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Shift beyond shift: On the erosion of the collective memory of Picard among adolescents in Lille

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2014

TIM POOLEY
TIM POOLEY*
Affiliation:
London Metropolitan University
*
Address for correspondence: Tim Pooley e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This study seeks to assess the competence in, and current perceptions of, the traditional regional ancestral variety, Picard, among school students in Lille. In the first part, dialect retention is evaluated by a series of language tests, administered in two rounds of fieldwork, the first carried out between 1995–1999 covering the whole of Lille-Métropole and the second undertaken in 2004–2005 focusing on the urban heartlands. The results show that competence in Picard, as measured by the tests, is highest among European or Metropolitan French subjects in the north-eastern part of the urban area (Roubaix-Tourcoing) despite significantly greater ethnic diversity among the school populations.

In the second part of the study, the subjects’ perceptions of a range of Picard and Regional French varieties, as represented by a series of sample recordings, covering most of the picardophone areas are evaluated against a linguistic analysis of ‘picardité’ as measured by the density of Picard features in the extracts concerned. The results show a lack of correspondence between the two evaluations. Subjects’ perceptions are further clarified by their metalinguistic comments regarding the value of Picard and its place in their linguistic repertoire. As this variety is rarely if ever used in peer-to-peer exchanges, relative competence does not correlate with indicators of socialisation that proved significant with regard to other aspects of the students’ linguistic repertoire and was also found to correlate negatively with measures of regional loyalty and cultural value.

The ‘real-time’ aspect of the study appears to point to some degree of ongoing erosion of awareness and confidence in recognition of the varieties concerned among the population investigated, despite some important cultural events which might have been expected to counter this trend.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 85 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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