Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T11:20:38.815Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Variation in the use of discourse markers in a language contact situation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 June 2009

Gillian Sankoff ,
Pierrette Thibault ,
Naomi Nagy ,
Hélène Blondeau ,
Marie-Odile Fonollosa  and
Lucie Gagnon
Gillian Sankoff
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Pierrette Thibault
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal
Naomi Nagy
Affiliation:
University of New Hampshire
Hélène Blondeau
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal
Marie-Odile Fonollosa
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal
Lucie Gagnon
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Use of discourse markers by 17 speakers of Anglophone Montreal French (AMF) showed great variation in individual repertoires and frequency of use. Only five subjects manifested rates of usage comparable to those of native speakers or to their own LI usage in English. In decreasing order of frequency, the speakers used tu sais ‘y'know’; là ‘there’ (the most frequent among L1 Montreal French speakers); bon ‘good’, alors ‘so’, comme ‘like’, and bien ‘well’; and the local discourse conjunction fait que ‘so’. The subjects occasionally made use of the English markers you know, so, like, and well. Québécois French markers with no English equivalent were used by the speakers who had been exposed to French in their early childhood environment. The one marker that showed influence from English was comme, apparently calqued on English like. Overall, frequent use of discourse markers correlated only with the speakers' knowledge of French grammar – evidence that a higher frequency of discourse marker use is the hallmark of the fluent speaker. As a feature that is not explicitly taught in school, mastery of the appropriate use of discourse markers is thus particularly revealing of the speakers' integration into the local speech community.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , July 1997 , pp. 191 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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

Blyth, Carl J., Recktenwald, Sigrid, & Wang, Jenny. (1990). I'm like, “Say what?”: A new quotative. American Speech 65:215–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dessureault-Dober, Diane. (1974). CA FAIT QUE: Opérateur logique et marqueur d'interaction. Master's thesis, Université du Québec à Montréal.Google Scholar
Gal, Susan. (1980). Language shift: Social determinants of linguistic change in bilingual Austria. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Genesee, Fred. (1987). Learning through two languages. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
Gumperz, John, & Wilson, Robert. (1971). Convergence and creolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border. In Hymes, D. (Ed.), Pidginization and creolization of languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 151–168.Google Scholar
Harley, Birgit. (1992). Aspects of the oral second language proficiency of early immersion, late immersion, and extended French students at Grade 10. In Courchêne, R. I., Glidden, J. I., John, J. St., & Thérien, C. (Eds.), Comprehension-based second language teaching/L'enseignement des langues secondes axé sur la compréhension. Ottawa: Ottawa University Press. 371–388.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica, & Lévy, Laurette. (1992). Mixed marriages: Life on the linguistic frontier. Multilingua 11:1, 11–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laberge, Suzanne. (1977). Etude de la variation despronoms sujets définis et indéfinis dans le français parlé à Montréal. Doctoral dissertation, Université de Montréal.Google Scholar
Lambert, Wallace E., & Tucker, G. Richard. (1972). The bilingual education of children: The St. Lambert experiment. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.Google Scholar
La Société du Parler français au Canada. (1968). Glossaire du parler français au Canada. Québec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, [reprint of the original 1930 publication]Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Claire (Ed.). (1982). La syntaxe comparée du français standard et populaire: Approches formelle et fonctionnelle. 2 volumes. Québec: L'Editeur officiel du Québec.Google Scholar
Lieberson, Stanley. (1965). Bilingualism in Montreal: A demographic analysis. American Journal of Sociology 71:10–25.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mougeon, Raymond, & Nadasdi, Terry. (1995). Sociolinguistic discontinuity in minority language communities. Paper presented at NWAVE-XXIV, Philadelphia, PA.Google Scholar
Mougeon, Raymond, & Beniak, Édouard. (1995). Social class and language variation in bilingual speech communities. In Guy, G., Feagin, C., Schiffrin, D., & Baugh, J. (Eds.), Towards a social science of language: Papers in honor of William Labov. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. 69–99.Google Scholar
Mougeon, Raymond, & Beniak, Édouard. (1991). Linguistic consequences of language contact and restriction: The case of French in Ontario, Canada. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poplack, Shana. (1985). Contrasting patterns of code-switching in two communities. In Warkentyne, H. (Ed.), Methods V: Papers from the Fifth International Conference on Methods in Dialectology. Victoria, British Columbia: University of Victoria Press. 363–386.Google Scholar
Poplack, Shana, Sankoff, David, & Miller, Christopher. (1988). The social correlates and linguistic processes of lexical borrowing and assimilation. Linguistics 26:47–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, Marie-Marthe. (1981). Les conjonctions BUT et SO dans le francais de Moncton. In Sankoff, D. & Cedergren, Henrietta (Eds.), Variation omnibus. Edmonton, Alberta: Linguistic Research. 429–444.Google Scholar
Sankoff, David, Sankoff, Gillian, Laberge, Suzanne, & Topham, Marjorie. (1976). Méthodes d'échantillonnage et utilisation de l'ordinateur dans l'étude de la variation grammaticale. Cahiers de linguistique de l'Université du Québec 6:85–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorensen, Arthur. (1967). Multilingualism in the North West Amazon. American Anthropologist 69:670–684.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thibault, Pierrette, & Daveluy, Michelle. (1989). Quelques traces du passage du temps dans le parler des Montréalais. Language Variation and Change 1:19–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thibault, Pierrette, & Sankoff, Gillian. (1993). Diverses facettes de l'insecuritd linguistique: Vers une analyse comparative des attitudes et du français parlé par des Franco- et des Anglomontréalais. Cahiers de l'Institut de Linguistique de Louvain 19:209–218.Google Scholar
Thibault, Pierrette, & Vincent, Diane. (1990). Un corpus de français parlé. Québec: Département de langues et linguistique, Université Laval.Google Scholar
Vincent, Diane. (1992). The sociolinguistics of exemplification in spoken French in Montreal. Language Variation and Change 4:137–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vincent, Diane. (1993). Les ponctuants de la langue et autres mots du discours. Québec: Nuit blanche.Google Scholar
Vincent, Diane, & Sankoff, David. (1992). Punctors: A pragmatic variable. Language Variation and Change 4:205–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinreich, Uriel. (1951). Research problems in bilingualism, with special reference to Switzerland. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Wesche, Marjorie. (1992). French immersion graduates at university and beyond: What difference has it made? In Alatis, J. M. (Ed.), The Georgetown Roundtable on Languages and Linguistics 1992. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 208–240.Google Scholar