing Together Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language
7.1 Overview of the chapter We attempt to draw together here the threads of earlier chapters in the light of our depiction of the linguistic situation in the territories under scrutiny, beginning with three of the main aspects of social levelling described in Chapter 3: social class, gender and migration. We evaluate their sociolinguistic effects before moving on to issues of ideology and cultural hegemony. We aim to summarise, firstly what can be argued from documented evidence of vernacular French forms, and secondly cases where social and ideological changes have favoured the maintenance and/or valorisation of a traditional ancestral variety. We begin with social class.
7.2 Social class As stated previously, many studies have had recourse to education as a social-class indicator, and the raising of levels of educational achievement since the mid-20th century can be shown to have had clear consequences for linguistic behaviour. Higher levels of educational expectation and achievement have encouraged the abandonment of traditional vernaculars and marked regional forms of French. The social embedding of both types of variety has been shown in several locations to correlate with age, low level of education and often the economic dominance of a traditional staple industry (agriculture, textiles, coal), producing a high degree of class solidarity. The usage of the most recent, least well-educated generations in the same communities points at most to varieties that retain a reduced range of regional features occurring variably, although use of marked vernacular variants has in certain cases 249
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
7
remained viable at least until the latter part of the 20th century, as in certain parts of Lille (Pooley, 2004) and the Borinage (Thiam, 1995). Along with greater educational achievement has come an increase in service-sector employment, which even in its more modest forms tends to favour frequent encounters with strangers of various social classes, and thus to multiply occasions when a more neutral, levelled style is called for. Even in the locations referred to as examples of vernacular maintenance, signs of moyennisation appear. For instance, Thiam’s (1995) Borinage informants share geographical origins, notably Frameries and Quaregnon, with those of Bauvois in Mons. Table 7.1 compares the educational profiles of informants in the two studies: Table 7.1 Upward drift of educational attainment in Mons region (Thiam, 1995; Bauvois, 2002a) Borinage
Mons 4. Diplôme universitaire
A (Higher), i.e. have completed secondary education and possibly some higher education
3. Diplôme de l’enseignement supérieur de temps court
B (Intermediate), i.e. four years of secondary education
2. Diplôme de l’enseignement secondaire ou technique
C (Lower), i.e. having left school without the leaving certificate
1. Diplôme primaire ou professionnel ou moins
The considerable maintenance of the traditional apical /r/ variant correlates with a relatively modest level of education, proletarian values stemming from the traditional staple industry and a strong sense of local identity distinct from that of the ‘fransquillon’ city of Mons. By contrast, increasing participation in higher education usually entails study at an institution in Mons and interaction with speakers of a less locally marked variety, one where apical /r/ and other features are likely to be marginalised, as is the case elsewhere in Belgium (Hambye, 2005). This upward drift of educational attainment is thus a significant entry point where mainstream ‘fransquillon’ values and practices invade local social space. Pooley (1996) shows similarly that in Roubaix in the 1980s every dialectal variant was used most heavily by older informants with levels of education equivalent to below B or 2. Further examples of upward social drift can be abundantly illustrated in Roubaix, which since the fieldwork of the 1980s has become a centre
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
250 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
for higher education, with some former industrial premises being used as university or IUT buildings. Moreover, some of the most emblematic industrial buildings are now used both for cutting-edge (Eurotéléport) and low-level service industries (retail, mail order). While some of the industrial architectural heritage has been redeployed, this has proved more difficult for residential property, where most of the archetypical courées or terraces have been demolished, including those investigated by Pooley in the 1980s. In parallel, the invasion of the surrounding rural space has resulted in urbanisation and moyennisation of areas traditionally devoted to agriculture. There is good reason to believe that levelling is greatest in such periurban areas, settled over the latter decades mostly by members of the median classes. Pooley (2004) shows for instance that ignorance of the traditional ancestral language was highest in these areas, in contrast to the industrial heartlands and rural communes where intergenerational continuity was greater. With increased levels of educational attainment comes obviously improved mastery of the reference variety, or at least an impression of this. Some education professionals argue that this sense of mastery is based on shaky foundations (Caitucoli, Delamotte-Legrand and Leconte, 2003), while recent work like Hambye’s (2005) has shown that young graduates manifest what Bourdieu termed a certain désinvolture, seen for instance in the wider range of stylistic variation in the use of schwa, compared to older, less well-educated speakers. The emergence of new prestige stylistic features, of which the strongly articulated variant (SAV) /r/ seems to be one, is compatible with the need to mark more formal styles, and the arguable emergence of hyperstyle variables where, as Gadet (1998: 67) observes, the diaphasic aspects of variation assume greater salience. While this principle is illustrated through Hambye’s work on Belgium, there is no particular reason to suppose that such behaviour is specific to that country, for it is quite plausible that young educated Belgians are behaving in this respect like their French counterparts although, for the moment, the data required to demonstrate this are lacking. For France, we may mention again the fairly close correlation between the Rennes panel’s perceptions of the Nancy speakers as working-class (Section 5.1; Table 5.2), and the latter group’s rates of deletion of liquids following an obstruent (WFPOLD) as in tab(le) or quat(re) (Armstrong and Boughton, 2009: 14). In this study the broad WC-MC categorisation (imposed on the informants) was based on occupation, essentially manual/non-manual. On the basis of this admittedly slender and indirect data-base, social levelling as defined above does not therefore appear to be taking place in French, neither in perception nor production. We
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 251
can suggest too that this apparently rough-and-ready occupation-based measure of social class appears to be as robust as more sophisticated models. The generalised upward mobility of the post-World War II decades gave rise, as Klinkenberg (1992: 40) observes, to much linguistic insecurity in francophone Europe, given the dominance of the ideology of the standard in the French educational and social traditions, seen perhaps even more acutely in Belgium and Switzerland. Social commentators like Mermet (2008: 204) claim that this unprecedented period of upward mobility has now ended and as Chauvel (2005: 82ff) argues, many young people more highly educated than their parents, particularly in France, face the prospect of downward social mobility, higher property prices and fewer available jobs. This is particularly true since, as Chauvel cogently argues, the expansion of the public sector in the period 1945–1975 has left a pensions burden that limits the possibilities of job creation. Such trends are, however, too recent to reverse the ongoing trend of levelling in France, where linguistic divergence seems unlikely, despite other manifestations of social fragmentation (Section 7.5), although these trends might contribute to the consolidation of differences that have been maintained in Belgium and Switzerland. That said, the considerable body of perceptual studies (Moreau, Francard, Singy) suggest that one can conceive of Belgium and Switzerland as a set of internal markets overarched by the panEuropean (and indeed pan-francophone) linguistic market dominated by France, but capable nevertheless of acting with some independence in their own territory. Thus public figures can speak, although not all do, on national media with audibly Belgian or Swiss accents without the kind of social censure to which they would be subjected in France (Sections 4.8, 4.9). Different linguistic markets within the same country or city may be associated with different degrees of tension, in a manner reminiscent of Labov’s notion of attention paid to speech, the effect of which is measurable in style shift. If, as has been argued for other locations (Section 2.9), destandardisation is increasing, then style shift depends on awareness of legitimised norms, as well as the linguistic competence needed to comply with them. Bourdieu claims that legitimised norms can only be symbolically contravened, as in his classic example of a mayor who switches to local patois. Such ostensible breaking of the normative hierarchy serves in fact only to reinforce it, for both speaker and hearers are perfectly aware that it is a temporary switch and that the speaker has mastery of the standard. While that applies
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
252 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
to France, it does not appear to apply, or at least not in the same way, in certain other countries. Norwegian and Swiss German politicians, for instance, can unarguably gain much symbolic capital by using dialect, and public figures in Belgium and Switzerland may at least speak with their regional or recognisably non-supralocal accent in public discourse without censure (Sections 4.8, 4.9).
7.3 Gender The ‘sociolinguistic gender pattern’ (SGP) (Labov, 1990; Section 3.5) states that in the majority of cases of stable variation, men use more vernacular variants than women with comparable social characteristics. In cases where variation is indicative of change, women will usually adopt the innovative form earlier than men, irrespective of whether the change constitutes convergence to or divergence from a prestige form. These generalisations apply in western societies where gender equality and parity of educational opportunity prevail and gender roles are overlapping and increasingly converging. In societies where these conditions do not apply (in particular, if gender roles show little or no overlap), markedly different varieties may be used by men and women (as in some Amerindian tribes) or prestige variants may be used to a greater degree by men, as in certain Arabic-speaking communities where males still have greater access to education (e.g. Haeri, 1987). Documented female-led changes in the French of France largely concern cases where there is no difference between the prescriptive norm, Reference French and supralocal French, e.g. Lefebvre (1991) and Armstrong and Unsworth (1999). Lefebvre’s data (recorded in the late 1970s) show that women maintained with greater consistency certain variably phonemic contrasts, /o/-/O/ as in côte-cote; /E:/-/E/ as in maître-mettre; /œ/-/ø/ as in heureux or Maubeuge and /a/-/A/ as in patte-pâtes. Along with the maintenance of the contrasts associated with the prescriptive norm, Lefebvre also observed that the female informants generally scored lower on a local-accent index predicated on a number of variables, like a backed realisation of /a/ in word-final open syllables, e.g. là, for which the regional vernacular pronunciation is [lA]. Similar arguments could be built on the evidence in Armstrong and Unsworth’s study of the use of schwa among students in two towns in the Aude, Carcassonne and Lézignan-Corbières. The study shows females apparently taking the lead in moving away from southern norms of schwa realisation in three frequent contexts: (1) #jE crois; # cE qui se passe; (2) c’était PierrE; (3) toutEs sortes, la semainE prochaine. These gender differences appear
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 253
to override social class, construed somewhat imprecisely and in binary fashion between MC and WC (cf. the remarks on Nancy above). The results correspond closely however to an index of regional attachment, such that the boys in the study had markedly higher indices of regional attachment and used schwa significantly more. Against this, girls displayed greater mental (geographical) mobility and thus conformed more closely to supralocal norms. Since all these changes point clearly to advergence, it will be of interest to look at (apparent) exceptions, which Pooley (2001b) classified as follows: (1) vestigial variants (2) changes towards supralocal (as opposed to a standard) variants (3) use of vernacular variants correlating with membership of social networks. Cases of feminine vestigial variants or heavier vestigial use of a regional vernacular by women have occurred largely because of their greater longevity and their more restricted mobility in the lower strata of society until well into the first half of the 20th century (cf. Hadjadj, 1981 for clear examples in the Auvergne and the Francoprovençal-speaking Loire). While in UK English a number of cases have been observed of women leading the adoption of changes towards supralocal as distinct from prestige variants, comparable recent examples in French are harder to demonstrate, given the degree of levelling now seemingly present in the reference variety (Lyche, forthcoming 2010). Studies of UK varieties of English like Milroy et al., (1994) in Tyneside and Mees and Collins (1999) in Cardiff have shown women leading the adoption of intervocalic glottal stops as in [b2P@] butter, historically a feature of London vernacular. The closest parallel case in French is the adoption of fronted variants of /o/, as in Maroc pronounced [maöœk]. Armstrong and Low’s (2008) study of Roanne (Loire) shows younger women leading this innovation, which is becoming increasingly frequent in standardised usage. In Table 7.2 below, the proportions of fronted, centralised and back /o/ for individual speakers and speaker groups are shown; these figures are based on an instrumental analysis of each token of /o/. Age and gender differences are quite clear, especially for fully fronted tokens of /o/; those with a value of 2 on a three-way fronting scale where 0 indicates back /o/, 1 a centralised variant and 2 fronted /o/. Informants are coded by gender and year of birth: thus ‘f1954’ means female, born 1954.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
254 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 255 Table 7.2 Degrees of /o/ fronting based on formant frequency analysis (Armstrong and Low, 2008: 448) N = 372 Percentage fronting 0
1
2
m1942 m1956 Older males
30.00 43.37 38.35
34.00 27.71 30.08
36.00 22.89 27.82
f1954 f1955 Older females
19.39 25.86 21.79
31.63 34.48 32.69
44.90 39.66 42.95
m1982 m1981 Younger males
21.82 43.90 31.25
32.73 29.27 31.25
39.09 19.51 30.73
f1981 f1981 Younger females
26.19 35.96 31.82
27.38 20.18 23.23
46.43 43.86 44.95
The information given in the rightmost column of Table 7.2, referring to use of the fully fronted /o/ variant, in other words the variant that is the most ‘advanced’ both phonetically and socially, shows clearly the patterns of age and (especially) gender of interest here. Although the male informants are not behaving in a homogeneous fashion, the females are, especially the younger group, and we can suggest very tentatively, in the absence of collateral studies, that any change in progress is being led by them. Milroy and Gordon (2003:102–3) suggest that women are capable of legitimising non-standard variants, such that a feature like the glottal stop in English may gain prestige by the very fact of entering into female usage. Although it is certainly too early to affirm this for t-glottalling in intervocalic position, the ‘ideologised’ character of fronted /o/, to use the term introduced by L. Milroy (2003), appears to be fairly clear. The third type of feminine variant is best exemplified by L. Milroy’s (1987) study of three working-class areas of Belfast, where the younger women from one of the communities (Clonard) made greater use of certain vernacular variants than their male contemporaries. This unusual behaviour corresponded to greater involvement in local networks, measured by factors such as work relations and kinship ties. As Coates (1993) and Wardhaugh (1998) have pointed out, the criteria used by the Milroys generally applied more to men than to women. In francophone
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Informant
Europe there is no lack of examples of traditional communities where men were economically dominant, if at modest income levels, with as a result considerable degrees of separation between the genders. Activities like fishing (Léonard, 1998), mining (Hornsby, 2006b) or livestock farming involving transhumance (Ott, 1981) obliged men and women to live much of their lives in separate groups. Among such traditional activities, the textile industry stands out as one where a considerable proportion of women were employed. Studies of the mill town of Roubaix (Pooley, 1996) provide a robust case of reversal of the normal sociolinguistic gender pattern, explicable by reference to social-network organisation. The case of WFCD in speakers born before 1938 in Roubaix (Pooley, 1994, 2006a) shows women born in or before 1938 devoicing word-final consonants as in [saS] sage, and using forms with the non-vocalisation of /l/ like travail(le) [töaval] (Vj-Vl) more than men (of any generation). The classic pattern of men making greater use of the vernacular WFCD form than women was observed in subsequent generations, if at a significantly lower level than for pre-1938 subjects of either gender. The [töaval]-type variants have more or less disappeared from the usage of younger speakers. The most plausible explanation, at least for WFCD, seems to be that most of the older women worked in the textile industry (one of the few where female labour was widely used), which attracted many workers from Belgium, mostly Flemish-speaking, and that both Flemish and Frenchspeaking Belgians are much more likely to devoice than their French counterparts. Both Vj-Vl and WFCD were however perceived differently in the early part of the 20th century compared to their social indexing in later decades. In both cases, there is clear evidence to suggest that both vernacular variants were perceived as French rather than Picard, thus conforming to the pattern of women adopting variants interpreted as representative of a non-local (arguably for the time supra-regional) variety. Another example of SGP reversal explicable by network factors in Lille-Métropole comes to light by comparison of speakers of different ethnic origins three generations younger: the greater use of back /a/ as in [sA] ça by Maghrebian girls (aged 14–15) compared to their male counterparts in a SEGPA1 (Section d’Education Générale et Professionnelle Adaptée) class in Marcq-en-Barœul (Pooley, 1996; 2000). The girls of migrant background backed /a/ in open final syllables in virtually identical proportions to their French classmates, whereas the Maghrebian boys used this regional-vernacular variant much less than any other group defined by gender or ethnicity (Table 7.6 below). The explanation
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
256 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
proposed was that at the time of the fieldwork (January 1995), the girls in the class had been together for two years and a term, whereas the Maghrebian boys were just starting their second term at the school where the fieldwork was carried out. Moreover, their French classmates formed a closely knit group with anti-mainstream values, which the boys in question did not yet share. Social-network patterning that goes against the SGP seems to be fragile, temporary and by definition highly localised. The generations born post-1938 use WFCD considerably less than their predecessors and gender variation displays the ‘classic’ SGP, with men using the vernacular variant more. It can be argued equally that the women of the older generation had adopted it as a supra-regional French variant, one that was hence less characteristic of traditional dialects than the local-regional variety of French which was the target variety of shift (cf. Cochet, 1933; Hambye, 2005). The school-based networks of the 1995 corpus are for different reasons equally fragile, and unlikely to be maintained beyond the time that the informants concerned were thrown together by the education system. The same remarks are true of the Milroys’ results and any similar ones, given that the dominant direction of socio-economic organisation tends to erode tight networks. A case of the SGP seeming to have been more or less permanently reversed emerges from Bauvois’ (2001) study of subjects from three intermediate professions (nursing, primary-school teaching and youth work). For one variable (WFCD) she showed that male primary-school teachers used more standard forms than their female colleagues. An earlier study of Belgian primary teachers (Lafontaine, 1986) showed female subjects maintaining local variants to a greater extent than their male colleagues. This observation was explained by the fact that since primary-school teachers have a high stake in the legitimised variety, male entrants to the profession might feel that they have to prove their loyalty to the practice of the standard and its concomitant values to a greater degree than the female majority of their colleagues. It is also possible that the numerical dominance of women in the staff room may encourage in the man a tendu mindset, to use Bourdieu’s term. By contrast, the other two professions investigated by Bauvois show expected, if not highly significant, gender differences. Greater gender parity might be thought to be leading to the elimination of the differences noted in early variationist studies. Gone are the days when a scholar like Trudgill (1974) could defend his classification of non-working women according to their husbands’ profession or declare, perhaps justifiably at the time, that gender differentiation
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 257
of the kind characterised by the SGP was the single most consistent finding of the first two decades of variationist endeavour. More recently, Bauvois (2002b) has argued that social-class differences far outweigh gender differences, whence her title Ni d’Eve ni d’Adam. As with Hambye’s findings on changing social-class differences, it seems more plausible that Belgium is following France rather than manifesting an independent development, although again supporting data are scarce. If it is impossible to tell whether contemporary variation in French will result in social divergence in the long term or differentially paced levelling, the shift from regional languages undoubtedly illustrates the latter trend. Women, generally speaking, abandoned the autochtonous vernaculars sooner than men, for reasons which overlap with those which have been shown to correlate with differential use of vernacular French forms, many of which arose out of contact between the national and the minority language. As Bauvois (2002b) argues for the use of differently valued variants in French, social factors both outweigh and overlap with (or did so in the past) the use of indigenous vernaculars in francophone Europe. These languages were largely spoken in communities sustained economically by traditional primary and secondary activities (Pooley, 2003). The primary-sector activities in particular entailed a clear demarcation of gender roles and physical separation during the working day (as in the case of coal-face workers, exclusively male, and surface-level employees of both genders) or for longer periods (deep-sea fishing or transhumance). A number of case studies in various regions, e.g. Poitou (Léonard, 1991; Auzanneau, 1998); the Basque Country (Ott, 1981; Coyos, 1999); Brittany (Broudic, 1995); the Auvergne and the Loire (Francoprovençal-speaking) (Hadjadj, 1981); and the Tarn (Maurand, 1981) have shown that use of the local languages corresponds closely to the viability of traditional occupations. A number of studies have moreover differentiated between the various types of rural dweller, in particular those whose life-style is increasingly urban in character as against traditional farmers, living in viable local-language speaking communities. These latter occupations were male-dominated, yielding modest yet viable incomes, which both enabled and influenced women to devote themselves to domestic roles. As the importance of education and mastery of French came to be more clearly perceived, the expectation that women would serve as linguistic models to facilitate upward mobility increased. At the time, the mental mobility of women developed more than that of men, as suggested by respective indices of
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
258 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
regional attachment in a study of students as recent as 1999 (Armstrong and Unsworth). In earlier generations, Hadjadj differentiated sedentary from mobile women in their advancing years in the mid-1970s in Celles-sur-Durolle (Auvergne) and Saint-Thurin (Loire) where the more professionally ambitious women of the generation had gone to live in towns and in so doing had adopted French as their principal language. The women who had remained all their lives in the local areas had manifested very little mobility, unlike their male contemporaries, who as children had run errands in neighbouring villages and as young adults were obliged to leave home for military service. Maurand’s study of diglossia in an Occitan-speaking village in the Tarn (Ambialet) shows increasing gender differentiation across the generations, to the point where he can claim (1981: 114) that: Le français est plutôt, mais non exclusivement, la langue des femmes et l’occitan celle des hommes. While this study also shows that for the children of the time in Ambialet the transmission of Occitan is largely reserved for boys, other studies have confirmed that the use of a local language by younger women is either somewhat incongruous (Auzanneau, 1998) or totally inappropriate (Wanner, 1993), to the point where some local-language speakers feel that the presence of a woman is itself a trigger to switch to French. These testimonies show the persistence of the traditional gender differentiation, as well no doubt as the still predominantly female role in the socialisation of young children, creating pressure to act as a model of standard speech, although the influence of social class is unclear. Nonetheless, the increasing degree of equality in the workplace and elsewhere in the public sphere obviates in some measure women’s need to compensate for lack of actual status by adopting symbolic forms of behaviour, including the use of prestigious language. On the other hand, for many men there are fewer work-based contexts favouring markedly differentiated masculine forms of speech behaviour. While gender roles are undoubtedly less clear-cut than in the early to mid-20th century, use of covertly prestigious speech forms still contributes to an image of masculinity and that of overtly prestigious forms to one of femininity. Such traditional divergences are blurred by the fairly recent emergence of now well-known informal categorisations such as camp males and ladettes, but social and linguistic data concerning these are lacking. Much of the foregoing is applicable to all Western post-industrial societies. The distinctiveness of the French situation is perhaps due to what
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 259
260 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
has already been alluded to, the relatively late industrialisation that allowed rural varieties to persist for longer.
The sociolinguistic consequences of the major migrations of the 19th and early 20th centuries (Section 3.6) have been described by Landrecies (2001) and Pooley (2006a) (Belgians in northern France) and Blanchet (2003) (Italians in Provence). Landrecies (2001: 29–30) claims that Belgian migrants to Roubaix, of whom 88% were Flemish-speaking, were assimilated linguistically into French society through the traditional vernacular language, Picard: [. . .] ténacité du dialecte et volatilisation de l’idiome étranger [. . .] Il ne s’agit donc pas du cas relativement simple d’une assimilation du néerlandais au français mais d’une assimilation de dialectes du néerlandais au français dans un contexte dialectal picard. Pooley (2006a) refines this claim by arguing that Flemish speakers shifted to what they perceived to be French but what is in fact a local vernacular variety with many dialectal (Picard) features. Evidence gathered in a traditional dialectological perspective (Carton, 1972) shows that a speaker from the traditional working-class area of Saint-Sauveur born in the late 19th century used a wider array of Picard features with greater consistency than a contemporary from Wazemmes. This newly assimilated area was perceived in a number of contemporary accounts as strongly Flemish. Following infrastructure developments in the 20th century the old Saint-Sauveur quarter was demolished and rebuilt, leaving Wazemmes as the core central working-class area of Lille, at least in popular perception. Indeed, according to the fictionalised memoirs of a local resident (Vindevogel, 1984: 26, 69), Wazemmes had become by the 1920s the perceived heartland of a highly picardised local vernacular. By that time new Flemish arrivals were seen as foreigners (cf. Van der Meersch, 1933: 141) often by Lillois with patronymics evoking (often recent) Flemish ancestry (Pooley, 2006a: 224). Despite their considerable numbers (Belgians constituted, for instance, the majority of the population of Roubaix in the 1870s and 1880s), the overall picture was one of fairly rapid assimilation, with the only lasting legacy to local vernacular French being a few lexical items but no indisputable phonological features. The feature that
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
7.4 Historical perspectives on the sociolinguistic consequences of migration
can be argued most cogently to have been reinforced by a significant Flemish presence is WFCD. Although a feature of Germanic languages, including Netherlandic, the presence (or strengthening) of WFCD in Lillois vernacular cannot be unambiguously attributed to the migration of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It could be ascribed to longerstanding contact between Romance and Germanic communities in a region having both linguistic and political borders, as indeed is the case for regionally marked varieties of French in Alsace-Lorraine (Pooley, 2006a). As WFCD is still present in Belgian varieties in nearby francophone areas such as Mons (Bauvois, 2001), it is at least likely that the feature gained prominence as a result of the presence of migrants from francophone Belgium as well as those from contiguous areas of the hinterland of Lille. It should be borne in mind that the adoption of this feature is most plausibly construed as an indicator of a shift away from Picard vernacular norms to local/regional vernacular French norms. WFCD is far from being a feature of all the dialects depicted in the ALPic atlas (Carton and Lebègue, 1989; 1998) and a number of indications suggest that it was in the early part of the 20th century characteristic of varieties perceived as French rather than Picard (e.g. Cochet, 1933, comparing the extremely conservative variety of the village of Gondecourt (WFCD-free) to that of the francofied variety of the nearby town of Seclin (WFCD present)). By the end of the 20th century the feature, which is not mentioned in the classic studies of français populaire (e.g. Frei, 1929; Bauche, 1946), came to be perceived as ‘not French’. For the interwar generations it was, however, a markedly feminine feature, suggesting that it was one to be adopted, and perhaps more broadly part of a variety (local vernacular French) to be taken up at the expense of Picard (or more markedly picardised French) (Section 7.2). Recent studies in perceptual dialectology in Lille suggest that Metropolitan French (MF) informants are more knowledgeable about and sensitive to Picard features than their contemporaries ‘issus de l’immigration’ (Pooley, 2004). The Flemish Belgians had no particular incentive to adopt specifically local vernacular features, but their socioeconomic status meant that they settled for the most part in poorer working-class areas where they associated with French people having these forms. The migrants were not only less sensitive to the social significance of local features but at least in the short term had less ready access to more standardised forms than the indigenous population. In the 19th century French was the language of culture and literacy in Flanders, and the Flemish migrants would have had greater incentive to acquire it than a standard variety of Netherlandic.2
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 261
In that perspective, it is not surprising that the Flemish migrants of the 19th and early 20th centuries abandoned their Netherlandic dialects relatively quickly and shifted to French, or at least to varieties they perceived as French, although these may well have been construed by many French people as patois. Their patois contained, however, fewer dialectal features than those of traditional speakers of local vernaculars. They thus contributed to the processes of convergence towards French, dialect levelling and koinéisation within Picard varieties, and certain areas where they settled came several decades later to be known as strongholds of patois. While there are clear similarities between the Italian migration into southern France and the Belgian in the north – poorly educated or illiterate people of mostly peasant stock crossing a porous frontier to settle in border regions close to their homeland – the points of contrast are not far to seek. Blanchet (2003) underscores the cultural affinity between Provençal-speaking Provence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the mainly Piedmontese migrants, whose language and culinary traditions were markedly similar. Moreover, this linguistic and cultural blending occurred at a time when Provence was becoming francofied, particularly through the introduction of compulsory primary education (Ferry Laws, 1881–86). Unlike Picard, Provençal was, in the latter part of the 19th century, enjoying a literary renaissance through the Félibrige, which Blanchet (2003: 9) suggests may have been a factor motivating Italian migrants to acquire it. On the other hand, the Provençaux readily italianised their speech to facilitate communication with Piedmontese speakers (Pasquini, 2000: 305) and indeed many informants in that study were hard put to distinguish between Provençal and Piedmontese. While the majority of the early Italian migrants came from Piedmont and Liguria, more came from Tuscany and Naples in the 20th century. In the interwar period, Provençal-dialetto code-mixing was widespread. As regards the acquisition of French, Roux (1970: 58–9) takes the view that Italian migrants of all regional origins needed to go through the intermediate stage of acquiring Provençal: un fait très important mérite d’être noté, valable pour tout le Var (et peut-être pour toute la Provence): [. . .] avant 1914 ou même 1930, les Italiens arrivant dans la région [. . .] apprenaient en même temps le dialecte local et le français; pour beaucoup même (d’origine surtout piémontaise) le provençal était un intermédiaire quasi obligatoire pour arriver au français. Tous les ordres ou conseils pour le travail étaient d’ailleurs donnés en dialecte [provençal].
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
262 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
As with Landrecies’ account of what occurred in Roubaix, the acquisition of a local vernacular proved to be an essential step in acceding to the mainstream language. Indeed, just as Blanchet argues emphatically that the Italian migrants strengthened and prolonged the everyday use of Provençal in Provence, so one can argue that people of Flemish extraction helped maintain Picard (albeit francofied) in the Nord. Both groups were accustomed to a situation where a dialect was used for informal local communication. The main linguistic legacy of the Italian presence in Provence is lexical, but the so-called italianisms came from various parts of Italy and Corsica3 and were probably assimilated into local vernaculars over a prolonged period. With regard to phonological levelling in French, a number of studies (Brun, 1931; Walter, 1982; Carton et al., 1983; Taylor, 1996; Pooley, 2007) refer to the influence of Provençal on regional varieties, but no feature, particularly in and around Marseille where the largest concentrations of Italians were to be found, is specifically attributed to possible Italian influence on the regional language. Whilst not wishing to downplay the differences between the two processes of migration described above, or the fact that the decline of Provençal as a social practice is several decades more recent than that of Picard in the Nord, both migrations were partly but by no means entirely made up of illiterate dialect speakers who assimilated into the lower strata of the local French society and adopted their linguistic habits, while at the same time promoting convergence towards more widespread varieties. The Provence accent in French unarguably is the most positively viewed both within and outside the region, while that of the Nord is highly stigmatised. That may be attenuated by the fact that, as will be seen in Section 7.5, an indicator of regional attachment has been shown to correlate closely with the use of regional French features and can cross ethnic boundaries in the Nord. Moreover, as was argued in Section 5.12, relatively favourable attitudes towards the Provence accent have not prevented its progressive abandonment by subsequent generations.
7.5 Urban youth vernaculars As with Blanchet’s study of Provence, most studies of youth vernacular have concentrated on lexis. The way in which perceptions of the phenomenon changed over the last two decades of the 20th century has been analysed by Boyer (2001: 77) who distinguishes three periods of media coverage of the phenomenon: in the 1980s, the press referred
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 263
to youth language as français branché or even le jeune before narrowing it down to certain underprivileged young people, and then by the mid-1990s, pushed it still further to the multi-ethnic and multilingual elements of the poorer communities, most of whom are of Maghrebian extraction. While media exaggeration and certain cinematic representations (e.g. La Haine, 1995) suggest the formation of a new dialect or dialects more or less incomprehensible to most of the population, the suggestion does not resist the scrutiny of accountable, contextualised fieldwork (Lepoutre, 1997: 430; Fagyal, 2004: 43). Both of these researchers studied a high-rise estate nicknamed Les 4000 in La Courneuve, a northern Parisian banlieue. Lepoutre’s work is ethnographic in approach and strongly recommends careful micro-sociolinguistic studies on language to complement his description of the multi-ethnic social world of adolescents, where Maghrebians constitute the largest migrant group. Faygal’s study of the lexis of adolescents in the same area in the early part of the current century fails to find convincing evidence of newdialect formation despite the subjects’ own perception that they have a particular way of speaking. With regard to phonology, Armstrong and Jamin (2002) have argued that the banlieues are the main source of vernacular innovation against a general backdrop of levelling towards a supralocal norm (Pooley, 2006b, 2007). The first variationist study of the Paris banlieue, that of Laks (1978) in Villejuif to the south of the capital, focussed on features like the dropping of liquids (/ö/ and /l/ after obstruents, as in [s A ˜ t] centre and [tab] table), and the reduction of linking phrases, like et puis to [epi], which can now be considered as compatible with supralocal norms, at least in informal styles. Laks’s fine-grained ethnographic analysis showed positive correlations between integration by male adolescents into a non-mainstream social network loosely centered on the local Maison pour tous in Villejuif and frequent phonological reduction. More recent studies have focussed on more clearly marked urban vernacular features, considering variants characteristic of traditional Parisian slang or titi parisien of pre-World War II times and of dialectal Arabic, e.g. Jamin (2005) in La Courneuve. The dual origin of the features diverging from the supralocal norm is shown by the vernacular forms noted by Armstrong and Jamin (2002), reproduced in Table 7.3. Features 1 to 5 in Table 7.3 cannot be specifically attributed to the input of migrants of either southern European or North African origin. Ethnically speaking, they can be categorised as white vernacular norms.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
264 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 265 Table 7.3 Divergent phonological features in La Courneuve (Armstrong and Jamin, 2002: 132) Example
1 Use of back /a/ in all contexts
la table [lA tAb] ; c’est grave [sE göAv]
2 /O/ raised towards /o/
la mort [lamoK] ; la police [lapolis]
3 Closing of /E/ to /e/ before word-final uvular approximant
ta mère [tAmeK] ; je suis vert [Sűi veK]
4 Raising and lengthening of /œ/ to [ø:] before /ö/
j’ai peur [Ze pø:K]
5 Affrication of dental and velar stops
/t/ realised as [tS] and /d/ as [dZ] before /i y w/ : tu dis [tSy di] ; toi [tSwA]; je veux dire que [ZvødZi:kS@:] /k/ realised as [kS] before /a A i E @ y œ ø/ and after nasal: qui [kSi]; donc [d˜OkS].
6 Pharyngeal /r/
ta mère [tAmeKQ ]
They are characteristic of traditional vernacular and have been reported in a number of regional varieties. As previously stated, back /a/ is a socially split variant, characteristic of both regional vernacular and oldfashioned standard varieties. In Parisian and Normandy vernacular it is a small-set variant occurring in few words, whereas in the Nord– Pas-de-Calais and Brittany it can occur in open word-final syllables. What appears to be happening in La Courneuve is that some speakers are treating it as a purely phonetic variant and using it variably in all contexts. Pre-rhotic close /o/ and raised /e/ are also found in older and marginalised vernaculars, while the raising of /œ/ to [ø] before /ö/, although without lengthening, can be construed as a variable feature of the supralocal norm. Affrication after /k/ and /t/ is a feature that has been associated with Parisian vernacular for several centuries (cf. Rosset, 1911: 314), leaving only pharyngeal /r/ as perhaps a Maghreb feature. In this regard however, current perceptions, of which speakers are highly aware, are of greater import than historical accounts of which they are of course uninformed; it is perhaps the combination of these elements in a structured system that lends distinctiveness to the variety. For feature 5 and to a lesser degree features 1 and 6, Jamin, Trimaille and Gasquet-Cyrus (2006) argue that divergence from the supralocal norm is matched by convergence across pluri-ethnic (but Maghrebiandominated) areas of several cities. The use of back /a/ as a phonetic variant has been observed not only by Jamin in La Courneuve north
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Feature
of Paris, but also by Trimaille (2003) in Chorier-Berriat, a multi-ethnic area of Grenoble. That said, only Jamin’s data reflect the multi-ethnic character of the area investigated through the choice of informants, Trimaille having elected to restrict his analysis to subjects of Maghrebian origin. Pharyngeal /r/ has been noted not only in Paris and Grenoble, but also in Perpignan by Pickles (2001). The findings of this latter study show the variant to be used by school pupils of Maghrebian origin considerably more than speakers of other ethnicities, although the Maghrebian informants were not from areas suffering particular social blight. The affrication of /t/ and /d/ has again been observed in both the Paris and Grenoble studies, to which may be added the perceptual approach of Gasquet-Cyrus (Jamin, Trimaille and Gacquet-Cyrus, 2006) who adduces convincing evidence that the feature is perceived by the Marseillais as characteristic of their fellow citizens of Maghrebian origin who live in the northern suburbs (quartiers nord, hence the term accent QN). In the Paris and Perpignan studies, all the variants proved to be minority features, used in fewer than half of possible cases by those who use them at all. In Grenoble, however, two of the three variants are strongly majority features for some speakers, who use them even in reading styles. Table 7.4 suggests that for the young people of various ethnicities in the northern Paris suburbs, affrication is an indicator, as it is used more by those of Maghrebian origin than metropolitan French (MF in the table) or members of other ethnic minorities, but there are no significant differences between reading and interview styles. For all groups, boys use affrication more than girls and adolescents and younger adults (aged 15–25) more than older adults (30–50). Table 7.5 shows that affrication is a significant minority variant for the younger age group immersed in street culture, while it is used only occasionally by the adults who have settled lives characteristic of Table 7.4 Affrication of dental and velar stops in two styles in La Courneuve (Jamin, 2005: 43) Ethnicity
MF parents Maghrebian parents Parents of other migrant origin
Interview style
Reading style
N
%
N
%
3,349 4,465 2,746
6.4 21.6 13.6
579 741 379
5.3 22.9 16.7
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
266 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 267 Table 7.5 Affrication by style, age and gender in La Courneuve (Armstrong and Jamin, 2002: 133)
Males 15–25 Females 15–25 Males 30–50 Females 30–50
Reading styles
N
%
N
%
1,369 387 18 52
22.5 13.4 0.6 1.4
111 26 1 1
17.3 8.3 0.2 0.2
mainstream values, particularly employment and nuclear family. This is typical of the disavowal by most young people, once they leave school and enter the wider world, of the adolescent values they espoused so closely while at school in the banlieue (cf. Lepoutre, 1997). While there are some grounds for claiming that in multi-ethnic urban areas, where the Maghrebians are the largest migrant group, certain phonological features and possibly some lexical items are used more by young people of North African origin than their peers from other ethnicities, neither affrication nor pharyngeal /r/ are, generally speaking, majority features for their users. Indeed, affrication is a long-standing vernacular feature observed in such geographically distant places as the Pas-de-Calais (Hornsby, 2006b), western France (Wolf, 1987: 30; Gulyás, 2004: 74), Belgium (Hambye, 2005: 90), Canada (Walker, 1984: 90) and Réunion (Beniamino and Baggioni, 1993: 161) and most recently among middle-class speakers from Grenoble and in the public speech of politicians (Trimaille, forthcoming). Trimaille suggests, however, that the jeunes des quartiers affricate more frequently and with greater intensity. Apart from in Marseille, its perceptual salience is not particularly high, since it is not one of the features generally parodied, unlike pharyngeal /r/ and some prosodic features and lexis. Nor should the public attention directed at lexical items, as witnessed by coverage in the mainstream press and the publication of many dictionaries and glossaries, be interpreted as a sign of new-dialect formation. Lexicographical studies such as Goudaillier (2001) appear to assume a clear correlation betwen the use of certain terms and certain social characteristics (young, banlieue-dwelling, lower-class, ‘ethnic minority’), while making no attempt to compare the usage of young people with socially equivalent profiles or indeed more privileged contemporaries, particularly of MF background. In any event, youth vernaculars or verlan do not result in full bidialectalism, nor exclude mastery of a parler
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Casual style
268 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Je ne connais personne qui fasse des phrases entièrement en verlan. En général, tu as des mots et des expressions qui reviennent mais ça dépend à qui tu parles. Si je vais à la mairie ou que je parle à mon prof, je leur parle normalement New vernacular terms are part of an informal speech style and come to be widely shared, particularly if the items in question enjoy any longevity. Goudaillier (2001), quoting Décugis and Zemouri (1995: 176), hints at the possibility of sub-regional variation within Greater Paris, distributed according to greater concentrations of particular ethnic groups, for instance go in variation with meuf : il y a des expressions ou des mots qui existent dans un département mais pas dans un autre. Dans le 95, par exemple, pour dire meuf, on dit go. C’est surtout les blacks qui disent ça. Ou daron à Champigny (94), c’est le père. Goudaillier’s examples suggest further that various word-formation processes may be more prevalent in different cities. Curiously, innovative verlan seems to be strongly characteristic of Paris, whereas the urban youth of Lyon and Marseille favour other types of neologism. Although of some interest, this situation is far removed from the processes of newdialect formation described by Fox (2007) in her study of the English of young people of Bangladeshi origin in the East End of London, where she reports several innovative vowel features that are strongly associated with this migrant community. Lexis quite manifestly is superficial compared with pronunciation. The work of Pooley (1996, 2000, 2004, 2009) in Lille covers both old, decaying inner-city industrial areas (les courées de Roubaix) and post1960s high-rise estates (Rouges-Barres, Marcq-en-Barœul; Trois-Ponts, Roubaix). The data collected in the early 1980s concentrate on MF subjects and show the vitality of dialectal features among older speakers and the emergence of (non-exclusive) regional French features, particularly back /a/ in open final syllables and the use of open /o/ in closed syllables in words where a close variant predominates in supralocal French, e.g. côte [kOt]. Studies of past and contemporary migration (e.g. Pooley 2006a) show that migrants have mostly settled in poorer working-class
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
normal, as the following informant observed, cited by Décugis and Zemouri (1995: 73):
areas, with high levels of interaction with locals of comparable social background as a result. Maghrebian immigration in the second half of the 20th century has given rise to relatively high concentrations of North Africans who generally form the majority of the ethnic-minority population in certain multi-ethnic areas, either in old inner-city quarters like Lille-Sud or les barres et les tours of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the Trois-Ponts in Roubaix. In popular perception history can be said to be repeating itself as the better-off sections of the community (for the greater part MF) leave the undesirable older industrial areas for better-quality housing in the green periurban communes within easy commuting distance, creating wide disparities of ethnic composition between these and the old industrial heartlands (Lille-Roubaix-Tourcoing) where Maghrebiandominated multi-ethnic communities flourish. This has given rise to certain sociolinguistic phenomena, at least in the popular perception, notably reverse assimilation which sees young MF people using Arabic words (cf. Rampton, 1995). The Marcq-en-Barœul study (Pooley, 2000) showed the vitality of two marked regional features, back /a/ [sA] ça and open /o/ [kOt] côte, in an otherwise more or less completely depicardised vernacular in the mid1990s. Secondly, the data showed strongly marked gender and ethnic differences, with back /a/ emerging as a white masculine marker, while among the female subjects there was little difference in the behaviour of the MF and Maghrebian girls. Indeed, the greater use of back /a/ among the Maghrebians by the girls compared to the boys was interpreted as being indicative of their greater integration into their gender peer group. The female group manifested a heartening level of interethnic harmony, whereas the male group showed signs of interethnic rivalry and conflict. As an indication, this is one of the few situations where respondents manifested a positive value for a ‘Le Pen Index’, which involved the subjects’ expressing some degree of support for the Front National leader as president or approval of those who vote for him and his party. Curiously too, style-shifting patterns for open /o/ were completely reversed for the two ethnic groups, with the MF adolescents showing the predicted pattern of greatest use of [kOt]-type forms in Group Style (spontaneous conversation) as opposed to Word List, Reading Passage and Interview, while the Maghrebians used the greatest number of [O] tokens in Word List and the least in Group Style, suggesting that they perceived forms like [kOt] as standard. A Regional Loyalty Index (RLI) (Pooley, 1996, 2004) based on responses about living in the region, the people of the region and their preferred choice of residence in adulthood, proved
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 269
sensitive to ethnicity with only French subjects achieving the highest possible value. Among the MF teenagers a high RLI value correlated significantly with frequent use of back /a/. Analysis of the Lille-Sud corpus (Pooley, 2009) recorded a decade later, while showing partial confirmation of the Marcq-en-Barœul findings, reveals a number of indicators of levelling. The subjects are an ethnically mixed class of thirteen (seven of MF origin and six of Maghrebian background, including one of mixed parentage). In school the class showed high levels of interethnic harmony; 71% of the pupils (counting the girl of mixed parentage in each of her guises) named at least one friend of different ethnic background among their three best friends at school (Interethnic Friendship Index at School – IFIS) with half points awarded for any name after the first three. Outside school (Interethnic Friendship Index Outside School – IFIO), interethnic friendships were considerably fewer. In both cases, claimed interethnic friendships were more frequent than inter-gender friendships. In contrast to the Marcq-en-Barœul group, no informants manifested the slightest positive reaction when questioned over Le Pen and the National Front. The Lille-Sud study suggests that back /a/ is somewhat recessive compared to the mid-1990s, whereas open /o/ continues to thrive. Strongly backed variants of /a/ in the region of [2] or [A] were a strongly minority feature, compared to the more generalised front realisation [a]. On many occasions a kind of intermediate form was used, with some degree of backing but not fully back, transcribable as [5]. Comparison of the two corpora (Table 7.7) shows the Lille-Sud group used strongly backed /a/ only in a minority of cases and significantly less than the Marcq-en-Barœul informants, even if tokens transcribed as [5] were included, as shown by the bracketed figures. Table 7.7 suggests too that phonological context is of considerable importance, with strong /a/ backing significantly favouring word-final and phrase-final (pre-pausal) position. Moreover, the variant shows clear signs of a phonologically arbitrary lexicalisation to a small range of lexical items, particularly ça and là which are the most crucial loci because of their high frequency. Open /o/, on the other hand, was used with greater consistency in the 2005 data than in those of 1995 and indeed it is a clear majority form in the corpus as a whole. Some individual items are invariant, such as rôle [öOl] and gauche [goS]. Although the open variant was slightly more frequent in phrase-final position, this is not significant as was the case of /a/ backing. While the patterns of stylistic variation are similar overall, the decreased frequency of back /a/ has the effect of compressing the
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
270 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 271 Table 7.6 Style shift in use of back /a/ and open /o/ (Marcq-en-Barœul, 1995; Lille-Sud, 2005) Marcq-en-Barœul Back /a/
Lille-Sud
Open /o/
Back /a/
Open /o/
Word List
19%
39%
7%
49%
Reading Passage
18%
39%
9%
38%
Interview
24%
39% 4%
74%
14%
77%
Group Conversation word-final Group Conversation word-final, phrase-final
41%
53%
Table 7.7 Use of back /a/ and open /o/ by gender and ethnicity (Group Conversation) (Marcq-en-Barœul, 1995; Lille-Sud, 2005) Gender
Boys Girls
MF 1995
Maghrebians 1995
Back /a/
Open /o/
Back /a/
Open /o/
57% 41%
62% 39%
14% 39%
50% 27%
MF 2005
Boys Girls
Maghrebians 2005
Back /a/
Open /o/
Back /a/
Open /o/
22% 5%
74% 58%
20% 6%
90% 17%
variation over a very narrow range, while the opposite is the case for open /o/, where the high frequency in conversational style stretches the range. Table 7.7 shows apparently classic gender correlations for the MF subjects in 1995 and 2005. For the Maghrebians the classic SGP in 1995 was clearly reversed for back /a/, where only the girls behaved similarly to their French peers. For open /o/, the apparently orthodox gender patterns for both ethnicities have to be weighed against the fact that the Maghrebians appear to perceive the standard and vernacular variants differently, in which case the Maghrebian girls’ scores could be interpreted as more highly vernacular than those of their male counterparts. The 2005 data for back /a/ suggest that gender overrides ethnicity and that it is a masculine rather than an MF male feature, albeit at
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Style
a decreased level of frequency. Open /o/ is a majority feature for all MF subjects, although the males’ score is significantly higher than that of the females, but the difference is dwarfed by the huge difference between the Maghrebian boys, for whom it is a strong majority variant (90%), compared to the girls, for whom it is clearly a minority variant (17%). In fact the Maghrebian girls reverse the pattern of style shifting for both variants, using them most in word-list style (83% for open /o/). As regards the Regional Loyalty Index, a maximum index value was found to correlate significantly with greater use of both vernacular variants in both corpora, the main difference being that in the Marcqen-Barœul data only MF subjects gave responses corresponding to the highest possible index value, whereas in the Lille-Sud study, a high RLI index value crossed ethnic boundaries. In contrast, interethnic friendship indices, whether in or outside school, proved to be poor predictors of heavy use of back /a/ and open /o/, except that a nil value tended to correspond with the highest rates of vernacular use. A further indicator of interethnic harmony was knowledge of Arabic among MF subjects. Only one boy scored positively in this respect, and his scores were below the mean for males for both variables. On the other hand, a reworking of the friendship data to produce an interethnic index of popularity among classmates correlated significantly with high frequencies of vernacular use. By and large, interethnic harmony favours levelling, although attenuation of both interethnic and intergender differences (Billiez, Krief and Lambert, 2003) means that such differences as remain take on greater significance. This latter study shows that statistically slight intergender differences in interaction4 are amplified in the perceptions of participants of both sexes, who see boys’ usage as markedly more vernacular than that of girls. Moreover, boys identify with vernacular norms more readily than girls. As in Section 7.3, where it was argued that social class was a more significant factor than gender, it is arguable that gender overrides ethnicity in situations of interethnic harmony, since use of the vernacular, however defined, seems to be a male prerogative among the lower social classes. In situations of hostility, real or perceived, both MF and ethnic-minority speakers, particularly males, may claim their prerogative as gatekeepers of the counter-norm. Billiez, Krief and Lambert (2003: 183) describe the perceived stereotypes of the somewhat effete bourges (MF) and the more stereotypically masculine racailles (Maghrebian). Both ethnicities have the competence to use ethnically suitable forms such as Arabic or regional features. In Marcq-en-Barœul, the use of regional features, such as long close /o/ as in connais [ko:ne] or
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
272 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Roger [öo:Ze] by MF boys (Pooley, 1996: 291) can plausibly be interpreted as forming part of a strategy to exclude their classmates of migrant background. Such reactions appear not to be generalised but may certainly be fostered by certain friendship groups. More generally, rather than any new dialect emerging, greater social meaning is invested in a narrower range of phonetic differences, supplemented by lexical innovation, but here descriptions of the social patterns of distribution have hitherto proved lacking in rigour.
7.6 Concluding remarks While there remains considerable variability in European varieties of French, the degree of levelling demonstrable through comparison of oral data over the 20th century is by any measure considerable, and arguably greater than in any historically multilingual parts of the ‘old continent’.5 This applies particularly to the regional dimension of variation, where the historical Oïl areas, with some notable exceptions such as the Nord– Pas-de-Calais, now seem to show little distinctive variation that would be readily recognised by ordinary francophones, even if careful linguistic investigation reveals specific features. It may be that Brittany and Alsace are also exceptions, particularly the latter, but convincing recent evidence is lacking and as far back as World War II (Martinet, 1945) middle-class speakers claimed few distinctive characteristics, if any. The increased recognition of regional languages may perhaps cause speakers to invest their linguistic identity in the ancestral tongues rather than in specific ways of speaking French. In the south, audibly regional accents are still much more respectable, and in Provence informants have been shown to perceive their way of speaking as preferable in some respects even to Parisian pronunciation. That conceded, evidence of levelling in southern France is considerable, particularly among educated young people, and ordinary ‘judges’ are hard put to discern sub-regional differences even among older speakers. In Belgium and Switzerland, a number of old-fashioned standard distinctions persist strongly, and certain historically vernacular features remain compatible with public usage among middle-class speakers – WFCD in Belgium is the best documented example, but this seems in principle to apply equally to the phonetic use of back /a/ in Switzerland. Greater mobility and thus international contact among the best-educated speakers clearly favours advergence towards French norms, although internal linguistic markets retain some value, and in
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 273
the middle ranks of society so-called old-fashioned standard features are solidly maintained. The picture we have of variable pronunciation has undoubtedly been distorted by the prevalence, indeed until quite recently the dominance, of perceptual studies, which have tended to exaggerate the perceived vitality of older and stereotypical varieties. More recent behavioural studies strongly suggest however that while marked regiolectal and sociolectal varieties have flourished principally among the lower classes, and to some extent still do, increased social levelling has reduced the differences between the usage of people from other social groups, while in the collective memory these continue to be defined by terms which seem less and less suitable in a post-industrial society pervaded in numerous ways by individualism. While studies like that of Armstrong and Boughton (1998) suggest that ordinary subjects can reliably identify the social origins of speakers when invited to do so in no doubt over-simplified binary terms, like working and middle class, other research, such as Hansen’s (2000) and Hambye’s (2005), point to a quite ample range of stylistic variation among educated speakers, compared to their less-well-educated peers. It seems that a generation has now grown up confident in their mastery of the reference variety, but happy to use a small range of vernacular pronunciation features for stylistic effect, supplemented by lexical differences. This reinforces the notion of the diglossic or quasi-diglossic nature of contemporary French, if by these terms is meant a situation where style variation is more important than social. This presupposes a state of affairs that sees most variable features as available to all speakers, such that they become ‘more a feature of register than of social dialect’ (Lodge, 2004: 247). Lodge’s remarks bear upon informal vocabulary but they seem to apply to pronunciation too. In this hypothesis the loss of regional pronunciation forms, which by definition are not available to all, has been largely replaced by widespread features like mute-e and liaison, the stylistic value of which is reinforced by universal and still quite highly normative education. In social terms the demographic dominance of the median classes means that the majority of speakers seek to sound neither too pointu nor too plouc. For most French speakers the distinction between /œ/ ˜ and /˜ E/ will be felt to be too pointu, and it may be either too pointu or too plouc to distinguish /a/ from /A/, depending on the region or lexical items concerned. In general it is certainly plouc to use dialect-influenced forms, although highly marked forms of regional languages are enjoying reinvigorated valorisation, in most cases without any accompanying
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
274 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
adoption as social practice. Certainly the term plouc evokes the rural past of France, and as Lodge (2004: 14) has pointed out, very few French terms exist to refer to urban vernaculars, in contrast to those current in UK English (Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, etc.). Indeed, it is sometimes said that the very term accent connotes for many French speakers a rural accent. While the French language remains a respected, indeed a totemic institution, and is certainly less vehemently decried than other social institutions, the reference variety has undergone some degree of levelling through simplification, exemplified by the loss of distinctions such as /œ/-/˜ ˜ E/ and /a/-/A/, and some destandardisation as described by Willemyns (2007), seen most notably in the middle-class adoption of fronted /o/. It remains to be seen whether further markers of destandardisation will emerge; the only candidate seems at the moment to be affrication of /t, d/. The ideology of the standard, along with the dominance of Paris in every aspect of public affairs as well as in demographic weight, has favoured levelling beyond the Île-de-France, as Map 5.4 is designed to illustrate. What is more, as Singy (1996) has rightly observed, Paris remains the main source of linguistic innovation, as in the case of pre-pausal schwa, seemingly the most recent variable feature to emerge. In Belgium and Switzerland, the transmission of this ideology and the influence of Paris have undoubtedly been weaker, despite widespread concerns about correctness. The persistence of old-fashioned standard forms is now plainly under threat, even in the public domain, as is that of vernacular regional forms. Belgian and Swiss speakers may feel some pride in the way that they speak but the prestige they derive from it is largely confined to the internal linguistic market, where valorised sub-regional differences are being eroded. Internationally, both Belgians and Swiss recognise the extraterritoriality of the reference variety and are generally aware that their distinctive traits are hardly held in high regard by the French. Compared to Quebec, the affirmation of prestige national norms in Belgium and Switzerland is weak, although stylistically appropriate practices, despite clear indications of levelling, retain some vitality and internal valorisation. While as variationists we applaud a plurality of norms and the encouragement of francophones of all regions to express ownership of their language through its variable use, we can hardly deny that the ideology of the standard and the cultural dominance of France, although not unquestioned and in some respects undermined, still face no serious challenge, particularly in Europe.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Social Factors: Class, Gender, Migration, Ideology and Language 275
With regard to the historical contact varieties, the ideological position of France in particular has softened, according some recognition as languages to traditional dialects no longer perceived as a threat to national unity (Section 2.10). Switzerland, in the spirit of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, has chosen not to follow this initiative, while Belgium, riven by ethnolinguistic conflict, dare not contemplate it. The Belgian and Swiss approaches may paradoxically have the effect of investing a greater identity value in their regional (effectively national) forms of French, as the Belgian francophones and Romands affirm their identity as francophones within federal nations where their Flemish and Alemanic compatriots are dominant. The cultural hegemony of France, although unarguably pervasive, seems by contrast less of a preoccupation, yet the revalorisation of the regional languages has had the rather perverse effect of promoting artificial normalised varieties which never were spoken historically. These have the potential to alienate native speakers of the varieties acquired through family or community and now used as the principal, if now largely symbolic, focus of the linguistic aspects of regional identity; they are capable too of divesting further the regiolectal varieties of French of their symbolic role. These normalised varieties are confined to small, self-conscious cultural circles (e.g. associations patoisantes), while social practices which are perhaps less subject to conscious reflection become less regionally differentiated. The major exception to all this in France is the south, although as we have already stated, meridional varieties too are undergoing considerable degrees of levelling.
Notes 1. Equivalent to Special Needs. 2. Eloy et al. (2003) suggest greater awareness of the differences between Picard and French on the part of migrants from various parts of the picardophone area. Their study is purely epilinguistic and considers only well-established migrants. 3. This is not to deny that Corsican speakers perceive their language as distinct from Italian. 4. Perceived interactional distinctions, such as use of swear words, may or may not correlate with use of variable features of pronunciation. 5. Except for Iceland, whose historic uniformity is described by Trudgill (1986).
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
276 Social and Linguistic Change in European French
Adonis, A. and Pollard, S. (1997) A class act: the myth of Britain’s classless society. London: Penguin. Ågren, J. (1973) Etude sur quelques liaisons facultatives dans le français de conversation radiophonique. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. Altwegg, J. (2006) Une Suisse en crise. Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes. Andreassen, H. (2004) Une contrainte de fidélité flottante dans le traitement du schwa et de la liaison dans le canton de Vaud. Bulletin Phonologie du français contemporain 3, 139–84. Also available at http://info.u-paris10.fr/pfc/ bulletin3_andreassen-Vaud.pdf Andreassen, H. (2006) Aspects de la durée vocalique dans le vaudois. Bulletin Phonologie du français contemporain, 6: 115–34. Andreassen, H. and Lyche, C. (2003) La phonologie du français contemporain: le vaudois en Suisse. Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 64–71. Aquino-Weber, D., Cotelli, S. and Nissille, C. (2009) Le français régional de Suisse romande à travers les recueils de cacologies. Paper presented at Association for French Language Studies Conference, Neuchâtel. Ardagh, J. (1995) France in the 1990s. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Armstrong, L. (1932) The phonetics of French. London: Hall and Hyman. Armstrong, N. (1993). A study of phonological variation in French secondary school pupils. PhD thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Armstrong, N. (1996) Variable deletion of French /l/: linguistic, social and stylistic factors. Journal of French Language Studies 6: 1–21. Armstrong, N. (2001) Social and stylistic variation in spoken French. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Armstrong, N., Bauvois, C. and Beeching, K. (eds.) (2001) La langue française au féminin. Paris: L’Harmattan. Armstrong, N. and Boughton, Z. (1998). Identification and evaluation responses to a French accent; some results and issues of methodology. Revue PArole 5 (6): 27–60. Armstrong, N. and Boughton, Z. (2009) Perception and production in French dialect levelling. In K. Beeching, N. Armstrong and F. Gadet (eds.), 9–24. Armstrong, N. and Jamin, M. (2002) Le français des banlieues: uniformity and discontinuity in the French of the Hexagon. In K. Salhi (ed.), 107–36. Armstrong, N. and Low, J. (2008) C’est encoeur plus jeuli, le Mareuc: some evidence for the spread of /o/-fronting in French. Transactions of the Philological Society 106 (3): 432–55. Armstrong, N. and Unsworth, S. (1999) Sociolinguistic variation in southern French schwa. Linguistics 37 (1): 127–56. Arnaud, V. (2006) La dimension variationniste du français en usage à SaintClaude (Haut-Jura): Une étude acoustique des voyelles orales des «gens d’en haut». PhD thesis, Université Laval. 277
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
References
Ashby, W. (1988) Français du Canada/français de France: divergence et convergence. French Review 61 (5): 693–702. Ashby, W. (2003) La liaison variable en français parlé tourangeau: une analyse en temps réel. Paper presented at the Conference of the Association for French Language Studies, Tours. Auer, P. (2005) Europe’s sociolinguistic unity, or: A typology of European dialect/standard constellations. In N. Delbecque, J. Van der Auwera, and D. Geeraerts, (eds.), Perspectives on variation: sociolinguistic, historical, comparative. Berlin: Mouton, 7–42. Auer, P., Hinskens, F. and Kerswill, P. (eds.) (2005) Dialect change: convergence and divergence in European languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Aurnague, M. and Durand, J. (2003) Quelques aspects de la phonologie du français au pays basque. La Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 110–16. Auzanneau, M. (1998) La parole vive du Poitou. Une étude sociolinguistique en milieu rural poitevin, avec application aux marchés. Paris: L’Harmattan. Baetens-Beardsmore, H. (1971) Le français régional de Bruxelles. Brussels: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles. Baetens-Beardsmore, H. (1979) Les contacts des langues à Bruxelles. In A. Valdman (ed.) Le français hors de France. Paris: Champion, 223–47. Ball, R. (1997) The French-speaking world. London: Routledge. Ball, R. (2000) Colloquial French grammar. Oxford: Blackwell. Bassand, M. (2004) La métropolisation de la Suisse. Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes. Bauche, H. (1946) Le langage populaire. Paris: Payot. Bauvois, C. (1996) Parle-moi et je te dirai peut-être d’où tu viens. Revue de Phonétique Appliquée 121: 291–309. Bauvois, C. (2001) L’assourdissement des sonores finale en français: une distribution sexolectale atypique. In N. Armstrong, C. Bauvois and K. Beeching (eds.), 19–36. Bauvois, C. (2002a) La parole sexuée. Etude sociolinguistique de douze variables en Belgique francophone. PhD thesis, Université de Mons-Hainaut. Bauvois, C. (2002b) Ni d’Eve ni d’Adam. Etude sociolinguistique de douze variables du français. Paris: L’Harmattan. Bauvois, C. and Diricq, B. (1999) L’oreille géographique des Montois: des facteurs qui influencent l’identification d’un locuteur. In T. Bulot (ed.), Langage et identité urbaine: le discours épilinguistique en situation urbaine à Rouen, Venise, Athènes et Mons. Paris: L’Harmattan, 197–215. Beauvoir, S. de (1949) Le deuxième sexe. Paris: Gallimard. Beeching, K., Armstrong, N. and F. Gadet (eds.) (2009) Sociolinguistic variation in contemporary French. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Beniamino, M. and Baggioni, D. (1993) Le français, langue réunnionaise. In D. Robillard and M. Beniamino (eds.) Le français dans l’espace francophone. Vol.1. Paris: Champion, 151–72. Berruto, G. (1997) Code-switching and code-mixing. In M. Maiden and M. Parry (eds.) The dialects of Italian. London: Routledge, 394–400. Berruto, G. (2005) Dialect/standard convergence, mixing and models of language contact: the case of Italy. In P. Auer, F. Hinskens and P. Kerswill (eds.), 81–95.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
278 References
279
Beswick, J. (2007) Regional nationalism in Galicia. Language use and ethnic identity in Galicia. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Billiez, J., Krief, K. and Lambert, P. (2003) Parlers intragroupaux de filles et de garçons: petits écarts dans les pratiques, grand écart symbolique. Cahiers du Français Contemporain 8: 163–94. Binisti, N. and Gasquet-Cyrus, M. (2003) Les accents de Marseille. Cahiers du Français Contemporain, 8: 107–30. Bizet, A. (2002) Langages et ‘Loftstory’. Défense de la Langue Française 205: 54–7. Blampain, D., Goosse, A., Klinkenberg, J.-M. and Wilmet, M. (1997) Le français en Belgique, Louvain-la-Neuve: Duculot. Blanchet, P. (1998) Quelle(s) évaluation(s) de quelle(s) pratique(s)? Réflexions sur des enjeux idéologiques à partir d’évaluations récemment médiatisées. In J.-M. Eloy (ed.) Evaluer la vitalité. Variétés d’Oïl et autres langues. Amiens: Centre d’Etudes Picardes, 23–36. Blanchet, P. (2003) Destructuration et restructuration des identités culturelles: les exilés italiens en Provence dans la première partie du XXe siècle. http://www.lascience-politique.com./revue/revue3/fichier14.htm Blanchet, P. and Armstrong, N. (2006) The sociolinguistic of ‘contemporary dialects of French’ in France today: an overview of recent contributions on the dialectalisation of Standard French. Journal of French Language Studies 16 (3): 251–75. Borrel, C. (2006) Enquêtes annuelles de recensement 2004 à 2005. INSEE Première, 1098. Bouchard, P., Guilloton, N., Vachon-L’Heureux, P., De Pietro, J.-F., Béguelin, M.-J., Mathieu, M.-J. and Moreau, M.-L. (1999) La féminisation des noms de métiers, fonctions, grades ou titres. Brussels: Duculot. Boughton, Z. (2005) Accent levelling and accent localisation in northern French. Journal of French Language Studies 15 (3): 235–56. Bourdieu, P. (1979) La distinction. Critque sociale du jugement. Paris: Minuit. Bourdieu, P. (1982) Ce que parler veut dire. Paris: Fayard. Bourdieu, P. (1996) Sur la télévision. Paris: Liber-Raisons d’Agir. Bourdieu, P. and Boltanski, L. (1975) Le fétichisme de la langue. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 4: 2–32. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.-C. (1970) La reproduction. Paris: Minuit. Bourges, H. (1993) La télévision du public. Paris: Flammarion. Boyer, H. (2001) Le français des jeunes vécu/vu par les étudiants. Enquêtes à Montpellier, Paris, Lille. Langage et société 95: 75–87. Boyer, J.-C. (2000) Les banlieues en France. Territoires et sociétés. Paris: Armand Colin. Braudel, F. (1979) Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIIIe siècle. Vol. 3, Le temps du monde. Paris: Colin. Brichard, H. (1991) Le français normal de Belgique. Une étude sociolinguistique. Mémoire de licence en sciences psycho-pédagogiques, Université de Mons-Hainaut. Britain, D. (2005) The dying dialects of England? In A. Bertacca (ed.), Historical linguistic studies of spoken English. Pisa: Edizioni Plus, 35–46. Broudic, F. (1995) La pratique du breton de l’Ancien Régime à nos jours. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Brown, P. and Levinson, S. (1987) Politeness. Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
References
Brown, R. and Gilman, A. (1960) The pronouns of power and solidarity. In T. Sebeok (ed.) Style in language. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 253–76. Brun, A. (1931) Le français de Marseille. Marseille: Institut Historique de Provence [Laffitte Reprints]. Bulot, T. (1998). Parler Rive Gauche, parler Rive Droite. Les représentations de l’espace urbain à Rouen. Etudes normandes 1: 59–71. Bulot, T. (1999). La production de l’espace urbain (mise en mots de la ville urbanisée: Rouen). In T. Bulot and N. Tsekos (eds.) Le langage et l’identité urbaine: le discours épilinguistique en situation urbaine à Rouen, Venise, Berlin, Athènes et Mons. Paris: L’Harmattan, 41–69. Bulot, T. (2005) ‘Que parle-t-on en Pays de Caux?’ Emergence et/ou continuité d’une communauté sociolinguistique régionale. Marges Linguistiques 10: 88–117. Caitucoli, C., Delamotte-Legrand, R. and Leconte, F. (2003) L’usage du langage dans l’institution scolaire: Variation et perception de la variation. Cahiers du Français Contemporain 8: 19–34. Calvet, L.-J. (2002) Linguistique et colonialisme, 4th edn. Paris: Payot. Cannadine, D. (1998) Class in Britain. London: Penguin. Carton, F. (1972) Recherches sur l’accentuation des parlers populaires dans la région de Lille. Lille: Service de Reproduction des Thèses, Université de Lille III. Carton, F. (1987) Les accents régionaux. In G. Vermes and J. Boutet, (eds.) France, pays multilingue. Paris: L’Harmattan, Vol. 2, 29–49. Carton, F. (1992) L’essor de la poésie picarde à Lille. Nord 19: 23–34. Carton, F. (2000). La prononciation. In G. Antoine and B. Cerquiglini (eds.) Histoire de la langue française 1945–2000. Paris: Editions du CNRS, 25–60. Carton, F. (2001) Quelques évolutions récentes dans la prononciation du français. In M.-A. Hintze et al. (eds.), 7–23. Carton, F. and Decamps, P. (1971) Les parlers d’Aubers-en-Weppes: système phonologique, lexique. Arras: Société de Dialectologie Picarde. Carton, F. and Lebègue, M. (1989, 1998) Atlas linguistique et ethnographique picard. Paris: Editions du CNRS. Carton, F. and Poulet, D. (1991) Dictionnaire du français régional du Nord–Pas-deCalais. Paris: Bonneton. Carton, F., Rossi, M., Autesserre, D. and Léon, P. (1983). Les accents des Français. Paris: Hachette. Castelloti, V. and de Robillard, D. (2002) Des Français devant la variation: quelques hypothèses. In V. Castelloti and D. de Robillard (eds.) France, pays de contacts de langues. Leuven: Peeters, 223–40. Cesari, J., Moreau, A. and Schleyer, A. (2001) Plus marseillais que moi, tu meurs! Paris: L’Harmattan. Chambaz, C., Maurin, E. and Torelli, C. (1998) L’évaluation sociale des professions en France. Revue française de sociologie 34 (1): 177–226. Chambers, J.K. (2003) Sociolinguistc theory, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. Chambers, J.K. and Trudgill, P. (1998) Dialectology, 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chandler, T. and Fox, G. (1974) 300 years of urban growth. New York: Academic Press. Chanet, J.-F. (1996) L’Ecole républicaine et les petites patries. Paris: Aubier.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
280 References
281
Charnley, J. (2002) Le point de vue suisse romand : the French language in Switzerland. In K. Salhi (ed.), 187–204. Chauvel, L. (2005) Les classes moyennes à la dérive. Paris: Seuil. Chauvin, M. (1985) Transformation d’un français régional. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 54: 57–77. Clanché, F. (2002) Langues régionales, langues étrangères de l’héritage à la pratique. Insee Première, 830. Clyne, M. (1995) The German language in a changing Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clyne, M., Kretzenbacher, H.-L., Norrby, C. and Schüpbach, D. (2006). Perceptions of variation and change in German and Swedish address. Journal of Sociolinguistics 10: 287–319. Coates, J. (1993) Women, men and language, 2nd edn. London: Longman. Cochet, E. (1933) Le patois de Gondecourt (Nord): grammaire, lexique. Paris: Droz. Coluche (2000) Elle est courte mais elle est bonne! Paris: Cherche-Midi. Conrick, M. (2002) Language policy and gender issues in contemporary French. In K. Salhi (ed.), 205–36. Coquillon, A. (1997) Etude comparative du schwa final dans les parlers des régions toulousaine et marseillaise. Mémoire de DEA, Aix-Marseille I, cited in Durand and Tarrier (2003). Corbeil, J.-C. (1983) Eléments d’une théorie de la régulation linguistique. In E. Bédard and J. Maurais (eds.), La norme linguistique. Quebec/Paris: Conseil de la langue française/Editions Le Robert, 281–303. Coveney, A. (2000) Vestiges of nous and the 1st-person plural verb in informal spoken French. Language Sciences 22: 447–81. Coveney, A. (2001) The sounds of contemporary French: articulation and diversity. Exeter: Elm Bank Publications. Coveney, A. (2003) Anything you can do, tu can do better: tu and vous as substitutes for indefinite on in French, Journal of Sociolinguistics 7: 164–91. Coyos, J.-B. (1999) La langue basque: état des lieux. Plurilinguismes 17: 183–202. Damette, F. (ed.) (1997) La région du Nord–Pas-de-Calais. Villes et système urbain. Report for l’Agence de Développement et d’Urbanisme de Lille-Métropole. Dardenne, E. and Eraly, A. (1995) L’usage du français dans les grandes entreprises. Une étude en Belgique francophone. Brussels: Service de la Langue Française /Ministère de la Communauté Française/Duculot. Dauncey, H. (ed.) (2003a) French popular culture. An introduction. London: Arnold. Dauncey, H. (2003b) Television. In H. Dauncey (ed.), 62–76. Dauzat, A. (1927) Les patois: évolution, classification, étude. Paris: Delagrave. Décugis, J-M. and Zemouri, A. 1995. Paroles de banlieues. Paris: Plon. Dell, F. (1980) Les règles et les sons. Paris: Hermann. Deyhime. G. (1967) Enquête sur la phonologie du français contemporain. La Linguistique, Vols 1 and 2: 97–108, 57–63. Di Pietro, J.-F. (1995) Francophone ou romand? Qualité de la langue et identité linguistique en situation majoritaire. In J.-M. Eloy (ed.) La qualité de la langue? Le cas du français. Paris: Champion, 223–50. Di Pietro, J.-F. and Béguelin, M.-J. (1999) La Suisse romande. Le féminin dans la langue: un espace de variation et de réflexion. In P. Bouchard et al. (eds.), 30–44.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
References
Di Pietro, J.-F. and Matthey, M. (1993) Entre insécurité et identité linguistique: le cas du français à Neuchâtel (Suisse). In M. Francard (ed.), L’insécurité linguistique dans les communautés francophones périphériques. Cahiers de l’Institut de Louvain 19/3,1: 121–36. Diller, A.-M. (1978) The mute-e as a sociolinguistic variable. Montreal Working Papers in Linguistics 10: 11–21. Dominicy, M. (2000). La dynamique du système phonologique en français. Le français moderne 68: 17–30. Dubar, C. (2000) La crises des identités. L’interprétation d’une mutation. Paris: PUF. Dumas, D. (2001) Tendances récentes dans la prononciation du français québécois. In M.-A. Hintze et al. (eds.), 240–50. Durand, J., Laks, B and Lyche, C. (eds.) (2003) La prononciation du français dans sa variation. La Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33. Bulletin PFC. Durand, J. Slater, C. and Wise, H. (1987) Observations on schwa in southern French. Linguistics 25(5): 983–1004. Durand, J. and Tarrier, J.-M. (2003) Enquête phonologique en Languedoc (Douzens, Aude). La Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 117–27. Durand, M. (1936) Le genre grammatical en français parlé à Paris et dans la région parisienne. Paris: Bibliothèque du Français Moderne. Durrell, M. (2007) Language, nation and identity in the German-speaking countries. In C. Fandrych and R. Salverda (eds.), 37–58. Economist (1999) The world in 2000. Economist (2003) The world in 2004. Economist (2007) The world in 2007. Eloy, J.-M. (1988) La famille comme refuge dialectal: un refuge revisité. Plurilinguismes 1: 102–16. Eloy, J.-M., Blot, D., Carcassone, M. and Landrecies, J. (2003) Français, picard, immigrations. Une enquête épilinguistique. Paris: L’Harmattan. Eloy, J.-M. and ÓhIfearnáin, T. (eds.) (2005) Langues proches. Langues collatérales. Paris: L’Harmattan/Amiens: Centre d’Etudes Picardes. Elspaβ, S. (2007) Variation and change in Colloquial (Standard) German. In C. Fandrych, C. and R. Salverda, R. (eds.) 201–16. Encrevé, P. (1988) La liaison avec et sans enchaînement. Paris: Seuil. Enever, J. (2007) Yet another early-start language policy in Europe: Poland this time! Current Issues in Language Planning 8.2: 208–21. EUROSTAT (2009) http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu Fagyal, Z. (2004) Action des média et interactions entre jeunes dans une banlieue ouvrière de Paris. Cahiers de Sociolinguistique 9: 41–60. Fandrych, C. and Salverda, R. (eds.) (2007) Standard, Variation und Sprachwandel in germanischen Sprachen. Tübingen: Narr. Fauconnier, J.-L. (1998) Les données de Belgique romane. In J.-M. Eloy (ed.), 91–100. Ferguson, C. (1959) Diglossia. Word 15: 325–40. Festy (2006) La législation des couples homosexuels en Europe. Population 4: 493–532. Finkielkraut, A. (1987) La défaite de la pensée. Paris: Gallimard. Flutre, L.-F. (1977) Du moyen picard au picard moderne. Amiens: Musée de Picardie.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
282 References
283
Fónagy, I. (1989) Le français change de visage? Revue Romane 24: 225–54. Forster, S. (2008) L’école et ses réformes. Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes. Fouché, P. (1959) Traité de prononciation française. Paris: Klincksieck. Foulkes, P. and Docherty, G. (eds.) (1999) Urban voices. London: Arnold. Fox, S. (2007) The demise of Cockneys? Language change in London’s ‘traditional’ East End. PhD thesis, University of Essex. Francard, M. (1989a) Ces Belges qui parlent français. (Videocassette and booklet). Louvain-la-Neuve: Unité de Linguistique française, Université Catholique de Louvain. Francard, M. (1989b) Insécurité linguistique en situation de diglossie. Le cas de l’Ardenne belge. Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 8 (2): 133–63. Francard, M. (1993) L’insécurité linguistique. Brussels: Service de la Langue Française/Ministère de la Communauté Française/Duculot. Francard, M. (1998) La légitimité linguistique passe-t-elle par la reconnaissance du statut de variété ‘nationale’? Le cas de la communauté française de WallonieBruxelles. Revue québécoise de linguistique 26 (2): 13–23. Francard, M. (1999a) The French language in Belgium. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 13: 1–11. Francard, M. (1999b) Les langues régionales de la Wallonie romane: Entre dialectologie et planification linguistique. Plurilinguismes 17: 15–32. Francard, M. (2001) ‘L’accent belge’: Mythe et réalités. In M.-A. Hintze et al. (eds.), 251–68. Francesca, N. (2007) Les Flamands votent un texte hostile aux francophones. AFP/Belga, 7 November 2007. Frankenberg, R. (1969) Communities in Britain. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Frei, H. (1929) La grammaires des fautes. [Reprinted Geneva: Slatkine, 1971]. Frickx, R. (1997) Littérature belge de langue française ou littérature française de Belgique? In P. Gorceix (ed.), 21–30. Gabrielli, G. (1836) Manuel du provençal ou les provencialismes corrigés, à l’usage des habitants des départements des Bouches-du-Rhône, du Var, des Basses-Alpes, de Vaucluse, du Gard. Aix/Aubin/Marseille: Camoin et Masvert. Gadet, F. (1989) Le français ordinaire. Paris: Armand Colin. Gadet, F. (1997) Le français ordinaire, 2nd edn. Paris: Armand Colin. Gadet, F. (1992) Le français populaire. Paris: PUF. Gadet, F. (1996) Variabilité, variation, variété: dans le français d’Europe. Journal of French Language Studies 6:75–98. Gadet, F. (1998) Cette dimension de variation que l’on ne sait nommer. Sociolinguistica 12, 53–71. Gadet, F. (2003) La variation sociale en français. Paris: Ophrys. Galloway, R. (2007) Bilinguals’ interacting phonologies? A study of speech production in French-Swiss German bilinguals. MPhil dissertation, University of Cambridge. Gardner-Chloros, P. (1991) Language selection and switching in Strasbourg. Oxford: Berg. Gardner-Chloros, P. (2007) Tu/Vous choices: An act of identity? In W. AyresBennett and M.C. Jones (eds.) The French language and questions of identity. Oxford: Legenda, 106–15.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
References
Garsou, M. (1991) L’image de la langue française. Brussels: Service de la Langue Française /Ministère de la Communauté Française/Duculot. Gastaut, Y. (1999) Des Trente Glorieuses à la crise des banlieues. L’Histoire 229: 48–53. Girard, F. and Lyche, C. (2003) La phonologie du français contemporain dans le Domfrontais: un français en évolution. Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 166–73. Girard, F. and Lyche, C. (2005). PFC en Basse-Normandie: Brécey et le Domfrontais. Bulletins PFC 4. http://www. projet-pfc. Gooskens, C. (2005) Contact, attitude and phonetic distance as predictors of inter-Scandinavian communication. In J.-M. Eloy and T. ÓhIfearnáin, (eds.), 99–108. Goossens, J. (2000) De toekomst van het Nederlands in Vlaanderen. Ons Efrdeel 43: 3–13. Gorceix, P. (ed.) (1997) L’identité culturelle de la Belgique et la Suisse francophones. Paris: Champion. Gordon, B. (2003) Leisure. In H. Dauncey (ed.) French popular culture. An introduction. London: Arnold, 150–64. Gordon, M. (2000) Small-town values. Big-city vowels. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Goudaillier, J-P. (2001) Comment tu tchatches ! Dictionnaire du français contemporain des cités, 3rd edn. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose. Gravier, J.-F. (1957) Paris et le désert français. Paris: Flammarion. Grégoire, A. (1956) Les vices de la parole. Namur: Wesmael. Grenoble, L. and Whaley, L. (eds.) (1998) Endangered languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grin, F. (1998) Language policy in multilingual Switzerland: Overview and recent developments. Paper presented at the Cicle de confèrencies sobre política lingüística. Direcció general de política lingüística, Barcelona, December 1998. Grin, F. and Sfreddo, C. (1998) Language-based earnings differentials on the Swiss labour market: is Italian a liability? International Journal of Manpower: 19 (7): 520–32. Grosjean, F., Carrard, S., Codio, C. Grosjean, L. and Dommergues, J.-Y. (2007) Long and short vowels in Swiss French: their production and perception. Journal of French Language Studies 17 (1): 1–19. Guézennec, N. (2003) Variations phonétiques: entre identité et interactions sociales. Cas de l’île de Sein (Finistère-Sud). Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 151–58. Gueunier, N., Genouvrier, E. and Khomsi, A. (1978) Les Français devant la norme. Paris: Klincksieck. Gulyàs, A. (2004) Etude de créole martiniquais du point de vue de la phonologie historique. Aspects méthodologiques. In C. Feullard (ed.) Créoles, langages and politiques linguistiques. Bern: Peter Lang, 71–7. Hachez, T. and Wynants, B. (1991) Les élèves du secondaire et les normes du français écrit. Brussels: Communauté Française de Wallonie-Bruxelles. Haarmann, H. (1999) History. In J. Fishman (ed.), Handbook of language and ethnic identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 60–76.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
284 References
285
Hadjadj, D. (1981) Etude sociolinguistique des rapports entre patois et français dans deux communautés rurales du centre de la France en 1975. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 29: 71–97. Haeri, N. (1987) Male/female differences in speech: An alternative interpretation. Paper presented at NWAV-XV, Stanford University. Cited in Chambers (2003). Hall, D. (2008) Variation in the regional French of Normandy. PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania. Hambye, P. (2005) La prononciation du français contemporain en Belgique. Variation, normes et identités. PhD thesis, Université Catholique de Louvain. Hambye, P. (2008) Convergences et divergences. Quelques observations sur la standardisation du français en Belgique. In J. Erfurt and G. Budach (eds.), Standardisation et Déstandardisation / Estandarización y desestandarización. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 35–62. Hambye, P. and Francard, M. (2004) Le français dans la Communauté WallonieBruxelles. Une variété en voie d’autonomisation? Journal of French Language Studies 14 (1): 41–59. Hambye, P. and Francard, M. (2008) Normes endogènes et processus identitaires. Le cas de la Wallonie romane. In C. Bavoux, L.-F. Prudent and S. Wharton (eds.) Normes endogènes et plurilinguisme. Aires francophones, aires créoles. Lyon: ENS Éditions, 45–60. Hambye, P., Francard, M. et Simon, A.-C. (2003) Phonologie du français en Belgique. Bilan et perspectives. La Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 56–63. Hansen, A. B. (1998) Les voyelles nasales du français parisien moderne. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum. Hansen, A. B. (2000) Le E caduc interconsonantique en tant que variable sociolinguistique – une étude en région parisienne. LINX 42 (1): 45–58. Hansen, A. and Mosegaard Hansen, M.-B. (2003) Le [@] prépausal et l’interaction. In A. Hansen and M.-B. Mosegaard Hansen (eds.) Structures linguistiques et interactionneles dans le français parlé. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 89–109. Haseler, S. (1996) The English tribe. London: Macmillan. Hauchecorne, F. and Ball, R. (1997) L’accent du Havre: Un exemple de mythe linguistique. Langage et société 82: 5–26. Haugen, E. (1966) Dialect, language, nation. American Anthropologist 68, 922–35. Haussmann, R., Tyson, L. Zahidi, S. (2008) Global gender gap report 2008. World Economic Report. Hayward, S. (1990) Television. A transparence on modern France. In M. Cornick (ed.) Beliefs and identities in modern France. Loughborough: ASMCF/ERC, 97–105. Hennig, J. (1926) Die französische Sprache im Munde der Belgier und die Marollenmundart Brussels. Heidelberg: Groos. Héran, F., Filhon, A. and Deprez, C. (2002) La dynamique des langues en France au fil du XXe siècle. INED 376. Hinskens, F. (2007) New types of non-standard Dutch. In C. Fandrych and R. Salverda (eds.) Standard, Variation und Sprachwandel in germanischen sprachen. Tübingen: Narr, 281–300. Hintze, M.-A., Judge, A. and Pooley, T. (eds.) (2001) French accents: Phonological and sociolinguistic perspectives. London: AFLS/CiLT.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
References
Hoare, R. (2004) Language attitudes and perceptions of identity in Brittany. Teanga (Irish Yearbook of Applied Linguistics) 20: 163–92. Hofstadter, R. (1962) Anti-intellectualism in American life. New York: Vintage Books. Hohenberg, B. and Lees, L. (1985) The making of urban Europe: 1000–1950. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hohenberg, B. and Lees, L. (1995) The making of urban Europe: 1000–1994. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Honey, J. (1991) Does accent matter? The Pygmalion factor. London: Faber. Hornsby, D. (1996) Dialect shift: The example of a French mining community. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge. Hornsby, D. (1999) Optional liaison in two French cities. Paper given at First French Variation Forum, London Guildhall University. Hornsby, D. (2006a) The myth of structured obsolescence. Journal of French Language Studies 16 (2): 125–46. Hornsby, D. (2006b) Redefining regional French. Oxford: Legenda. http.www.education.gouv.fr/ival INSEE (2000) Lille parmi les aires urbaines. Profils 61. INSEE (2001) Population, emploi, migrations: une vision de la région Nord–Pasde-Calais en trois dimensions. Profils 65. INSEE (2007) Bilan de la population. www.insee.fr Ion, J. (1997) La fin des militants? Paris: Editions de l’Atelier. Jamin, M. (2005) Sociolinguistic variation in the Paris suburbs. PhD thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury. Jamin, M., Trimaille, C. and Gasquet-Cyrus, M. (2006). De la convergence dans la divergence: le cas des quartiers pluriethniques en France. Journal of French Language Studies 16 (3): 335–56. Janssens, R. (2008) L’usage des langues à Bruxelles et la place du néerlandais. Quelques constatations récentes. Brussels Studies 13: 1–16. Jetchev, G. (2003) Le schwa français au miroir de la variation La Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 102–7. Johnstone, P. (1995) Operation world, 5th edn. Carlisle: Paternoster Press. Johnstone, P. and Mandryk, J. (2001) Operation world. 21st century edition. Carlisle: Paternoster Press. Jost, F. (1962) Rousseau et la Suisse. Neuchâtel: Editions du Griffon. Judge, A. (1993) French: a planned language? In C. Sanders (ed.) French today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 7–26. Keller, O. (1937) Eine sterbende Mundart: Romont-Plagne. Vox Romanica 2: 394–446. Kemp, W., Pupier, P. and Yaeger, M. (1980) A linguistic and social description of final consonant cluster simplification in Montreal French. In R.W. Shuy and A. Shnukal (eds.) Languages and the use of language. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Kerswill, P. and Williams, A. (2002) ‘Salience’ as an explanatory factor in language change: evidence from dialect levelling in urban England. In M. C. Jones and E. Esch (eds.) Language change. The interplay of internal, external and extra-linguistic factors. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 81–110. Klinkenberg, J.-M. (1992) Le français, une langue en crise? In M. Wilmet, J.-M. Klinkenberg, B. Cerquiglini and R. Dehaybe (eds.) Le français en débat. Brussels: Duculot, 25–44.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
286 References
287
Klinkenberg, J.-M. (1999) La francophonie septentrionale. Belgique francophone, Québec, Suisse romande. In J. Chaurand (ed.) Nouvelle histoire de la langue française. Paris: Seuil, 505–43. Klinkenberg, J.-M. (2000a) Le français en Belgique. In G. Antoine and B. Cerquiglini (eds.) Histoire de la langue française, 1945–2000. Paris: CNRS, 701–18. Klinkenberg, J.-M. (2000b) W comme Wallonie, Bruxelles, Flandre. In B. Cerquiglini, J.-C. Corbeil, J.-M. Klinkenberg and B. Peeters (eds.) Tu parles!? Le français dans tous ses états. Paris: Flammarion, 341–50. Kloss, H., McConnell. G. and Verdoodt, A. (1989) Les langues écrites du monde: relevé du degré et des modes d’utilisation. Quebec: Presses Universitaires de Laval. Knecht, P. (1985) La Suisse Romande. In R. Schläpfer, R. (ed.) La Suisse aux quatre langues. Geneva: Zoé, 127–69. Kok-Escalle, M.-C. and Melka, F. (eds.) (2001) Changements politiques et statut des langues. Histoire et Epistémologie 1780–1945. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kristol, A. (1996) Sondages d’opinion à thématique sociolinguistique: problèmes de fiabilité. Lengas 40: 123–37. Kristol, A. (1998) Que reste-t-il des dialectes gallo-romains de Suisse romande? In J.-M. Eloy (ed.), Evaluer la vitalité. Variétés d’oïl et autres langues. Amiens: Centre d’Etudes Picardes, 101–14. Kuiper, L. (1999) Variation and the norm: Parisian perceptions of regional French. In D. Preston (ed.), Handbook of perceptual dialectology, Vol 1. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 243–62. Kuiper, L. (2005) Perception is reality: Parisian and Provençal perceptions of regional varieties of French. Journal of Sociolinguistics 9 (1): 28–52. Labov, W. (1966) The social stratification of English in New York City. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics. Labov, W. (1972) Sociolinguistic patterns. Oxford: Blackwell. Labov, W. (1990) The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2: 205–54. Labov, W. (2001) Principles of linguistic change. Social factors. Oxford: Blackwell. Lafontaine, D. (1986) Le parti pris des mots. Sprimont: Maradaga. Lafontaine, D. (1988) Le parfum et la couleur des accents. Le Français Moderne 1 (2): 60–73. Lafontaine, D. (1991) Les mots et les Belges. Brussels: Service de la Langue Française/Ministère de la Communauté Française/Duculot. Lafontaine, D. (1997) Les attititudes et les représentations linguistiques. In D. Blampain et al. (eds.), 381–90. Laks, B. (1978) Contribution empirique à l’analyse socio-différentielle de la chute des /r/ dans les groupes consonantiques finals. Langue française 34: 109–25. Laks, B. (1983) Langage et pratiques sociales. Etude sociolinguistique d’un groupe d’adolescents. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 46: 73–97. Laks, B. (2002) Description de l’oral et variation: La phonologie et la norme. L’information grammaticale 94: 5–11. Lambert, W., Hodgson, R., Gardner, R. and Fillenbaum, S. (1960) Evaluational reactions to spoken language. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60 (1): 44–57.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
References
Landrecies, J. (2001) ‘C’est laid mais ça me fait rire’: Les représentations de l’accent du Nord dans une population de stagiaires de l’IUFM de Lille. In M.-A. Hintze et al. (eds.) 196–217. Landick, M. (1995) The mid-vowels in figures: Hard facts. French Review 6 (1): 88–103. Landick, M. (2004) Enquête sur la prononciation du français de référence. Paris: L’Harmattan. Lass, R. (1984) Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lateur, M. (1951) Lexique du parler populaire d’Artois. Paris: Ricour et Chevillet. Le Page, R. and Tabouret-Keller, A. (1985) Acts of identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Le Roy, G. (1967). Grammaire de diction française. Paris: Editions de la pensée moderne. Lechanteur, J. (1997) Les dialectes. In D. Blampain et al. (eds.), 81–102. Lefebvre, A. (1991) Le français de la région lilloise. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne. Lefèvre, V. (1862) Le Marollien, œuvres complètes de Coco Lulu. Brussels. Lehmann, S. (1995) Vestiges d’un patois: la situation des patois jurassiens. Société jurassienne d’émulation. Actes 1994 : 115–44. Lemaire, J. (2008) L’histoire de la langue française. http://www.tlfq.ulaval.ca/ axl/francophonie/histlngfrn.htm 20th July 2009. Lemaire, J. (2009) La communauté française de Belgique. http://www.tlfq. ulaval.ca/axl/europe/belgiquefrn.htm Lenoir, F. (2008) Religions, croyances, et spiritualité. Grandes tendances. In L’Etat de la France, 2007–08. Paris: La Découverte, 113–20. Léon, P. (1983) Dynamique des changements phonétiques dans le français de France et du Canada. La Linguistique 19 (1): 13–28. Léon, P. (1992) Phonétisme et prononciation du français avec des travaux d’application et leurs corrigés. Paris: Nathan. Léonard, J.-L. (1991) Distance et dialecte: approche des représentations ethnolinguistiques à Noirmoutier (Vendée). In J.-C. Bouvier and C. Martel (eds.) Les Français et leurs langues. Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence Aix-Marseille I, 59–83. Léonard, J.-L. (1998) Le piège de la diglossie en domaine poitevin (questions d’idéologie linguistique). In J.-M. Eloy (ed.) Evaluer la vitalité. Variétés d’oïl et autres langues. Amiens: Centre d’Etudes Picardes, 207–32. Lepoutre, D. (1997) Cœur de banlieue. Codes, rites et langages. Paris: Odile Jacob. Lhoir, I. (1994) Le français de Belgique? Quelles Normes? Mémoire de Licence, Université de Mons-Hainaut, quoted in Moreau, Brichard and Dupal (1999). Linn, A. and Oakes, L. (2007) Language policies for a global era: The changing face of language politics in Scandinavia. In C. Fandrych and R. Salverda (eds.) Standard, variation and language change in the Germanic languages. Tübingen: Narr, 59–90. Lodge, R.A. (1993) French: from dialect to standard. London: Longman. Lodge, R.A. (1997) Was there ever a Parisian Cockney? Plurilinguismes 13: 9–34. Lodge, R.A. (2004) A sociolinguistic history of Parisian French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
288 References
289
Lonnemann, B. and Meisenburg, T. (2006) Les groupes consonantiques et leur éventuelle solution das le français du Midi (PFC Lacaune). Paper presented at Journées PFC, February 2006, available at www.projet-pfc.net/ Lucci, V. (1983) Etude phonétique du français contemporain à travers la variation situationnelle. Grenoble: Faculté des Langues et Lettres. Luck, J. (1980) A history of Switzerland. Palo Alto: Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship. Lüdi, G., Py, B., De Pietro, F., Franceschini, R., Matthey, M., Oeshserra, C. and Quiroga, C. (1995) Changement de langage et langage du changement. Aspects linguistiques de la migration interne en Suisse. Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme. Lyche, C. (forthcoming 2010) Le français de référence. In S. Detey, J. Durand, B. Laks and C. Lyche (eds.) Les variétés du francais dans l’espace francophone: resources pour l’enseignement (with DVD). Paris: Ophrys. Maffesoli. M. (1988) Le temps des tribus. Paris: Klincksieck. Maître, R. and Matthey, M. (2004) Le patois d’Evolène, dernier dialecte francoprovençal parlé et transmis en Suisse. In J.-M. Eloy (ed.), Des langues collatérales. Problèmes linguistiques, sociolinguistiques et géopolitiques de la proximité linguistique. Paris: L’Harmattan, 375–90. Malécot, A. (1977). Introduction à la phonétique française. The Hague: Mouton. Manessy, G. (1997) Norme endogène. In M.-L. Moreau (ed.) Sociolinguistique. Concepts de base. Sprimont: Pierre Mardaga, 223–5. Manno, G. (2003) Le français régional de Suisse romande à l’aube du XXIe siècle: dérégionalisation ou dédialectalisation. In C. Sanders, A. Coveney and M.-A. Hintze (eds.) Variation et francophonie. Mélanges en hommage à Gertrud Aub-Buscher. Paris: L’Harmattan, 331–57. Marchand, P. (1999). La vie artistique à Lille de 1920 à nos jours. In L. Trénard and Y.-M. Hilaire (eds.) Histoire de Lille. Du XIXe siècle au seuil du XXIe siècle. Lille: Perrin, 353–69. Martin, W. (1980) Histoire de la Suisse. Lausanne: Payot. Martinet, A. (1945). La prononciation du français contemporain. Paris: Droz. Martinet, A. (1958). C’est jeuli le Mareuc ! Romance Philology II: 345–55. Martinet, A. (1969). Le français sans fard. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Martinet, A. (1979) Les usages linguistiques et la société française. Revue romane 18: 59–68. Martinet, A. and Walter, H. (1973) Dictionnaire de la prononciation dans son usage réel. Paris: France Expansion. Martinon, P. (1913) Comment on prononce le français. Paris: Larousse. Matthey, M. (2003) Le français langue de contact en Suisse romande. Glottopol 2: 92–100. Mattheier, K. (1996) Varietätenkonvergenz. Überlegungen zu einem Baustein einer Theorie der Sprachvariation. In P. Auer, F. Hinskens and P. Mattheier (eds,) Convergence and divergence of dialects in Europe (Sociolinguistica 10), 31–52. Mathieu, N. (1990) La notion de rural et les rapports ville-campagne en France, des années cinquante aux années quatre-vingt. Economie rurale 197: 35–40. Mauchamp, N. (1995) Les Français. Mentalités et comportements. Paris: Clé International. Maurais, J. (2008) Les Québécois et la norme. L’évaluation par les Québécois de leurs usages linguistiques. Quebec: Office de la Langue Française.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
References
Maurand, G. (1981) Situation linguistique d’une communauté rurale en domaine occitan. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 29: 99–119. Mazel, J. (1975) Français standard et français d’Oc. Groupe de Recherche sur la Diglossie 2: 1–13. Mazel, J. (1980) Francitan et français d’Oc. Problèmes de terminologie. Lengas: 113–41. Mazzoleni, O. (2003) Nationalisme et populisme en Suisse. Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes. Mees, I. and Collins, B. (1999) Cardiff: a real-time study of glottalisation. In P. Foulkes and G. Docherty (eds.) Urban voices. London: Arnold, 185–202. Meillet, A. (1921) Linguistique historique et linguistique générale. Paris: Champion. Meisenburg, T. (2003) Français et occitan à Lacaune. Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 128–34. Meizoz, J. (1996) Le droit de ‘mal écrire’. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales 111 (1): 92–109. Mermet, G. (2008) Francoscopie. Paris: Larousse. Merton, R. K. (1957) Social theory and social structure. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Métral, J.-P. (1977) Le vocalisme du français en Suisse romande. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 31: 145–76. Michielsens, M. (2005) 175 ans de femmes. Egalités et inégalités en Belgique, 1830–2005. Brussels: Conseil de l’Egalité des Chances entre Hommes et Femmes. Miller, A. (2003) Bande dessinée. In H. Dauncey (ed.), 135–49. Milroy, J. (1992) Linguistic variation and change. Oxford: Blackwell. Milroy, J. (2000) Historical description and the ideology of the standard language. In L. Wright (ed.) The development of Standard English, 1300–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 11–28. Milroy, L. (1987) Language and social networks. Oxford: Blackwell. Milroy, L. (2003) Social and linguistic dimensions of phonological change: fitting the pieces of the puzzle together. In D. Britain and J. Cheshire (eds.) Social dialectology: in honour of Peter Trudgill. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 155–72. Milroy, L. and Gordon, M. (2003) Sociolinguistics. Methods and interpretation. Oxford: Blackwell. Milroy, J., Milroy, L., Hartley, S. and Walshaw, D. (1994) Glottal stops and Tyneside glottalisation: competing patterns of variation and change in British English. Language Variation and Change 6: 327–57. Morán, P. (ed.) (2004) Asturian language: report and recommendations. Liège: Association Internationale pour la défense des langues et cultures menacées. Moreau, M.-L. (1997) Le bon français de Belgique: d’un divorce entre norme et discours sur la norme. In D. Blampain et al. (eds.), 391–98. Moreau, M.-L. (1999) La Communauté française de Belgique. La féminisation des termes de professions en Belgique francophone. In P. Bouchard et al. (eds.), 65–80. Moreau, M.-L. and Bauvois, C. (1998) L’accommodation comme révélateur de l’insécurité linguistique. Locutrices et locuteurs belges en interaction avec des Français et des Belges. In P. Singy (ed.) Les femmes et la langue. L’insécurité linguistique en question. Lausanne/Paris: Delachaux and Niestlé, 61–73.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
290 References
291
Moreau, M.-L. and Brichard, H. (1999a) Français et Belges: des fluidités verbales différentes? Des donnéés objectives aux représentations subjectives. In M.-L. Moreau, H. Brichard and C. Dupal (eds.), 12–18. Moreau, M.L. and Brichard, H. (1999b) Aimeriez-vous avoir un fils qui parle comme ça? La norme des francophones belges. In M.-L. Moreau, H. Brichard and C. Dupal (eds.). 27–36. Moreau, M.-L., Brichard, H. and Dupal, C. (1999) Les Belges et la norme: analyse d’un complexe linguistique. Brussels: Service de la Langue Française /Ministère de la Communauté Française/Duculot. Mortamet, C. (1998) L’hétérogénéité des étudiants et son évaluation. Mémoire de DEA, Université de Rouen. Müller, B. (1985) Le français d’aujourd’hui. Paris: Klincksieck. OECD (2007) Annual Report. www.oecd.org OECD (2008) L’immigration en Belgique. Effectifs, mouvements et marché du travail. Rapport Direction générale Emploi et Marché du Travail. Office fédéral de la statistique (2000) http://bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/fr/index/ themen/01/22/publi/portrait_dem/introduction.html Office for National Statistics /ONS (2002) Jack and Chloe top babies’ names again. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/bnames0102.pdf Offord, M. (2003) The role of private associations. In M. Landrick (ed.) Le français face aux institutions. Paris: L’Harmattan, 95–110. ONU (2005) Le développement humain. www.unesco.org, 23rd February 2009. Ott, S. (1981) A circle of mountains. Reno: University of Nevada Press. Pannatier, G. (1995) Le patois d’Evolène (Valais). Synchronie et diachronie d’un parler francoprovençal. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de Neuchâtel. Paris, D. and Stevens, J.-F. (2000) Lille et sa région urbaine. Paris: L’Harmattan. Parry, M. (2002) The challenges to multilingualism today. In A. Lepeschy and A. Tosi (eds.) Multilingualism in Italy: past and present. Oxford: Legenda, 47–59. Pasquini, P. 2000. Le bilinguisme problématique des immigrés italiens. In I. Félici (ed.) Bilinguisme: enrichissements et conflits. Paris: Champion, 303–13. Pedersen, I.-L. (1994) Linguistic variation and composite life modes. In B. Nordberg (ed.) The sociolinguistics of urbanization: the case of the Nordic countries. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 87–115. Pedersen, I.-L. (2005) Processes of standardisation in Scandinavia. In P. Auer, F. Hinskens and P. Kerswill (eds.), 171–95. Perellon, J.-F. (2003) La qualité dans l’enseignement supérieur. Reconnaissances des filières d’études en Suisse et en Europe: analyse d’une révolution. Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes. Péretz-Juillard, C. (1985). Variétés vocaliques et différenciations sociales à Paris. In A.-M. Houdebine (ed.) La phonologie de l’enfant français de six ans. Variétés régionales. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag, 131–66. Perrineau, P. (1998) La logique des clivages politiques. In D. Cohen (ed.) Les révolutions invisibles. Paris: Clamann-Lévy, 289–300. Perkins, H. (2002) The rise of professional society: England since 1880. London: Routledge. Phillipson, R. (2003) English-only Europe? Challenging language policy. London: Routledge. Pichon, E. (1938). ‘Genre et questions connexes (sur les pas de Mlle Durand)’, Le français moderne 6: 107–26.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
References
Pickles, M. (2001) La mère de mon père est né à Grenade: Some phonological features of the French of teenagers in Perpignan. In M.-A. Hintze et al. (eds.), 128–47. Pierrehumbert, W. (1926) Dictionnaie historique du parler neuchâtelois. Neuchâtel: Attinger. Piguet, E. (2004) L’immigration en Suisse. 50 ans d’entrouverture. Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes. Piron, M. (1979) Le français de Belgique. In A. Valdman (ed.), 201–21. Piron, M. (1985) Le français en Belgique. In G. Antoine and R. Martin (eds.) Histoire de la langue française 1880–1914. Paris: CNRS, 369–79. Poesmens, D. (2005) EBU Members’ Audience Trends, 1992–2004. Paper given at EBU-ISN Annual Conference, Marrakesh, September 2005. Available at www.ebu.ch (consulted January 2009). Pohl, J. (1953) Quand les ketjes tiennent le fou au quartier des Marolles. Vie et Langage 20: 521–3. Pohl, J. (1962) Témoignages sur la syntaxe du verbe dans quelques parlers français de Belgique. Brussels: Palais des Académies. Pohl, J. (1979) Les variétés régionales du français. Etudes belges (1945–1977). Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles. Pohl, J. (1983) Quelques caractéristiques de la phonologie du français parlé en Belgique. Langue français 60: 30–41. Pohl, J. (1985) Le français de Belgique est-il belge? Présence francophone 27: 9–19. Pohl, J. (1986) Une parenté phonologique belgo-suisse archaïsante. La Linguistique 22 (2): 133–6. Poignant, B. (1998) Rapport sur les langues et cultures régionales. http://www. bzh.com/identite-bretonne/charte/fr-poignant.html. Poirier, C. (1998) De la défense à la codification du français québécois: plaidoyer pour une action concertée. Revue québécoise de Linguistique 26 (2): 129–50. Pöll, B. (2001) Francophonies périphériques. Histoire, statut et profil des principales variétés du français hors de France. Paris: L’Harmattan. Pooley, T. (1994) Word-final consonant devoicing in a variety of working-class French – a case of dialect contact? Journal of French Language Studies 4: 215–33. Pooley, T. (1996) Chtimi: the urban vernaculars of northern France. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pooley, T. (2000) The use of regional French by Blancs and Beurs: questions of identity and integration in Lille. Interface 5: 51–69. Pooley, T. (2001a) By their a’s shall ye know them: variety contact and changing perceptions in the life cycle of two northern regional features. In M.-A. Hintze et al. (eds.), 165–95. Pooley, T. (2001b) Les variantes sociolinguistiques féminines: Essai de synthèse. In N. Armstrong, C. Bauvois, K. Beeching (eds.) La langue française au féminin. Paris: L’Harmattan, 53–73. Pooley, T. (2002) The depicardization of the vernaculars of the Lille conurbation. In M. Jones and E. Esch (eds.) Language change. The interplay of internal, external and extra-linguistic factors. Mouton: De Gruyter, 29–62. Pooley, T. (2003) Picard et français: Lille et sa région. Ia Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 174–9. Pooley, T. (2004) Language, dialect and identity in Lille. 2 Vols. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
292 References
293
Pooley, T. (2005) Basque and the regional-languages question in France. Cahiers of the Association for French Language Studies 11 (2): 1–40. Pooley, T. (2006a) The linguistic assimilation of Flemish immigrants in Lille (1800–1914). Journal of French Language Studies 16 (2): 207–33. Pooley, T. (2006b) On the geographical spread of Oïl French in France. Journal of French Language Studies 16 (3): 357–90. Pooley, T. (2006c) Langues d’Oïl, langues de France, langues pourquoi faire? Cahiers of the Association for French Language Studies 12 (1): 11–78. Pooley, T. (2007) Dialect levelling in southern France. Nottingham French Studies 46 (2): 40–63. Pooley, T. (2008) Analyzing urban youth vernaculars in French cities. In D. Ayoun (ed.) Studies in French Applied Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 317–44. Pooley, T. (2009) The immigrant factor in phonological levelling. In K. Beeching, N. Armstrong and F. Gadet (eds.), 63–76. Potte, J-C. (1977) Le français de Glaine-Montaigut (Puy-de-Dôme): Connaissance du milieu et approche phonétique. In G. Taverdet and G. Straka (eds.) Les français régionaux. Paris: Klincksieck: 191–8. Pustka, E. (2007) Phonologie et variétés en contact. Aveyronnais et Guadeloupiens à Paris. Tübingen: Narr. Pottier, B. (1968). La situation linguistique en France. In A. Martinet (ed) Le Langage. Paris: Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, 1144–61. Quévit, M. (2009) Populisme: pas de ça chez nous. http://www.actua24.be, consulted 23rd February 2009. Racine, I., Bühler, N. and Andreassen, H. (2009) Le projet ‘Phonologie du Français contemporain’: une première analyse du point d’enquête de Neuchâtel. Paper presented at Association for French Language Studies Conference, Neuchâtel. Rampton, B. (1995) Crossing. London: Longman. Rapport parlementaire (1995) Les sectes en France. Paris: Patrick Banon. Rash, F. (1998) The German language in Switzerland. Bern: Peter Lang. Reichstein, R. (1960) Etude des variations sociales et géographiques des faits linguistiques. Word 16: 55–99. Remacle, L. (1953) Atlas linguistique de la Wallonie. Vol.1: Aspècts phoètiques. Liège: Vaillant-Carmanne. Remacle, L. (1969) Orthophonie française. Conseils aux Wallons, 2nd edn. Liège: Les Lettres Belges. Remacle, L. (1972) La géographie dialectal de la Belgique romane. In Les dialectes de la France au Moyen Âge et aujourd’hui. Actes du Colloque de Strasbourg (May 1967). Paris: Klinksieck, 311–35. Remacle, L. (1976) La différenciation lexicale en Belgique romane. Les dialectes de Wallonie 4: 5–32. Reuse, W. (1987) La phonologie du français de la région de Charleroi (Belgique) et ses rapports avec le wallon. La Linguistique 23 (2): 99–115. Reynaud, A. (1981) Société, espace et justice, inégalités régionales et justice sociospatiale. Paris: PUF. Rittaud-Huttinet, C. (1991a) Schémas intonatifs des signes vocaux et français régional: le français de Besançon. Lengas 30: 145–63. Rittaud-Huttinet, C. (1991b) Variétés du français de Besançon et grammaire polylectale. In G.-L. Salmon (ed.) Variétés et variantes du français des Villes-Etats de l’est de la France. Paris, Geneva: Champion-Slatkine, 81–98.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
References
Rittaud-Hutinet, C. (2001) Les français de Besançon: Systèmes phonologiques et énonciation. In M.-A. Hintze, et al. (eds.), 96–127. Robertson, B. (2001) Gaelic in Scotland. In G. Extra and D. Gorter (eds.) The other languages of Europe. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 83–102. Roché, S. (1996) La société incivile. Qu’est-ce que l’insécurité? Paris: Seuil. Roncayolo, M. (ed.) (2001) La ville aujourd’hui. Paris: Seuil. Rosset, T. (1911) Les origines de la pronunciation moderne étudiées au XVIIe siècle. Paris: Armand Colin. Roucasse, J. (1996) Les roucasseries. Paris: J’ai Lu. Roux, P. (1970) Etude sur le parler de Fréjus et sa proche région. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de Paris. Ruelle, P. (1981) Le vocabulaire professionnel du houilleur borain. Brussels: Académie royale de langue et de littérature françaises. Salhi, K. (ed.) French in and out of France. Language policies, intercultural antagonisms and dialogue. Oxford: Peter Lang. Sankoff, D. and Laberge, S. (1978) The linguistic market and the statistical explanation of variability. In D. Sankoff (ed.), Linguistic variation: Models and methods. New York: Academic Press, 239–50 Sankoff, D. and Sankoff, G. (1973). Sample survey methods and computerassisted analysis of grammatical variation. In R. Darnell (ed.) Canadian languages in their social context. Edmonton: Linguistic Research, 7–64. Sankoff, G. and Cedergren, H. (1971) Some results of a sociolinguistic study of Montreal French. In R. Darnell (ed.) Linguistic diversity in Canadian society. Edmonton: Linguistic Research, 61–87. Schane, S. A. (1973) Generative phonology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Scheuringer, H. (1997) Sprachvarietäten in Österreich. In G. Stickel (ed.) Varietäten des Deutschen. Regional- und Umgangssprachen. Berlin/New York, 332–45. Schläpfer, R. (ed.) (1985) La Suisse aux quatre langues. Geneva: Zoé. Schoch, M., Furrer, O., Lahusen, T. and Mahmoudian-Renard, M. (1980). Résultats d’une enquête phonologique en Suisse romande. Bulletin de la Section de Linguistique de la Faculté des Lettres de Lausanne 2. Schuler, M. (2003) Nouvelle définition des agglomérations. Berne: Office Fédéral de la Statistique, 6–14. Schultz, P. (1982) La décentralisation administrative dans le nord de la France 1790–1793. Lille: Presses Universitaires de Lille. Schwok, R. (2006) Suisse – Union européenne. L’adhésion impossible? Lausanne: Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes. SDDU (1998) (Schéma directeur de développement d’urbanisme) Lille Métropole en 2015? Lille: La Voix du Nord. Séguy, J. (1951) Le français de Toulouse. Toulouse: Privat. Singy, P. (1996) L’image du français en Suisse romande. Paris: L’Harmattan. Singy, P. (2001) Extraterritorialité de la norme linguistique de prestige et représentations linguistiques: Les disparités entre générations en Suisse romande In M.-A. Hintze et al. (eds.), 269–87. Smith, A. (1996) A diachronic study of French variable liaison. MLitt dissertation, University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Sobotta, E. (2003) Les Aveyronnais d’Aveyron et les Aveyronnais de Paris. Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 135–42.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
294 References
295
Spiekermann, H. (2005) Regionale Standardierung, nationale Destandardisierung. In L. Eichinger and W. Kallmeyer (eds.) Jahrbuch 2004 des Instituts für deutsche Sprache. Berlin, 100–25. Steinberg, J. (1996) Why Switzerland? 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strauven, C. (1993) La lisibilité des textes administratifs. Brussels: Duculot. Sullivan, K. and Enever, J. (2009) What is language Europe? In S.L. Robertson and R. Dale (eds.) Globalisation and Europeanisation in education in Europe. Part II: Citizenship, identity and language. Oxford: Symposium. Szulmajster-Celnikier, A. (1996) Des serments de Strasbourg à la loi Toubon: le français comme affaire d’Etat. Regards sur l’Actualité 221: 39–54. Taylor, J. (1996) Sound evidence. Bern: Peter Lang. Temple, R. (2001) The interaction between speaker sex and changes in regional patters of voicing in metropolitan French: A case of over-levelling? In M.-A. Hintze et al. (eds.), 148–64. Thelander, M. (1982) A qualitative approach to the quantitative data of speech variation. In S. Romaine (ed.) Sociolinguistic variation in speech communities. Oxford: Blackwell, 65–84. Thiam, N. (1995) ‘Un vrai Borin’: aspects sociolinguistiques du français parlé dans le Borinage. Langage et Société 74: 71–92. Thibault, A. (1997) Dictionnaire suisse romand. Particularités lexicales du français contemporain. Sous la direction de P. Knecht et avec la collaboration de G. Boeri et S. Quinet. Geneva: Zoé. Thibault, A. (1998) Légitimité linguistique des français nationaux hors de France: le français de Suisse romande. Revue québécoise de linguistique 26 (2): 25–41. Tifrit, A. (2003) Le point d’enquête PFC à Dijon. Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 180–6. Tranel, B. (1987). The sounds of French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trénard, L. (1972) Histoire des Pays-Bas français. Toulouse: Privat. Trimaille, C. (2003) Variation dans les pratiques langagières d’enfants et d’adolescents dans le cadre d’activités promues par un centre socio-culturel, et ailleurs. Cahiers du Français Contemporain 8: 131–62. Trimaille, C. (forthcoming) Consonnes dentales palatalisées/affriquées en français contemporain: indicateurs, marqueurs et/ou variantes en développement? In M. Abecassis (ed.) Proceedings of ‘Les voix du français: usages et représentation’. Oxford, 3–5 September 2008. Trousson, M and Berré, M. (1997) La tradition des grammariens belges. In D. Blampain et al. (eds.), 338–64. Trudgill, P. (1974) The social differentiation of English in Norwich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trudgill, P. (1986) Dialects in contact. Oxford: Blackwell. Tyne, H. (2003) Introduction et remarques sur le point d’enquête PFC à Cherbourg. Tribune Internationale des Langues Vivantes 33: 159–65. Valdman, A. (ed.) (1979) Le français hors de France. Paris: Champion. Van der Meersch, M. (1933) Quand les sirènes se taisent. In M. Van der Meersch Gens du Nord. Paris: Omnibus [1933], 111–278. Vekemans, M. (1963) De invloed van de Brussels-Vlaamse volkstaal op de Brussels-Franse volkstaal. Thèse de licence, Université Catholique de Louvain.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
References
Viez, H. (1910) [1978]. Le parler populaire (patois) de Roubaix. Marseille: Lafitte Reprints. Vindevogel, J. (1984) Wazemmes de ma jeunesse: 1919–1936. Lille: self-published. Voillat, F. (1971) Aspects du français régional actuel. Actes du colloque de dialectologie francoprovençale. (Neuchâtel, Faculté des Lettres). Geneva: Droz, 216–46. Von Nolcken, A. (2002) Einsprachige Mehrsprachigkeit. Sprachwissen und Sprachvariation in der Normandie. Wilhelmsfeld: Gottfried Egert. Wachs, S. (1997) Le relâchement de la prononciation en français parlé en Ile de France: analyse linguistique et sociologique par génération. PhD thesis, Université Paris-X Nanterre. Walden, G. (2006) God won’t save America. London: Gibson Square. Walker, D. (1984) The pronunciation of Canadian French. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Walter, H. (1976) La dynamique des phonemes dans le lexique français contemporain. Geneva: Droz. Walter, H. (1977) La phonologie du français. Paris: PUF. Walter, H. (1982) Enquête phonologique et variétés régionales du français. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Walter, H. (1983). La nasale vélaire /N/. Un phonème du français? Langue française 60: 14–29. Wanner, A. (1993) Une enquête sociolinguistique comparative à Salses (PyrénéesOrientales) et Sigean (Aude). Lengas 33: 7–124. Wardhaugh, R. (1998). An introduction to sociolinguistics, 3rd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. Warnant, L. (1997) Phonétique et phonologie [du français en Belgique]. In D. Blampain et al. (eds.), 163–74. Watt, D. and Milroy, L. (1999) Patterns of variation and change in three Newcastle vowels: is this dialect levelling? In P. Foulkes and G. Docherty (eds.), 25–46. Weber, E. (1979) Peasants into Frenchmen. The modernization of rural France, 1870–1914. London: Chatto and Windus. Willemyns, R. (2007) De-standardization in the Dutch territory at large. In C. Fandrych and R. Salverda (eds.), 265–79. Williams, L. and van Compernolle, R. A. (2007). Second-person pronoun use in on-line French-language chat environments. French Review 80: 804–20. Woehrling, C. and Boula de Mareüil, P. (2006) Identification d’accents régionaux en français: perception et catégorisation. PFC Bulletin 6. Wolf, L. (1987) Französische Sprache in Kanada. Augsburg: Vögel. Wolfram., W. (1969) A sociolinguistic description of Detroit Negro speech. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Wouters, C. (1986) Formalization and informalization: changing tension balances in civilizing processes. Theory, Culture & Society 2 (2): 1–18. Yzerbyt, V., Provost, V. and Corneille, O (2005) Not competent but warm . . . Really? Compensatory stereotypes in the French-speaking world. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 8: 291–308.
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
296 References
Aachen, 67 ABN (algemeen beschaafd nederlands), 39–40 accents, viii, 78, 82–3, 100–204 and levelling, viii, 100–49 in Belgium, viii, 100, 126–38 in France, viii, 23, 100–25 in Switzerland, viii, 100, 138–49 acts of identity, 4, 288 address forms, 93–6 see also informalisation, pronouns advergence, 10, 39, 66, 98, 140–1, 145–6, 148, 179, 237–8, 254, 273, affrication, xvi, 110–11, 167–8, 174–5, 224–5, 265–7, 275 age, 2, 4, 82 and affrication, xvi, 267 and consonantal variants, xiii, 191 and alveolar and uvular variants, xiv, 220–1 and educational achievement in France, x, 55 and pronoun use, 94–5 and SAVs, xv, 233 and schwa realisation, xv, 234–5 and vowel use, 107 intergenerational changes, xiii, 37, 93–4, 97, 106, 109, 143, 159, 179–80, 184, 212, 251 rates of WFCD in Conversation task, xiv, 229 Aisne, the, 22 Aix-en-Provence, xiii–xiv, 124, 187, 194, 197–9, 288 Marseille-Aix-en-Provence, 15, 99n.3 nasal vowel realisations, xiii, 197 vowel realisations, xiii, 198–9 Algeria, 77–8 Algerians, 75, 91 Alltagssprache (generalised colloquial standard), 40
Alpes, 22, 105, 190–1, 201, 204, 283 Alsace, 22, 76, 160–1, 163–5, 181, 203n.1, 230, 273 Alsace-Lorraine, 11, 20, 152–3, 158–9, 261 Alsatian, 22, 37, 181, alveolar, xiv, 109, 178, 184, 197, 218–20, 220–1, 232 Amsterdam, 12, 14, 39 Ancien Régime, the, 21, 103, 279 Anglo-American, 46, 59, 82, 84, 93, 95–6, 222 Antwerp, 13–14, 48, 213, Appenzell, 32 approximant, 109, 165, 167, 183, 211, 232, 265 Arabic, 30, 253, 264, 269, 272, Argentina, 91 Asians, 75–6 aspiration (phonetics), 164–5, 181 assimilation, 18, 27, 78, 97, 109, 176, 195, 211, 260, 269, 293 Asturian, 37, 290 Austria, 9, 11, 26, 31, 34, 38–9, 42–3, 75, 78, 91, 203n.9 Auvergnat (Auvergne), 22, 183–4 Barcelona, 41, 284 Barère (1755–1841), 22–3, 104–5 Basel, 69 Basque country, the, 11, 41, 187, 189, 192–3, 195, 197, 258, 278 language, 22, 37, 103, 281, 293 Basse-Normandie, 76, 284 BBC English, 136 see also English Belgian French, xii, 133 National Day, 30, 87 pronunciation, 12
297
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Index
Belgium accents, viii, 100, 126–38 economic indicators, x, 28 francophone, 11, 16, 19 French-speaking, 12 Flemish Belgians, 11 foreigners, xi, 76 GDP, x, 16–17 gender equality, xi, 72 German-speaking Belgians, 11 Gini index, x, 53 language change, ix, 8–43, 227–36 locations of recent sociolinguistic studies, xiv, 218 linguistic and territorial divisions, xvii, 29 linguistic levelling, viii–ix, 205–48 as peripheral within French-speaking space, 20 population, x, 27 language ability, x, 30 working, x, 47 prestigious pronunciations, viii, 126–38 prosperity (relative), x, 49 sociolinguistic situation, 1 standardisation, 8–43 territorial history of, 26 Bellinzona, 69 Berber, 30 Berne, 32, 69–70, 87 Besançon French, xiii, 181–3, 293–4 bidialectalism, 11, 42, 156, 267 Biel-Bienne, 11, 69–70, 140 bilabial, 193–4, 197, 202 bilingualism, xvii, 11, 28–30, 37, 42, 105, 107, 157, 205–6 Blocher, Christoph, 34, 77 Bordeaux, 15, 59, 99n.3, 200 Borinage, the, ix, xiv, 52, 67, 218–22 Boston, 14 see also USA bourgeois, 57, 68, 71, 95, 102, 105, 127 bourgeoisie, 25, 42, 51, 115, 130, 136 Brazil, 53, 91 Breton, 22, 103, 155, 159, 161, 163–4, 175–7 see also non-Romance languages
Brittany, viii, 11, 22, 76, 175–80 Bruges, 13 Brussels, ix, 14, 48, 76, 79, 227–35 Belgian nationals in, xiv, 206 bilinguals, xiv, 11, 27–31, 208 Bruxelles-Capitale, 28, 66, 76 Bruxellois, 14 economic indicators, x, 28, ethnolinguistic affiliation, 19 of 19th-century French and Dutch speakers, x, 19 Parliament of Bruxelles-Capitale region, 28 population, 15–16 speakers, xii, xv, 132, 232 vernacular, ix, 205–11 Buddhism, 92–3 Burgundy, xii, 22, 26, 31, 143–4, 160, 163–4, 169, 181, 201 Caen, 16, 169, 177 Cambodia, 92 Cambrai, 13 Canada, 35, 131, 141, 267, 278, 288 capital (Bourdieu conception of), 56–7 Castillian, 37 Catalan, 22, 37, 41, 201 Catalonia, 41, 195, Catholicism, 34, 87, 91, 177 Central-Place System, 12–13 see also Network System, history of urban Europe (model) Centre-Periphery model, x, 12–15 Cergy-Pontoise, 64 Champenois, 38, 212 Charleroi-La Louvière-Mons, 67–8 Christianity, 34, 77, 90–3, 137 Christliche Volkspartei, 91 see also political parties class, social, ix, xii, 2, 4–5, 7, 50–8, 61, 83, 85, 96–7, 102–7, 249–53 and gender, 71 classification, 53–4 consciousness, 42
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
298 Index
middle-class, viii, xii, xiii, 5, 6, 14, 31, 36, 40, 51–2, 63, 71, 79, 82, 94, 110, 106, 132, 160, 188, 190, 194, 199–202, 213, 216, 267, 273, 275 and schwa deletion, xiii, 196 and stylistic variables, xiv, 225 lower classes, 24, 26, 86 upper-class, 23, 25, 36, 51 variation, 6 working-class, xii, xiv, 5–6, 36, 40–1, 51–2, 61, 71, 63–4, 96–7, 110–11, 151, 208, 213, 230, 251, 255, 260–1, 268, 292 Clermont-Ferrand, 16, 185, 203n.8 clothing see under dress Cockney, 36 see also English code-mixing, 206, 262, 278 code-switching, 206, 209, 278 Committee of Public Safety, 22 see also Barère communes, 15, 23, 26–7, 29, 59, 60–1, 66–7, 219, 251, 269 Communist Party, the, 86 see also political parties consonantal features in regional varieties, xiii, 164 phonemes, xi, 109, variants, xiii, 191–2 conversation, xiv–xvi, 225, 233–5, 271 corpus/corpora, 114, 119, 171, 196, 198, 208, 227–8, 230, 257, 270, 272 corpus-planning, 23, 74, 101 Corsica, 22, 25, 76, 263, 276n.3 Courtrai, 13, 59, 68 Côte d’Azur, 22 covert prestige, 14, 58, 105, 123, 127, 181 see also overt prestige, prestige norm cultural hegemony, 249, 276 Czech Republic, 75 DATAR, 59, 64 Declaration of Human Rights, 24 dedialectalisation, 5, 38, 170, 246, 289
299
Deferre Law (1982), 22 Definition tasks, xiv, 225 Délégation Générale à la Langue Française (DGLF), 38 denasalisation, 182 Denmark, 9–10, 35, 40, 42, 53, 60, 75, 81 dental, 109, 160, 167, 193, 197, 202, 265–6, 295 stops, xvi, 266 départements, 21–2, 26, 63, 77, 187, 283 depicardisation, 169–70 desocialisation, 38 destandardisation, 35, 39–40, 123, 352, 275, 285 devoiced see under voiceless diaeresis, 134, 136, 189–90, 200, 203, 216, 224–5, 238 dialect, 34, 41–2, 103 base, 10–12 constellations in Europe (standard), x, 9 divergence of, 8 regional, 11 shift, 10 ‘dialect mix’, xiii, 171 dialectological methods, 10, 45, 169, 260 diaglossia, 9, 10–12, 35, 37, 39, 43 see also vernacular post-diaglossia, 9 dialectology, 53, 152, 155, 201, 207, 261, 280, 290 diglossia, 9, 11–12, 21, 26, 35–6, 38–9, 43, 205–6, 259, 282 medial-diglossia, 9–10 post-diglossia, 9 post-spoken diglossia, 10 spoken, 10 Dijon, 16, 181, 295 diphthong(s), 163–4 diphthongisation, 171, 180, 182, 184, 207, 209–10, 214–15, 238, 243 dress, 89–90, 97, 99 Dominant Southern Pattern (DSP), 188–9, 192, 202–3 Dunkerquois, 11
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Index
Duruy report, the, 23 Dutch, 1, 11, 19, 26, 28, 30–1, 35–6, 39, 43, 76, 207, 211, 285, 296 Druon, Maurice, 74 Eastenders, 36 see also Cockney; Garnett, Alf Edict of Nantes (1685), 33 education level, 50, 85, 96–7 and frequency of use of variants, xiii, 173, 220–1 and SAVs, xv, 233 and schwa realisation, xv, 234 and vowel usage, xiii, 173 four-point scale, xiv, 222 and rates of WFCD in Conversation task, xiv, 229 education system and parents’ profession, x, 56 in Belgium, 71–2, 78–9, 90–1 in England, 25 in France, viii, 20, 24–5, 71–2, 79, 90–2, 105, 120–3 in Switzerland, 35, 71–2, 80, 90–1 policy, 79–80 post-compulsory, 8 elision, 105, 109, 111, 164–5, 209–11 endoglossic, 9 see also diglossia, exoglossic England, 11, 40–1 Birmingham, 41 Lancaster, 40 Leeds-Bradford, 41 Liverpool, 41, 89 London, 14–15, 40–1, 89 Manchester, 41 Norwich, 54 Tyneside, 41, 196 West Midlands, 41 English, language, 1, 5, 11, 19–20, 30, 37, 40–1, 43, 52, 78–80, 95–6, 103, 109, 136, 153, 155, 203, 203n.9, 254–5, 268, 275, 279, 285, 287, 290–1, 295 see also BBC English, Cockney, Estuary English, Received
Pronunciation, United Kingdom people, 41 Estuary English, 40 see also English ethnicity, 2, 4, 7, 249–76 and vowel realisation, xvi, 271 ethnographic approach, 264, 280 ethnolinguistic conflict, 37 European Commission, 87 European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, 25, 37–8, 276 European Economic Community, 49 European Union, the, 35, 73, 76, 88, 98 Eurostat, x, 28 Evolène, 37, 237, 289, 291 Évry, 64 exception culturelle, 1 exception française, 8–9, 12, 21, 43 exoglossic, 9, 11 fieldwork methodology, 82, 107, 160, 176, 203n.7, 205–7, 239, 250, 257, 264 Finland, 53, 72, 75, 81 Ferry Laws (1881–86), 24 Flanders, 9, 13, 16, 26–30, 38–9, 43, 48, 52, 75–7, 86, 127, 159, 161, 164, 172, 206–7, 215, 261 Meuse, the, 13 Scheldt (Escaut), 13 Verkavelingsvlaams, 40 Flemish, 22, 24, 26, 29–31, 38, 42, 48, 66, 78 background of speaker(s), xiv, 19, 208 Council, 28 formant frequency analysis, xv, 255 Fourastié, Jean, 47 français courant (stylistically neutral usage), 40, 110, 135 français familier (informal styles of standard speakers), 40, 121 français populaire (generalised vernacular, Parisian origin), 40, 111, 158, 162, 165–6, 189, 261, 283
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
300 Index
France accents, viii, 100–25 bilingualism in the autochtonous languages of, xvii, 157 eastern regions, viii, 180–3 educational achievement, x, 55 education system, viii, 120–3 GDP, x, 17 gender equality, xi, 72 Gini index, x, 53 language change, 6, 8–43 linguistic levelling, viii–ix, 150–204 see also levelling myth of the so-called Hexagon, 21, 25 National Front, 77, 86 non-southern, ix, 185–6 northern, 9, 26, 41, 77 population (working), x, 47 prosperity (relative), x, 49 reference pronunciation, viii, xi, 101–11 sociolinguistic situation, 1 southern, ix, xvii, 108, 186–204 standardisation, 8–43 Francophone area(s), vii, x, 1, 8, 10, 13, 15, 35 background, xii, 133 community Parliament, 28 Europe, 10, 12 major urban areas, xvii, 62 Francophonie Nord, viii, 73, 125–6 see also Quebec Francoprovençal, 12, 139, 144, 158, 248n.4 substrate, ix, 236–9 see also Suisse romande Franco-Prussian War, 20 free variation, 199 French Academy, 73–4, 101, 126 government, 37 phonemic inventory, 106–7, 109, 160, 210 -speaking population in francophone cantons and part-cantons, x, 32 Standard acquisition of, 120–3
301
attitudes towards, 246 emergence of, 10 features of, 12, 82, 135 162, ideology of, 100–5 regional, 11 use of, 18, 34, 117, 143, 163, 186, 190 perceived best and worst, xii, 131 see also Francoprovençal, Oïl Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 69 Fribourg, 32, 69–70, 143–5, 237–8, 240 fricative, 109, 164, 166, 183, 195, 200, 210–11, 224, 229, 230, 232 Frisia, 39 fronting, xv, 108–11, 168, 193, 203, 216, 254, 255, 277 Galician, 37 Garnett, Alf, 36 Gascon, 22, 189–93, 201, 203 GDP, comparative, x, 17 geographical distribution and schwa realisation, xv, 235 Gembloux, ix, xiv, xv, 227–35, 229–30, 232, 234 gender, ix, 4, 7, 249, 253–60 and affrication, xvi, 267 and the use of alveolar/uvular variants, xiv, 221 and educational achievement in France, x, 55 and linguistic mutation, 97 and rates of WFCD in Conversation task, xiv, 230 and schwa deletion, xiii, 196 and stylistic variables, xiv, 225 and vowel realisation, xvi, 271 changing roles, vii, 70–4 equality, xi, 46, 72, 101 feminisation, 72–4, 100, 127, 279, 290 heterosexuality, 82, 92 homosexuality, 92–3 sex as a demographic attribute, 2 Geneva, ix, 14–16, 19, 32, 68–70, 73, 76, 93, 102, 139, 141, 143–6, 237–41, 243–4, 283, 287, 293, 295–6 Geneva-Annemasse, 59, 70, 98
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Index
Genoa, 14 see also Italy German, 11, 20, 27, 30, 32, 41–3 Alsatian, 22 Frankish dialects, 11, 22, 38 germanic languages, 8 High German, 11, 42 Standard German, 38 germanophone(s), 11, 27–8, 32, 73, 81 German-speaking areas in Belgium, 1, 11, 27–9, 35, 49, 214 in Europe, 9–10 in France, 1, 20, 25, 49 in Switzerland, 1, 32, 35, 49, 52, 77, 80 Germany, 34, 36, 38–9, 41–2, 48–9, 60, 72, 75, 78, 81, 90–2, 95, 97 Ghent, 13, 213 Gini index see under Belgium, France, Switzerland glide, 109, 134, 197, 202, 211, 216, 224, 229, 238 globalisation, 46, 80, 295 government of the National Convention, 21, 104 Greek, 30 Grégoire, Abbé (1750–1831), 22–3, 104, 148n.2, 214, 234, 284 Grenoble, 76, 99n.3, 101, 266–7, 284, 289 Grisons, 32 Hague, the, 39 Harmel Report (1958), 27 haute bourgeoisie, 25, 51, 102 headscarf affair (affaire du foulard), 77 historical linguistics, 3 historico-sociolinguistics, 9 history of urban Europe (model), 12 see also Network System, Central-Place System hypercephalic, vii, 12 ideolect, 162, 176 ideology, ix, 249, 273–6 dominant, 82 Jacobin, 103 of Revolutionary regime, 23, 103
of Standard French, 101–5, 121, 252, 275, 290 one-language-one-nation, 23–4 Île-de-France region, xvii, 22, 36, 63–4, 76, 161, 163–4, 169, 275 imitation, 3 see also mimicry Indo-China, 92 see also Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia industrialisation, 39, 41, 48, 153, 260 informalisation, 4, 6, 89, 93–4, 96, 100, 110, 115 informality, 1, 8, 85, 98 in-group, 4 see also out-group insertion phenomena, viii, 111–20 internationalisation, vii, 46, 78–80, 88 intonation, 120, 151, 181–2, 231 Ireland, 41, 75, 81 see also Northern Ireland Islam see under Muslims Issac, 21 Italian, language, 30, 32, 35, 37, 77 people, 49, 75–6, 78 Italy, 9, 14, 25, 42, 49, 60, 72, 75, 81, 91, 263, 278, 291 Japan, 53 Jews, 34, 87–8 Jospin, Lionel, 25, 73 Jura, 32, 73, 87, 141, 143–5, 180, 237, 277, 288 Jutland, 41 labialisation, 134, 239 Labov, William, 2–3, 45, 53, 58, 110, 223, 252–3, 287 Labovian method, 1, 222 see also variationist method Labovian programme, 2, 6 Martha’s Vineyard, 45, 176–7 La Chaux-de-Fonds, 69–70 La Courneuve, xv, 265, 267 Lakes/Lac Léman, 33–4 La Louvière, 68 language and nation, vii, 20–5
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
302 Index
language change, vii in Belgium, 7–43, 26 in France, 7–43 in Switzerland, 7–43, 31 Langue d’Oc, 22 Languedoc-Roussillon, 22, 76 Langue d’Oïl, 10 La Nouvelle Héloïse, 19 Laos, 92 Latin, 9–10, 21 Latin American, 43 Lausanne, 14, 16, 68–70 see also Vaud, the Lavisse, 21 LEGA, 77 levelling, vii, 3–6, 8, 273–6 and accents, viii, 100–49 linguistic levelling, 8, 100 dialect levelling, 5, 10, 105, 262, 277, 286, 293, 296 in Belgium and Switzerland, viii–ix, 205–48 of regional varieties in France, viii–ix, 150–204 social levelling, 1, 4–6, 8, 44–100 lexical distribution, 163, 169 item, xii, xv, 107, 109, 128, 135, 145, 162, 165, 179, 182, 209, 231, 240, 260, 267, 270, 274 lexis, 18, 23 Liège, ix, xv, 15, 52, 67–8, 227–35, 232, 234 Lille, viii, 12, 59–60, 62, 65–6, 68, 96, 113–14, 152, 155, 162, 169–75, 177, 186, 201, 227, 230, 250, 260–1, 268–72, 279, 280–1, 288–9, 291–4, 296 commuting, xvii, 65 -Courtrai-Tournai, 59 educational categories, x, 55 loss of Picard items in, xiii, 171 Métropole, 13, 17, 65, 98, 230, 256 see also Villeneuve d’Ascq, Roubaix, Tourcoing population, 15–16 Lillois phonetic sub-system, xiii, 173 phonological sub-system, xiii, 172
303
Limburg, 38–9, 41 Lingala, 30 literature francophone writers, 18–19, 38, 81 see also publishing liquid, 210–11, 224, 226, 229, 242, 251, 264 consonants, viii, 111–14 deletion, xii, 109, 150–1, 227–8 Locarno, 69 Loft Story (Big Brother), 83 Lorraine, 38 Louis IX, 101 Lugano, 69 Luxembourg, 67, 214 Lyon, 15, 59, 66, 76, 99n.3, 268 Lys, the, 13 Maastricht, 67 Madrid, 41 Maghrebians, 75, 78, 166, 168, 195, 198, 200, 256–7, 264–7, 269–70, 271–2 Mallet, 21 Marne-la-Vallée, 64 Marseillaise, 78 Marseille, 76, 187, 189–93, 197, 201–2, 263, 267–8, 279–81 Marxist/ neo-Marxist, 58 media and popular culture, vii, 18, 25, 46, 73–4, 80–4, 86–7, 95, 98, 103, 123, 136, 144, 252, 263–4, 270 Melun-Sénart, 64 mergers, xv, 110, 164, 240 métropole bernoise, 69 métropoles d’équilibre, 17, 59, 99n.3 métropole lémanique, xvii, 68–9, 141, 144 métropole tessinoise, 69 Metz, 16 Middle Ages, 9 see also vernacular, Latin, and diglossia migration, vii, ix, 34, 46, 66, 74–8, 96–7, 249, 260–3 mimicry, 3 see also imitation
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Index
minimal pair, 107, 110, 143, 145, 181, 198 mise en mots, xi, 121 Mitterand government (1981–86), 73, 84 Mons, ix, xiv, 54, 67–8, 222–7 see also Wallonia educational attainment, xv, 250 educational categories, x, 55 studies, xiv, 222 Mons-Borinage, xvii, 219 Montpellier, 15 Moroccans, 75, 91 Mulhouse, 69 Muslims, 90–2, 99 mute-e, viii, xi, 106, 111, 115–20, 124, 163, 183, 188, 190, 192–5, 198, 204n.11, 274, 282 see also schwa Namur, 67–8 Nancy, 16, 99n.3, 113, 150–2, 181–2, 251, 254 speakers, xii, 151 Nantes, 15, 99n.3 Napoleon, 26 nasal, 109, 111, 124, 134, 160, 163, 168, 182–3, 188, 193, 197–8, 200, 202–3, 210–11, 217, 229, 238–9, 265, 285, 296 vowel realisations, xiii, xv, 106–7, 124, 133, 144, 159, 164, 182, 189, 192, 194, 197–8, 202–3, 210, 215, 217, 239, 243 nasalisation, 117, 124, 183, 188, 193, 197, 209, 215, 217 see also denasalisation Nazis, the, 34, 88 neoliberal economics, 51, 85 Netherlands, the, 26, 38–40, 49, 60, 72, 75, 81, 91–2 Network System, 12–13 see also Central-Place System, history of urban Europe (model) Neuchâtel, ix, 32–3, 52, 69–70, 93, 141, 143, 145–6, 237–41, 244, 277, 282, 286, 291–3, 296 vowel recognition, xii, 146
neutralisation, xiii, 145–6, 164, 172, 215–16, 238, 241, 243 New York, 14, 54 see also USA Noirmoutier, 37 nominalism, 91 non-Romance languages, 22 see also Breton, Basque-, Alsatian-, Frankishspeaking regions, 24 Nord–Pas-de-Calais, viii, xvii, 22, 48, 65–6, 75, 78, 108, 163, 165, 168–75, 185, 265, 273, 280–1 Norman, 38 Normandy, viii, 22, 175–80 North Africans, 75 Northern Ireland see also Ireland Belfast (Milroy study), 61, 97 Northern Irish (people), 41 Norway, 35, 72, 81 N-VA (Nieuw Vlaams-Alliantie), 77, 86 see also political parties Nyon, 70 obstruent, 109, 111, 210–11, 224, 228, 232, 251, 264 post-obstruent, xii, 112, 150–1 occupational structure changes in, vii, 50–9 Oc region, viii, 183–5 Oise, the, 22 Oïl, 12 French, 107, 150, 293 usage in the early to mid-20th century, viii, 158–60 omission phenomena, viii, 111–20 oral vowel, xii, 132–3, 144, 194, 197 distinctions, 143 distribution, xiii, 188, 202 in open syllables, xv, 242 in open stressed syllables, xiv, 208 phonemes, xi, 106 Ordinances of Villers-Cotterêts (1539), 21 see also Latin, Villers-Cotterêts Orléans, 16, 163–4
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
304 Index
out-group, 4 see also in-group overlayering (Überschichtung), 11 overt prestige, 12, 14, 58, 105, 123, 127, 142, 148, 259 see also covert prestige, prestige norm palatal, 109, 134, 160, 184, 189, 191, 200, 211, 224, 238–9, 295 palatalisation, 110, 164–5, 167–8, 174–5 Paris, 48, 62–4, 66, 76, 78 centrality of, 12–20 GDP, compared to Belgium and Switzerland 16–17 Greater, 39 employment, 16–17, 64 suburbs, 58 vowel recognition, xii, 146 16th-century, 9 Parti chrétien-social, 91 see also political parties Parti démocrate-chrétien, 91 see also political parties Parti évangélique, 91 see also political parties Parti Social Chrétien, 91 see also political parties Pas-de-Calais, 10 Avion, 10, 37 patois ouvriers, 41 pays des Chtimis, xvii, 170 paralect, 40–1, 136 PFC data, xv, 109, 146, 156, 178, 181, 187, 193, 195, 197, 200, 203n.8, 218, 227–8, 238, 241–3, 277, 282, 284, 289, 295–6 pharyngeal, 211, 232, 265–7 pharyngealisation, 163–5, 167–8 phonetic(s), 255, 273 context, 109 contrasts, 111, 161–2 distance, 284 distinctions, 169, 172, 192, 198, 246, 273 features, 105, 166, 214
305
general, 116 of French, 110, 277 quality, 163 realisation, 116, 148, 159, 193 space, 108 sub-system of Lille, xiii, 173 variability, 107–8, 167–8, 183, 255, 265 phonological features divergent, xv, 265 phonology, 107, 116, 135, 138, 155, 161, 181–2, 185, 227, 264, 288, 294 Picard, 38, 78 Picardie, 22 Poitou, 22, 37, 61 Poldersnederlands, 40 Poles, 75 politics developments, 29–30 elections, 29, 77, 98n.1 electoral rights, 26–7 see also universal suffrage political action, 86 political discourse, 102–3 political parties, 19, 34–5, 74, 77, 84, 86, 91 voting area BHV (Bruxelles-Hal-Vilvorde), 29 voting patterns, 19, 35 Portugal, 75 Portuguese, 30 post-diaglossic era, vii, 39 post-industrial era, vii, 2, 39, 46, 59–60, 65, 259, 274 see also post-diaglossic era post-industrial economy, vii, 45–9 post-modernist, 4 publishing, 18 purchasing power parity (PPP), 17, 49 population density, x, 60 pre-rhotic, 162, 166–8, 171, 173–4, 209, 265 prescriptive norm (PN), xi, 105–6, 107–9, 124, 172–3, 178, 188, 198, 203, 253
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Index
prestige forms, 5, 11, 41, 88 norm, 12, 36, 39, 42, 98, 179 see also overt prestige, covert prestige standard, 7 professionalisation, 51–2, 90, 97 pronouns, 93–6 see also address forms, informalisation Protestantism, 12, 26, 33–4, 91, 101–2, 139, 236–7 Provence, xii, 11, 22, 77–8, 101, 124, 152, 187, 189–94, 197–9, 201–2, 260, 262–3, 273, 279, 288 Provençal, 22, 78 regional standard, viii, xii, 11, 123–5 psychosocial, 3–4 Quebec, viii, 18, 31, 34, 43, 73–4, 79, 100, 125–6, 275, 281–3, 287, 289, 292, 295 radio, public service, xi, 114 see under media Randstad, 39–40 rattachistes, 31 Reading task, xiv–xv, 225, 233 Received Pronounciation, 6, 25, 40–1, 103 see also English redundancy, 111 Reference French, viii, xi, 102, 105, 107–8, 110, 136, 142, 168, 176, 182, 207, 211, 253 regiolectal, 36, 39, 41, 43, 173, 274, 276 region as a demographic attribute, 4 Regional Loyalty Index (RLI), 269, 272 register, 105, 122, 274 Reims, 16 religion affiliation, xi, 58, 77, 89, 90–3 practice, 33–4, 46, 87, 97 see also Protestantism, Catholicism, Jews, Christianity, Muslim, Buddhism
Rennes, 15 ‘republican elitism,’ 5 research themes, vii, 1 resocialisation, 37 see also socialisation, desocialisation Revolutionary regime (1790s), 20–1, 25 ideology of, 23 rhymes, xv, 240 Romance-speaking regions, 24, 37, 42 see also non-Romance Romandie, 35 Romansch, 37 Rotterdam, 13, 39 Roubaix, 17, 58, 60–1, 65, 99n.3 Roudy, Yvette, 73 Rouen, 15–16 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 19 see also La Nouvelle Héloïse RTBF, xii, 48, 74, 83, 98n.1, 99n.7, 136–7, 148, 247 Ruhr, the, 41 Russia, 23 Russian, 30 Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 64 Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, 64 Sarkozy government, 84, 125 Savoy, 31 Strongly Articulated Variants (SAVs), xv, 232–4, Saxony, 39 Scandinavia, 42, 78 Scarpe, the, 13 schwa, 106, 111, 116, 120, 124, 134, 154, 163, 188, 192–3, 195–8, 200–3, 207, 208–11, 218, 224–5, 228–9, 234–5, 251, 253–4, 275, 277, 281–2, 286 see also mute-e deletion, xiii, 196 frequency of use, xv, 234 prepausal, xi, 119 Schweizerische Volkspartei, 77 see also political parties Scotland, 41 Scots Gaelic, 37 (people), 41
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
306 Index
SHAPE, 87 Slovakia, 75 social changes in the second half of the 20th century, 40 identity, 3–4 levelling see under levelling mobility, 53, 121, 222–3, 226–30, 232–3, 252 and rates of WFCD in Conversation task, xiv, 230 networks, 50, 61, 71 profile of speakers, xiv, 228 practice(s), vii–viii, 4, 7–8, 44–99, 136, 211, 236, 263, 275–6 representations, 88–99 revolution of the 1960s, 8, 64, 71–2, 75, 82, 89, 92, 95, 97–8, 114–15, 183, 194, 205, 208, 218–19, 268–9 transformation, 8, 96 socialisation, 11, 36–7, 259 see also desocialisation, resocialisation Socialist Party (in Wallonia), 77, 86 see also political parties sociolectal, 163, 274 sociolinguistic situations of western Europe, vii, 8 sociolinguistics axioms, 3 quantitative, 5 socio-professional categories, x, 54 Spain, 25–6, 35, 37, 41, 60, 72, 75, 81, 90–1 Spanish, 20, 30, 37, 42–3, 75, 95, 103 sport, 41, 77–8, 83, 89 standardisation, vii, 5, 7, 103 see also dedialectalisation Haugen’s model, 9 in Belgium, 8–43 in France, 8–43 in Switzerland, 8–43 Strasbourg, 15, 37, 99n.3 statistical norm, 105–7, 110, 123
307
stigma, 36, 96, 105, 114, 124, 127–8, 130, 134, 136, 138, 189, 200, 217, 229–31, 236, 246–7 stylistic variation, viii, xvi, 6, 40, 111–20, 267, 274 and affrication, xvi, 266 relation with regional and social variation, ix, 153–8 style, 105, 109, 111, 113–20, 122, 134–5, 148, 153–4, 165, 179–81, 196, 200, 218, 223, 225–7, 234–5, 250–2, 258, 264, 266–9, 271–2, 280 shift, xi, xvi, 112–3, 220, 269 subject clitic pronouns, xi, 112 Sub-Saharan Africa, 75 Suisse romande, 12, 74 education, 42, 90–1 francophone, 11, 16 Francoprovençal substrate, ix, 236–7 French-speaking, 12 linguistic adaptation, 73 oral vowels, xii, 144 prestigious pronunciations, viii, 43, 138–49 unemployment, 32 supradialectal norm, 35–6, 39 forms, 40 varieties, 39–40 supralocal forms, 40 French, xii–xiii, xvii, 6–7, 36, 84, 96, 107, 112, 119–20, 136, 138–9, 146–8, 154–6, 158–9, 162–5, 168, 172, 175–8, 181–3, 185–6, 198, 200, 202, 216, 224, 235, 247, 253, 268 non-supralocal features, xii, 84, 133, 137, 147, 148, 162, 166, 215, 236–7, 239, 243 spread of, viii, xvii, 7, 186 Sweden, 10, 23, 35, 49, 60, 72, 75, 81, 91 Swedish, 95, 281 Swiss, Italian-speaking, 11, 77 Romanche-speaking, 11
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Index
Switzerland accents, viii, 100, 138–49 dialects, 11 features, xv, 239 francophone cities, xi, 14, 70 GDP, x, 16–17 gender equality, xi, 72 German-speaking, 9 Gini index, x, 53 language change, 8–43, 31 linguistic and territorial divisions, xvii, 33 linguistic levelling, viii–ix, 150–248 as peripheral within Frenchspeaking space, 20 population (working), x, 47 pronunciation, xii, 145 prosperity (relative), x, 49 secondary-school pupils, xv, 240 sociolinguistic situation, 1 standardisation, 8–43 urban areas (major), xvii, 68 syllables checked, xv, 242 open, xv, 242 open stressed, xiv, 208 pre-iambic, 181–3 spondaic, 181–3 stress, xii, xiv, 108, 116, 132–4, 143–4, 167–8, 176, 181–3, 207–10, 233, 237, 248n.4 trochaic, 181–3 symbolic representations, vii, 44–5 syntax, 18 television programming in France, Belgium and Switzerland, 18 viewing, xi, 81 see under media, RTBF, TSR terrorism, 77, 88 Tessin, 32, 35, 77 theology, 10 Third Republic, the, 21 Toulouse, 15, 66, 99n.3 Touraine, 101, 163–5, 201 Tourcoing, 17, 60, 65, 99n.3 Tournai, ix, xiv, xv, 13, 67–8, 227–35, 229–30, 232, 234
Tordeur, Jean, 74 Tunisia, 78 Tunisians, 75 Turkish, 30, 78, 91 Turks, 75 Treaty of Rome, 73 TSR (Télévision Suisse Romande), xii, 35, 83, 139, 141, 147, 247 Umgangsprache (generalised vernacular), 40 United Kingdom, iii–iv, 1, 5–6, 9, 11, 25, 35, 37, 41, 49, 53, 60, 72, 75, 81, 83, 90, 95–7, 131, 153, 155, 196, 203n.9, 217, 254, 275, 284, 286, 291 see also English, Welsh, Scots, Northern Irish United Nations, 87–8 Union Démocratique du Centre (UDC), 34–5, 77, 86 universal suffrage, 26–7 urbanisation, vii, 41, 44–6, 59–70, 153, 251 urbanites, x, 60 urban riots (2005), 77 USA, x, 49, 53, 90–1, 96 Utrecht, 39 uvular, xiv, 109, 134, 165, 167, 184, 190–1, 200, 211, 220–1, 232, 238, 265 Valais, the ix, 32, 37, 237–40 Valaisain informants, xv, 239 VALIBEL project, 135 variable liaison, viii, xi, 111, 114–15, 120, 123, 294 variationist method, ix, 1, 10, 40, 45, 53–4, 96, 111–12, 117, 120, 184, 194, 217, 222, 257–8, 264, 275 see also Labovian method sociolinguistics, 3, studies, ix, 217–18 Vaud, the, ix, 12–14, 32, 34, 54, 70, 76, 240–6 speakers, xv, 18, 242–3 towns and districts, xv, 244
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
308 Index
velar, 124, 134, 163, 165, 167, 173–4, 193–4, 197, 202, 209–11, 216, 238–9, 265 stops, xvi, 266 Venice, 12, 14 verbs, 108, 114, 179, 281, 291–2 Verlan, 78 vernacular, 88 ancestral, 11, 24 Brussels, 14 Latin, 9 local, 23 national varieties, 11 non-Romance, 11 Parisian, viii, xiii, 14, 36, 105, 108, 163–9, 185, 265 prominence, xiii, 173 regional, 10, 42 desocialisation of traditional, 19 stigmatised, 96 urban, 5, 39, 41 urban youth vernaculars, ix, 263–73 variants, 58 Versailles, 64 Verviers, 68 Vevey-Montreux, 68, 70 Vietnam, 92 Villeneuve d’Ascq, 17 see also Lille Villers-Cotterêts, 22 Vlaams Belang, 77, 86 see also political parties vocalic features in regional varieties, xii, 163 voiced, 109, 192, 210–11, 224–6, 232, 248n.2 voiceless, 109, 184, 210–11, 224, 227, 229, 232–3, 248n.2 vowel back, 107 distribution, xii, 160 see also oral vowel distribution front, 107, 168, 209, 239 high, 108, 134, 147, 173, 216, 239, 243 lax, 116, 173, 207, 209–11, 214–16 length, xiii, 106–7, 134, 160, 181, 183, 216, 232, 239 low, 108, 238
309
mid, 108, 111, 116, 120, 124, 134, 159, 164, 173, 175–6, 180, 182, 189, 192, 198–9, 202, 210, 216, 238–9, 288 realisations, xiv, 208 see also nasal vowel realisations rounded, 116, 134, 144, 163, 172, 192, 194, 202, 208–11, 242 style shift, xvi, 271 tense, 116, 122, 210 unrounded, 106, 116, 132–3, 144, 208, 242 Wales, 41, 196 Wallonia, 14, 27–30, 38, 41, 48, 60, 75, 75–7 accent features, xiv, 215 dialect regions (traditional), xvii, 11–12, 212 Parliament, 28 population, xi, 68 regional varieties, ix, 211–14 speakers, 19, 27, 31 urban areas, xvii, 67 Washington, 14 see also USA Waterloo, 26 Welsh, see also Wales language, 37 people, 41 Western Europe sociolinguistic situations, 8 WFCD (word-final consonant devoicing), 136–7, 145–6, 171–2, 174, 192, 214, 216–18, 223–5, 229, 230–1, 230, 233, 241, 247, 256–7, 261, 273 in Conversation task in Gembloux, xiv, 229–30 in Tournai, xiv, 229–30 William of Orange, 26 word-final, xii, 109, 111–13, 124, 136, 143–5, 150–1, 160, 162–5, 167–8, 171–3, 176, 188–9, 191–6, 198–200, 204, 209–11, 214–15, 224, 228, 232, 253, 256, 265, 270–1, 292
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
Index
310 Index xenophobia, 53, 77 Yugoslavia, 75 zeitgeist, viii, 4, 6, 8, 45–6, 84–96, 100 Zürich, 32, 69, 80, 88, 93
10.1057/9780230281714 - Social and Linguistic Change in European French, Nigel Armstrong and Tim Pooley
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-15
word-initial, 115, 181, 232 word-medial, 188–9, 192, 210–11 World War I, 19, 26–7, 41, 71, 80, 165–6, 193 World War II, 20, 34, 39, 48, 75, 87, 96, 106, 156, 179, 273 pre-World War II, 237, 264 post-World War II, 53, 59, 61, 252
