Discourse-pragmatic variation in Paris French and London English: Insights from general extenders

This paper examines the use of general extenders (GEs), such as and stuff in English and et tout in French, in Paris French and London English. We aim to compare the social and the linguistic conditioning of extender use in the two languages, discuss the different kinds of spread in the two cities and reflect on the specificity of discourse-pragmatic variation. The study shows that GE forms as well as frequencies vary across factors such as gender, age and ethnicity, while some variants also appear to be grammaticalising and acquiring new pragmatic functions. The analysis includes a comparison of different age groups, and finds that different types of generational change may be occurring in both languages. In London, forms such as and stuff and and that diverge along ethnic lines, whereas in Paris et tout is becoming the dominant variant across the board. While different variants in both languages are indirectly associated with different social categories, they perform similar pragmatic functions such as hedging, marking solidarity and appealing to common knowledge between the speaker and the interlocutor(s)

Changement grammatical et discursif en français multiculturel de la région parisienne : éléments de comparaison

Cet article cherche à comparer la variation et le changement dans deux domaines linguistiques, à savoir la grammaire et le discours. Il présente les résultats du projet « Multicultural London English – Multicultural Paris French » et s’interroge sur les différences dans l’usage des traits innovants et leur corrélation avec certaines catégories sociales. Du côté grammatical, la recherche se concentre en particulier sur l’usage des interrogatives indirectes in situ telles que 'je sais pas c’est qui' et 'je sais ça veut dire quoi', fréquemment utilisées à l’oral chez certains locuteurs. Du côté pragmatico-discursif, elle discute de l’utilisation des particules d’extension (et tout, et tout ça). L’étude révèle que la distribution des innovations discursives n’est pas la même que celle des innovations grammaticales, dont l’usage est davantage clivé en fonction des catégories sociales. L’article tente d’apporter des éclairages sur les processus de grammaticalisation et de changement, en s’interrogeant sur l’existence d’un français multiculturel typiquement « jeune » ou typiquement « parisien »

<i>‘Je sais et tout mais...’</i> might the general extenders in European French be changing?

This paper addresses contemporary trends in the use of general extenders in two recent corpora of spontaneous French stratified by age. In these corpora, certain variants (e.g. et tout) are highly prevalent in the speech of young people compared to older speakers, while others are not. Other studies have shown that general extenders’ form as well as frequency tends to vary with respect to speakers’ age, while some extenders may also undergo grammaticalisation. The present study includes a comparison with a late 20th-century corpus of spoken French, and finds that not only age grading but also generational change might be occurring. This conclusion is supported by qualitative and quantitative analysis of the contemporary data, showing that the forms most frequent among young people appear to have acquired new pragmatic functions

"Il parle normal, il parle comme nous”: self-reported usage and attitudes in a banlieue

We report on a survey of language attitudes carried out as part of a project comparing youth language in Paris and London. As in similar studies carried out in London (Cheshire et al. 2008), Berlin (Wiese 2009) and elsewhere (Boyd et al. 2015), the focus was on features considered typical of ‘contemporary urban vernaculars’ (Rampton 2015). The respondents were pupils aged 15-18 in two secondary schools in a working-class northern suburb of Paris. The survey included (1) a written questionnaire containing examples of features potentially undergoing change in contemporary French; (2) an analysis of reactions to extracts from the project data: participants were asked to comment on the speakers and the features identified. Quantitative analysis had shown that some of these features are more widespread than others and are used by certain categories of speaker more than others (Gardner-Chloros and Secova, 2018). This study provides a qualitative dimension, showing that different features have different degrees of perceptual salience and acceptability. It demonstrates that youth varieties do not involve characteristic features being used as a ‘package’, and that such changes interact in a complex manner with attitudinal factors. The study also provides material for reflection on the role of attitude studies within sociolinguistic surveys

Grammatical change in Paris French: In-situ question words in embedded contexts.

This article will review the parameters of a grammatical variable within the putative variety ‘Multicultural Paris French’, i.e. its distribution and use within a group of young banlieue speakers. The structure in question stands out as it has rarely been found in previous corpora in France: indirect questions following verbs like savoir, where the question word is post-verb (je sais pas il a dit quoi). We discuss which groups use the new forms in Paris, referring briefly to some comparable changes in London. This structure appears to be an instance of ‘change from below’ (Labov, 2007), which seems to have emerged in the speech of young people of immigrant background. It might also, on the other hand, be a long-standing vernacular variant, which has re-emerged, with specific identity-related significance, in this particular group of speakers. Its exceptional character in the Paris context highlights a lack of evidence for the emergence of a more wide-ranging, distinct multiethnolect, as found in London and other European capitals

Discourse‐pragmatic features of spoken French: analysis and pedagogical implications

My research focuses on selected discourse features of spoken French, especially those typical of present-day youth language. The dissertation has two parts: 1) Analysis of features typical of spoken language, based on a corpus of recorded data from young people aged 20 to 30, speaking to each other in spontaneous informal conversations. The analysis focuses particularly on features with discourse-pragmatic functions, including discourse markers, general extenders, presentational constructions and dislocated structures. I also address the question of how some of these typically spoken features develop in French youth language and the extent to which they may be considered innovative. 2) Discussion of the role of spoken language in foreign language teaching and learning, based partly on the results of a questionnaire for university learners of French as a foreign language aimed at investigating their knowledge of spoken features. This section addresses the question of whether features of spoken language generally, and of youth language in particular, are available to foreign learners

Discours direct chez les jeunes : nouvelles structures, nouvelles fonctions

Cet article s’interroge sur les nouvelles tendances dans l’utilisation du discours direct dans deux corpus spontanés recueillis à Paris et à Londres dans le cadre du projet « MLE-MPF, Multicultural London English - Multicultural Paris French ». L’analyse des données françaises révèle des stratégies innovantes qui accompagnent le discours rapporté dans les récits des adolescents. Elle expose des tendances similaires à celles trouvées dans d’autres langues et variétés (pour l’anglais, voir Tagliamonte & D’Arcy 2007, Buchstaller & D’Arcy 2009, Cheshire et al. 2011, Fox 2012 ; pour le français québécois, Levey et al. 2013), mais aussi quelques différences vraisemblablement spécifiques au français hexagonal. Cet article traite des fonctions pragmatiques que les formes émergentes recouvrent dans des contextes variés, et s’interroge sur les forces motrices de leur développement

Deux ou trois choses que je sais d’elles : les variantes émergentes en français multiculturel de la région parisienne

Book synopsis: Ce volume réunit des travaux axés prioritairement sur le français innovant sous toutes ses formes, dans tous les styles communicatifs et dans toutes ses variétés diatopiques. La thématique de la variation et du changement en langue est appréhendée à travers des approches théoriques dans l’interface sémantique – lexique – syntaxe. Ces dernières sont mises à profit pour aider à éclairer, sous un angle parfois inédit, divers aspects du diasystème français

The origins of new quotative expressions: the case of Paris French

We analyse genre in the speech of young people with multi-ethnic friendship groups in Paris in order to address the as yet unresolved question of whether new quotatives equivalent in meaning to English BE LIKE result from simultaneous independent parallel developments in languages other than English or from a process of calquing. We conclude that French quotative genre results from independent internal developments, but that it enters the French quotative system in the same way that BE LIKE entered the English system, driven by the meanings of ‘similarity’ or ‘approximation’ that are shared by the lexical item genre in a range of syntactic categories. We propose that in order for a new similarity quotative to emerge, a lexical item with a meaning of ‘similarity’ or ‘approximation’ must become syntactically multifunctional, and that the use of that lexical item must reach a critical frequency threshold. In the case of genre we suggest that the necessary increase in frequency results from the development of the lexical item into a discourse marker. We also analyse another new French quotative, ETRE LA, a sequence that we find is used to highlight activity of many kinds (including, but not confined to, spoken behaviour). The trajectory followed by each of the new quotative expressions conforms to De Smet's proposals about how linguistic innovations spread through the grammar