9 - Social variation: occupations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
THIS chapter is concerned with the use of French in working lives. The nature of employment or activity affects language use, the words and expressions selected or preferred, just as much as does geographical location or social category, and the variation involved is as systematic. For reasons of space three types of employment only will be considered, in the fields of science and technology, the law, and commerce, although most trades and types of employment have their own recognisable linguistic characteristics.
Professional discourse
Tasks and groups
We have mentioned above a distinction which is commonly made between primary, or face-to-face, human groups, and secondary groups whose members are linked indirectly (see Sprott, 1958). Primary groups come together in a number of different ways and for different purposes: family members meet around the breakfast table, neighbours might drop in for a chat over coffee, small groups converse in the pub, and most such casual meetings concern themselves with ‘making contact’, social interaction in which the conversation covers a range of subject areas, and in which social links are established and broken. Chapter 10 below will be concerned with interaction of this type, and with alternative sociolinguistic models, such as networks, for understanding it.
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- Information
- Sociolinguistics and Contemporary French , pp. 163 - 193Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990