Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T14:23:08.390Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Paris: a sociolinguistic comparative perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2018

DAVID BRITAIN*
Affiliation:
University of Bern
*
Address for correspondence: e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

This article assesses the sociolinguistic impact and importance of the other articles in this special issue on Paris, considering three main themes that are evoked. First, the contribution of the articles here to the development of work on language variation and change on Hexagonal French within the variationist paradigm. Second, I address what I see as the important contribution made to our understanding of the ‘city’ as a sociolinguistic site. Finally, I focus on ethnicity as a social construct in recent variationist work in cities and consider what the articles here, and in comparison with cities elsewhere, add to our understanding of the impact of immigration on local manifestations of language variability. In each case, I attempt to show how these articles foreground or even problematize these three issues, and provide a prospectus for further research that can address unresolved questions.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Avanzi, M. (2017). Atlas du français de nos régions. Paris: Armand Colin.Google Scholar
Baker, P., and Eversley, J. (2000). Multilingual Capital: The Languages of London's Schoolchildren and their Relevance to Economic, Social and Educational Policies. London: Battlebridge.Google Scholar
Benor, S. B. (2010). Ethnolinguistic repertoire: Shifting the analytic focus in language and ethnicity. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 14: 159183.Google Scholar
Britain, D. (1997). Dialect contact and phonological reallocation: ‘Canadian raising’ in the English Fens. Language in Society, 26: 1546.Google Scholar
Britain, D. (2009). ‘Big bright lights’ versus ‘green and pleasant land’? The unhelpful dichotomy of ‘urban’ v ‘rural’ in dialectology. In: Al-Wer, E. and de Jong, R. (eds), Arabic Dialectology: In Honour of Clive Holes on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday. Leiden: Brill, pp. 223248.Google Scholar
Britain, D. (2012). Countering the urbanist agenda in variationist sociolinguistics: dialect contact, demographic change and the rural-urban dichotomy. In: Hansen, S., Schwarz, C., Stoeckle, P. and Streck, T. (eds), Dialectological and Folk-dialectological Concepts of Space. Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 1230.Google Scholar
Britain, D. (2016). Sedentarism, nomadism and the sociolinguistics of dialect. In: Coupland, N. (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 217241.Google Scholar
Britain, D. (2017). Which way to look?: Perspectives on ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ in dialectology. In: Moore, E. and Montgomery, C. (eds), A Sense of Place: Studies in Language and Region. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 171187.Google Scholar
Bucholtz, M. (2003). Sociolinguistic nostalgia and the authentication of identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7: 398416.Google Scholar
Bulot, T. (2002). La double articulation de la spatialité urbaine: “espaces urbanisés” et “lieux de ville” en sociolinguistique. Marges Linguistiques, 3: 91105.Google Scholar
Bulot, T. and Tsekos, N. (1999). L'Urbanisation linguistique et la mise en mots des identités urbaines. In: Bulot, T. (ed.), Langue urbaine et identité. Paris: L'Harmattan, pp. 2134.Google Scholar
Calvet, L-J. (1994). Les voix de la ville: introduction à la sociolinguistique urbaine. Paris: Éditions Payot et Rivales.Google Scholar
Cheshire, J. and Fox, S. (2009). Was/were variation: a perspective from London. Language Variation and Change, 21: 138.Google Scholar
Cheshire, J., Kerswill, P., Fox, S. and Torgersen, E. (2011). Contact, the feature pool and the speech community: the emergence of Multicultural London English. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 15: 151196.Google Scholar
Fox, S. (2015). The New Cockney: New Ethnicities and Adolescents’ Speech in the Traditional East End of London. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Gadet, F. (2003). Is there a French theory of variation? International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 160: 1740.Google Scholar
Gadet, F. (2004). Mais que font les sociolinguistes? Langage et Société, 107: 8594.Google Scholar
Hoffman, M. and Walker, J. (2010). Ethnolects and the city: Ethnic orientation and linguistic variation in Toronto English. Language Variation and Change, 22: 3767.Google Scholar
Hornsby, D. and Jones, M. (2017). Exception française? Levelling, exclusion and urban social structure in France. In: Jones, M. and Hornsby, D. (eds), Language and Social Structure in Urban France. Oxford: Legenda, pp. 94109.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1963). The social motivation of a sound change. Word, 19: 273309.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1966/2006). The Social Stratification of English in New York City (second edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic Patterns. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Messaoudi, L. (2001). Urbanisation linguistique et dynamique langagière dans la ville de Rabat. In: Bulot, T., Bauvois, C. and Blanchet, P. (eds), Sociolinguistique Urbaine. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2, pp. 8798.Google Scholar
Newby, H. (1986). Locality and rurality: the restructuring of rural social relations. Regional Studies, 20: 209215.Google Scholar
Pahl, R. (1966). The Rural-Urban Continuum. Sociologia Ruralis, 6: 299329.Google Scholar
Papazachariou, D. (1998). Language Variation and the Social Construction of Identity: The Sociolinguistic Role of Intonation among Adolescents in Northern Greece. PhD thesis, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Quist, P. (2000). New Copenhagen “Multi-ethnolect”. Language use among adolescents in linguistic and culturally heterogeneous settings. Danske Talesprog, 1: 143212.Google Scholar
Scheurer, S. (2016). Evolving rhoticity among adolescents in a Swiss International School. MA dissertation, University of Bern.Google Scholar
Schreier, D. (2003). Isolation and Language Change: Sociohistorical and Contemporary Evidence from Tristan da Cunha English. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sharma, D. (2011). Style repertoire and social change in British Asian English. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 15: 464492.Google Scholar
Sowerine, C. (1998). Inscription de classe et espace urbain. In: Girault, J. (ed.), Ouvriers en banlieue XIXe-XXe siècle. Paris: Editions de l'Atelier.Google Scholar
Sudbury, A. (2000). Dialect Contact and Koineization in the Falkland Islands: Development of a Southern Hemisphere Variety? PhD thesis, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Trudgill, P. (1986). Dialects in Contact. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wacquand, L. (2008). Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Watts, E. (2006). Mobility-induced Dialect Contact: A Sociolinguistic Investigation of Speech Variation in Wilmslow, Cheshire. PhD thesis, University of Essex.Google Scholar
Woods, M. (2011). Rural. London: Routledge.Google Scholar