Judging French. Lay and expert language commentary in nineteenth- and twenty-first-century France

This thesis presents a comparative study of French language commentary from two time periods, the late nineteenth and the early twenty-first centuries, and from two perspectives, expert and lay. It analyses four sources of language commentary to undertake two main comparisons. The first is a diachronic comparison of two language advice services: Le Courrier de Vaugelas (1868-1881) and the Courrier des internautes (2011-present, part of the Dire, Ne pas dire section of the Académie française’s website). Both sources publish readers’ questions about language and a response from an expert, allowing for the analysis of commentary from an expert and lay perspective. Expert language commentary has been well studied, in the form of usage guides, remarques, chroniques de langage and dictionary prefaces, for instance, but these sources are primarily monologic. Analysis of the two dialogic Q+A sources provides insight into both lay and expert commentary and the interaction between them. The second comparison, a synchronic comparison, analyses the blog posts and user comments from two websites on the topic of language and correctness: Langue sauce piquante (2004-present) and Bescherelle ta mère (2014-present). Langue sauce piquante contains both expert and lay commentary. Bescherelle ta mère, on the other hand, is an exclusively lay space and its audience comprises not language enthusiasts (as is the case with the other three sources) but ‘ordinary’ people, due to both the type of content featured and its accessibility via Facebook. Language commentary from the nineteenth and the twenty-first century has received less scholarly attention than, for instance, the seventeenth century which marked the beginning of the remarqueur tradition, and the twentieth century, the period in which language columns were at their most popular. However, both the time periods analysed here are times of significant change for the language. In the late nineteenth century, the introduction of free compulsory education in the French language began to increase the number of people interested in questions of language. Turning to the twenty-first century, the lay-lay language commentary which we might assume was occurring most frequently in spoken language and was therefore inaccessible to researchers, has become accessible online. This thesis exploits the opportunities presented by the internet to examine lesser-studied lay-lay language commentary. This thesis combines quantitative and qualitative analysis to examine the areas of the language which, to judge by the four sources studied here, cause French speakers difficulty or simply interest, how linguistic authority is created and negotiated, the recurring tropes in discussions of correct language, the use of purist and prescriptivist imagery, and, finally, the implicit and explicit language ideologies expressed in lay and expert language commentary. It shows that standard language ideology and prescriptivism run through the nineteenth- and twenty-first-century sources, and argues that they have become a part of popular culture in lay online spaces. Whilst there are some striking similarities across the forms of language commentary from two time periods and two mediums (print to online), analysis also suggests that, in some cases, traditional commentary has taken a more extreme form online

Judging French. Lay and expert language commentary in nineteenth- and twenty-first-century France

This thesis presents a comparative study of French language commentary from two time periods, the late nineteenth and the early twenty-first centuries, and from two perspectives, expert and lay. It analyses four sources of language commentary to undertake two main comparisons. The first is a diachronic comparison of two language advice services: Le Courrier de Vaugelas (1868-1881) and the Courrier des internautes (2011-present, part of the Dire, Ne pas dire section of the Académie française’s website). Both sources publish readers’ questions about language and a response from an expert, allowing for the analysis of commentary from an expert and lay perspective. Expert language commentary has been well studied, in the form of usage guides, remarques, chroniques de langage and dictionary prefaces, for instance, but these sources are primarily monologic. Analysis of the two dialogic Q+A sources provides insight into both lay and expert commentary and the interaction between them. The second comparison, a synchronic comparison, analyses the blog posts and user comments from two websites on the topic of language and correctness: Langue sauce piquante (2004-present) and Bescherelle ta mère (2014-present). Langue sauce piquante contains both expert and lay commentary. Bescherelle ta mère, on the other hand, is an exclusively lay space and its audience comprises not language enthusiasts (as is the case with the other three sources) but ‘ordinary’ people, due to both the type of content featured and its accessibility via Facebook. Language commentary from the nineteenth and the twenty-first century has received less scholarly attention than, for instance, the seventeenth century which marked the beginning of the remarqueur tradition, and the twentieth century, the period in which language columns were at their most popular. However, both the time periods analysed here are times of significant change for the language. In the late nineteenth century, the introduction of free compulsory education in the French language began to increase the number of people interested in questions of language. Turning to the twenty-first century, the lay-lay language commentary which we might assume was occurring most frequently in spoken language and was therefore inaccessible to researchers, has become accessible online. This thesis exploits the opportunities presented by the internet to examine lesser-studied lay-lay language commentary. This thesis combines quantitative and qualitative analysis to examine the areas of the language which, to judge by the four sources studied here, cause French speakers difficulty or simply interest, how linguistic authority is created and negotiated, the recurring tropes in discussions of correct language, the use of purist and prescriptivist imagery, and, finally, the implicit and explicit language ideologies expressed in lay and expert language commentary. It shows that standard language ideology and prescriptivism run through the nineteenth- and twenty-first-century sources, and argues that they have become a part of popular culture in lay online spaces. Whilst there are some striking similarities across the forms of language commentary from two time periods and two mediums (print to online), analysis also suggests that, in some cases, traditional commentary has taken a more extreme form online

Defending the French language: an online battle?

This study investigates the metalinguistic discourse of Twitter users in the French language. It is often claimed that France is a country in which standard language ideology and prescriptivism are deeply entrenched. In modern society, the internet seems to have become a popular space to share and enforce prescriptive ideas about ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ language. Given suggestions that the views expressed online are often more extreme than offline interactions, the internet, in this case Twitter, is a particularly interesting context for a study of metalinguistic discourse. Through analysis of a corpus of tweets, created using search terms such as orthographe and the non-standard verb form croivent, I investigate attitudes towards both usages which deviate from the prescribed norm and the speakers behind the deviations. The results show that Twitter users have clear ideas about what constitutes ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ language, and equate non-standard usages with low intelligence and status. There has been relatively little research on contemporary prescriptivism in France and computer-mediated communication in French has also attracted little interest to date. This study uses innovative research methods to provide the first analysis of contemporary French prescriptivism in action in the online sphere

Technologies and Data Collection

Private blogs, cell phones, video games, and other new media technologies can be a great medium to increase participants’ engagement in research! Learn about why and when you could use various technologies, how to create them, how to use virtual technologies to change policy, what are some possibilities for interesting and systematic analysis of virtual data, and some problems researchers might face in attempting to use new media technologies

The hidden face of public language policy: a case study from the UK

In which domains and for which language types does language legislation occur and how easy is it to identify it? The United Kingdom (UK) affords a good test bed to answer these questions since it is often considered to be lacking in strong public language policy due to, amongst other things, a lack of a coherent language policy across the UK and its devolved administrations and a perceived societal disinterest in languages. Through analysis of a corpus of primary and secondary legislation from the UK and its constituent jurisdictions that contain stipulations about language(s), this article shows that UK language legislation spans multiple domains, including public health and safety, law and crime, transport and the media. Whilst some of the legislation, such as the Welsh Language Acts, explicitly deals with language(s), the vast majority of the UK's legislation which contains provisions concerning language(s) is hidden in legislation which primarily concerns another domain. Although hidden, at times these language stipulations mark important landmarks in the status of languages. All this has consequences for the UK language policy landscape, potentially diminishing the perceived importance of languages in and to government and affecting policymakers' ability to collaborate across government in a coherent way

Human paraoxonase gene cluster polymorphisms as predictors of coronary heart disease risk in the prospective Northwick Park Heart Study II

AbstractThe anti-atherogenic effect of HDL has been suggested to be partly due to the action of HDL-associated paraoxonase (PON). Three distinct enzymes have been identified, encoded by PON1, PON2 and PON3, clustered on chromosome 7q21–q22. Two cSNPs in PON1 (L55M and Q192R) and one in PON2 (S311C) have been implicated as independent risk factors for coronary heart disease (CHD) in some, but not all, studies. A PON3 SNP (A99A) was identified and the effect of these four PON SNPs on HDL levels and CHD risk was examined in the prospective Northwick Park Heart Study II (NPHSII). Genotype frequencies did not differ between cases and controls but the CHD risk associated with smoking was significantly modified by PON1 L55M genotype. Compared to LL non-smokers, LL smokers had a hazard ratio (HR) of 1.30 (95% CI 0.81–2.06) while M-allele carriers had a HR of 1.76 (1.17–2.67). When genotypes were analysed in combination, men with the genotype PON1 55 LM/MM+PON2 311 CC, had HR of 3.54 (1.81–6.93) compared to PON1 LL+PON2 SS/SC men (interaction P=0.004). These effects were independent of classical risk factors. These data demonstrate the importance of stratifying by environmental factors and the use of multiple SNPs for genetic analysis

Listening and learning about civic education from the community

From the United States to Myanmar, we see significant evidence that there are important and sometimes conflictive conversations about how we should be a civic community. Building on Coleman’s [1] argument that effective civic, character, or social-emotional education programs need to be embedded within a community’s values, this paper will give an example as to how community based listening tours can be used to facilitate this process. It will summarize how these listening tours gave voice to community beliefs about the why and the how of effective civic education. These listening tours found that effective civics education programs should a) elevate student voice, b) engage parents in the program development and implementation, c) engage community-based youth serving agencies in program development and implementation, d) include communities that have a prior interest or exposure to equity in K-12 civic education, e) demonstrate a commitment to centering the lived experience of students in the programming, f) have a school district-level commitment to civic education (staff, resources, stated mission, etc.), and g) have state-level commitment to civic education (education department policy, state standards and curricular frameworks, relevant civics legislation, etc) [2].One core takeaway from these listening tours are that successful educational programming is no longer a function of that great teacher, principal, or program. It is a function of the system working together to create opportunities for our children to thrive. Another is that a lived civics education program can serve to bring communities together around student learning and agency.Accepted manuscrip

SZZ in the time of Pull Requests

In the multi-commit development model, programmers complete tasks (e.g., implementing a feature) by organizing their work in several commits and packaging them into a commit-set. Analyzing data from developers using this model can be useful to tackle challenging developers' needs, such as knowing which features introduce a bug as well as assessing the risk of integrating certain features in a release. However, to do so one first needs to identify fix-inducing commit-sets. For such an identification, the SZZ algorithm is the most natural candidate, but its performance has not been evaluated in the multi-commit context yet. In this study, we conduct an in-depth investigation on the reliability and performance of SZZ in the multi-commit model. To obtain a reliable ground truth, we consider an already existing SZZ dataset and adapt it to the multi-commit context. Moreover, we devise a second dataset that is more extensive and directly created by developers as well as Quality Assurance (QA) engineers of Mozilla. Based on these datasets, we (1) test the performance of B-SZZ and its non-language-specific SZZ variations in the context of the multi-commit model, (2) investigate the reasons behind their specific behavior, and (3) analyze the impact of non-relevant commits in a commit-set and automatically detect them before using SZZ