Multicultural London English / Multicultural Paris French.

Le projet Multicultural London English /Multicultural Paris French (http://www.mle-mpf.bbk.ac.uk) fut lancé en 2010 à Birkbeck, University of London. Les données ont été recueillies auprès de jeunes dans divers lieux des banlieues parisiennes, puis comparées à celles réunies lors d’un projet antérieur sur l’anglais multiculturel de Londres. MLE/MPF est la première comparaison à grande échelle du langage informel employé par des jeunes dans deux contextes significatifs de l’Europe occidentale. Cet article décrit les principales conclusions de la recherche par rapport aux marqueurs pragmatiques, traits syntactiques, éléments de vocabulaire et de phonologie. Il inclut les ressources développées par le projet afin de servir dans la salle de classe pour aider les élèves dans leur recherche, leurs enquêtes inter-linguistiques et la créativité langagière.Il progetto Multicultural London English /Multicultural Paris French (http://www.mle-mpf.bbk.ac.uk) è stato lanciato nel 2010 a Birkbeck, University of London. I dati sono stati raccolti presso giovani in vari luoghi delle periferie parigine e, in seguito, paragonati a quelli raccolti nel corso di un precedente progetto sull'inglese multiticulturale di Londra. MLE / MPF rappresenta il primo confronto su larga scala del linguaggio informale, utilizzato da giovani in due contesti significativi dell'Europa occidentale. Questo articolo descrive le principali conclusioni della ricerca in relazione a marcatori pragmatici, a caratteristiche sintattiche, a elementi di vocabolario e fonologia. Il testo presenta le risorse, sviluppate dal progetto, da utilizzare in classe per aiutare gli studenti nella loro ricerca, nelle loro indagini inter-linguistiche e nella creatività linguistica

Phonétique, sociolinguistique, sociophonétique : histoires parallèles et croisements

International audienceIs it possible to provide a clear and unambiguous definition for the expanding field of sociophonetics ? Starting from this question, this article introduces the respective contributions of phonetics and sociolinguistics and the role their interactions have played inthe genesis and development of sociophonetic studies. Avenues of research that have traditionally received less attention are also highlighted. Particular attention is paid to the phonetic and/or sociolinguistic studies of French which have contributed to a description of French sound variability that incorporates social information. This introductory article brings together research from a wide range of studies on perception and social meaning of pronunciation variants in French.Est-il possible de définir de façon univoque et de circonscrire la sociophonétique, qui connait un essor important ces dernières années ? Partant de cette question, cet article introductif retrace les contributions respectives de la phonétique et de la sociolinguistique et le rôle de leurs interactions dans la genèse et le développement du domaine sociophonétique. Les directions de recherche encore peu explorées sont également mises en évidence. Une attention particulière est accordée aux études de la dimension phonique du français qui, bien qu'elles ne se soient que rarement définies comme sociophonétiques, ont peu à peu participé à l'élaboration d'une description socialement informée de la variabilité des unités sonores de cette langue, tant en ce qui concerne leur production que leur perception ou la construction de leur signification sociale

Palatalized/affricated plosives in Paris French. A sociophonetic production-perception study of a dynamic working-class and/or language contact phenomenon among middle-class speakers

A long tradition of attracting work forces to Paris from outside countries has produced a high proportion of inhabitants using other languages than French (Gadet 2008). Geographically, most of the immigrants and their descendants are housed in cheap residential areas in the northern and eastern parts of the capital and its surrounding suburbs - zones that were historically the home of working-class Parisians. Recently, sociolinguists have observed that a specific way of speaking French in these areas has emerged (Fagyal 2010; Gadet 2017), and might be spreading. There is agreement that part of the lexical phenomena in this “multiethnolectal French” is due to language contact between French and the immigrant languages, but as for phonetic features, diverging claims exist. Are the palatalized and affricated plosives (qui [kji]), voiture [vwatʃyr]), the strongly articulated /r/’s, and the frequent drops of phonetic material an effect of contact with Arabic or are they features of working-class Parisian French that have been boosted through an identity-based process of reallocation? Regardless of the answer to this complex question, we seek here to grasp the potential of the palatalized/affricated plosives to spread socially upwards to non-multicultural, middle-class speakers outside the area in question. On the basis of our recordings with upper- and lower-middle-class Parisians (Hansen ms.) and of the attitudinal data we have gathered from a listening experiment among 235 predominantly middle-class French speakers (Hansen 2015, Hansen ms.), we conclude that the phenomenon in question does show signs of active adoption and social spread upwards, while being intriguingly little salient for our participants according to the perception results, as compared to other phonetic phenomena. Only when occurring with other features (in casu strongly articulated /r/’s, with which it shares the ambiguity of being both a popular French and a possible French-Arabic language contact feature), a few listeners comment overtly on its presence and associate its users to Maghreb and/or poor suburban descent

Recent evolution of non-standard consonantal variants in French broadcast news

This paper investigates sociophonetic questions about global tendencies in contemporaneous European spoken French. The authors argue that automatic alignment allowing targeted variants can provide evidence for current hypotheses about possible ongoing sound changes or about destandardization even in formal contexts as broadcast news. This study focused on the evolution over a decade, in radio or TV news, of three ‘non- standard ’ consonantal variants: consonant cluster reduction, affrication/palatalization of dental stops and voiceless fricative epithesis. Measures obtained by this method showed that the first variant remains almost absent in journalists ’ speech, exactly as affrication of /d/. In contrast, affrication of /t / is increasing and the fricative epithesis, partially unpredictable, becomes longer. Our findings support the use of automatic alignment as an aid to validate sociolinguistic hypotheses and to develop pattern-driven studies, gathering more variables. Index Terms: sociophonetics, affrication, voiceless fricative epithesis, consonantic cluster reductio