This study investigates the expression of past temporal reference in a highly conservative variety of Acadian French spoken in the Baie Sainte-Marie region of Nova Scotia, Canada. Variationist analysis of data from a sociolinguistic corpus for the village of Grosses Coques reveals a split between narrative and conversational discourse, with variation mainly between use of the passé simple and the imparfait in the former and between the passé composé and the imparfait in the latter. The passé simple remains in robust use in this variety and is constrained in a manner similar to that found in 17th-century representations of colloquial speech involving narration.

This paper presents the results of a study that employed a questionnaire and a matched-guise experiment to investigate the attitudes that Quebec francophones, anglophones, French-English bilinguals and allophones hold towards Quebec French compared to European French. The findings indicate that attitudes towards Quebec French on the solidarity dimension have improved since the 1980s, while attitudes on the status dimension have remained the same. These findings are interpreted in the context of the burgeoning of Quebecers’ sense of belonging to their society on the one hand, and the tradition of viewing French as a monocentric rather than a pluricentric language on the other hand.

In this study we investigate code-crossing and multilingualism among 13–14 year olds in three schools (five classes) in the northern French city of Lille, based on data elicited during one-to-one interviews as part of a broader study of adolescent language in the city. With regard to code-crossing the study focuses on the indicative evidence of acquisition of (dialectal) Arabic by adolescents of European or Metropolitan French family background, gleaned from a series of language tests. The results suggest that for subjects of Metropolitan French background, interethnic friendships, bolstered by playful use of the language of the Other, are the single most important factor in non-institutional acquisition of Dialectal Arabic. These findings receive a degree of confirmation from the professed familiarity with a variety of Rom in one class group. Cross-ethnic language acquisition does not, however, appear to correlate in any significant way with factors that may be said to frame the socio-cultural space (such as tastes in music and style of dress) in which these teenage informants were moving at the time of the fieldwork. With regard to multilingualism subjects were found to have had exposure to a variety of European and one West-African language (Wolof). On the evidence of the language tests, the largest ethnically defined minority group, the Maghrebians manifested a range of competence in Arabic, with apparently significant differences between subjects of Algerian and Moroccan extraction.

Dans les études ayant conclu à une dépréciation de la variété endogène, les attitudes linguistiques ont été suscitées à partir de stimuli généraux (p.ex., accent). Dans cet article, nous soulignons les limites de ces travaux, en montrant au travers d'une récente enquête que la réponse à un stimulus général est formulée sur la base d'une partie seulement des variantes lexicales, celles relevant d'un contact de langues et présentant un déficit de prestige. Les résultats de cette recherche mettent parallèlement au jour la légitimité de tout un pan de variantes endogènes (archaïsmes et innovations romandes). Tout en expliquant pourquoi certaines ressources linguistiques sont plus susceptibles que d'autres de servir de fondement à la variété endogène légitime, nous discutons les facteurs contribuant à l'autonomisation du français en Suisse romande.

Cet article est consacré aux rapports qui existent entre l'identité et la norme en matière de langue dans le discours qu'on trouve sous la plume des chroniqueurs de langage canadiens-français. Notre objectif est d'analyser comment ces derniers définissent l'identité de leurs compatriotes et quelle importance ils accordent à des considérations identitaires dans leur discours à propos du français canadien et de sa légitimité. L'analyse porte sur 12 chroniques, écrites par autant d'auteurs différents, publiées dans la presse canadienne-française entre 1865 et 1996. Les résultats de notre analyse tendent à montrer qu'il ne suffit pas d'étudier comment les chroniqueurs canadiens-français perçoivent l'identité de leurs compatriotes – notamment en termes de degré d'autonomie par rapport à l'identité française – pour comprendre la façon dont ils ont évalué le français au Canada; il faut aussi, et surtout, tenir compte du poids que ces chroniqueurs attribuent à l'identité dans leur conception de la langue si on veut bien comprendre leur façon de définir la norme.

This paper examines the use of English-origin forms by Ironman France participants, with focus given to those having a widely used French equivalent (e.g. la finish and le bike). Investigation centres on print media, online discussion forums, and participant interviews. Innovative borrowings are argued to derive from a fetishization of English along the lines of Kelly Holmes (1997, 2000), whereby connotation is equally or more important than reference. It is further suggested that participants employ these innovative forms to distinguish themselves and solidify group identity, constituting a sort of sociolinguistic niche.