French Today
French Today
$125.00
USDFrench Today is a profile of the French language in its social context. British and French linguists examine trends in French throughout the French-speaking world, and address issues around prescriptivism, gender and language, and regional languages and dialects. The collection includes overviews of work done in particular areas and deeper analyses of sociolinguistic questions. One theme is how to represent and interpret data relating to language varieties that have been marginalised. Another concerns the ways in which French is adapting to the future, whether as a language of new technology, or as a vehicular language on the continent. All chapters of this book are in English, with examples and quotations in French, and a mixture of references given in both languages. At the end of each chapter, there are also texts in French, serving as illustration and as pointers to further reading.
- Of interest both to sociolinguists and students of French, putting language in the context of use and prescription
- Contributors French and English, taking in all the French-speaking world, and not just French in urban France
- Tackles key issues for language policy everywhere, such as marginalisation of dialects, gender and language, and the problems of language planning
Reviews & endorsements
"The whole thing was well planned and well executed. This is good, sound, professional stuff." Canadian Journal of Linguistics
"...perhaps the most interested reader would be the researcher in language planning with a special interest in the French-speaking world; in fact, for such a reader, the text may well be uniquely useful. Anthropologists who do fieldwork in any of the French-speaking countries will find the book moderately useful as well...." Anthropological Linguistics
Product details
April 1993Hardback
9780521395052
338 pages
229 × 152 × 21 mm
0.62kg
15 b/w illus. 3 tables
Available
Table of Contents
- List of figures and maps
- List of tables
- Notes on the contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction Carol Sanders
- 1. French: a planned language? Anne Judge
- 2. Sociosituational variation Carol Sanders
- 3. Regional variation in France Roger Hawkins
- 4. The other languages of France: towards a multilingual policy F. Larousi and J.-B. Marcellesi
- 5. The migrant languages of Paris L.-J. Calvet
- 6. Gender and language in French Marie-Marthe Gervais
- 7. The reform of the writing system Nina Catach
- 8. Alternative French Ken George
- 9. New words for new technologies Stephen Noreiko
- 10. Language and style in politics John Gaffney
- 11. French and French Creoles: the case of the French Caribbean Gertrud Aub-Buscher
- 12. French in Africa Suzanne Lafage
- 13. French in Canada Michel Blanc
- 14. Sociolinguistic variation and the linguist Jacques Durand
- Bibliography
- Index.
