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Sociolinguistics
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National and cultural identity
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Studies In Linguistics 4

Legenda: Oxford, 2007
£48.00 ($69.00 US)  Hardback  254pp
ISBN: 978-1-904350-68-2

Our choice of linguistic code is one of the most fundamental ways open to us of establishing our membership of some groups and our distance from others. This symbolic value of language may often leave it open to exploitation, especially by the state. The present volume demonstrates how the multi-faceted nature of the concept of identity makes its relationship with language both complex and unpredictable. Because of its particular historical and social characteristics, the French language provides especially fertile territory for the exploration of this theme.

Four main axes stand out in the French context: ‘institutionalized’ identity, regional identity, social identity and competing identities. These themes are explored from different perspectives by leading experts from Britain, Europe and North America: Roger Baines, Kate Beeching, Danielle Bouverot, David Cowling, Edith Esch, Françoise Gadet, Penelope Gardner-Chloros, David Hornsby, John E. Joseph, Dominique Lagorgette, Jacques Landrecies, Dawn Marley, Nicolas Pepin, Tim Pooley, Gilles Siouffi, Albert Valdman, Barbara von Gemmingen and Chantal Wionet.

Wendy Ayres-Bennett is Professor of French Philology and Linguistics, University of Cambridge and Fellow in Modern and Medieval Languages, New Hall, Cambridge. Mari C. Jones is Senior Lecturer in French, University of Cambridge and Fellow in Modern and Medieval Languages, Peterhouse, Cambridge.

With the contributions:

Wendy Ayres-Bennett, Mari C. Jones — Introduction
Gilles Siouffi — Langue française et questions d’identité: quelques propositions sur le xviie siècle
Chantal Wionet — L’Institutionnalisation de la langue commune à la fin du xviie siècle
Danielle Bouverot — Norme et identité(s) dans un dictionnaire institutionnel, le TLF
John E. Joseph — 842, 1871, and All That: Alsace-Lorraine and the Transformations of Linguistic Nationalism
Edith Esch — Français d’ailleurs: The Pluricentricity of French Identities?
Jacques Landrecies — Variations des rapports à la langue et brouillage identitaire dans l’aire picardophone
David Hornsby — Dialect Lite? The Rise of the Semi-Speaker in an Obsolescent Dialect Community
Tim Pooley — Picard and Identity in Lille and the Nord–Pas-de-Calais
Penelope Gardner-Chloros — Tu/vous Choices: An ‘Act of Identity’?
Dominique Lagorgette — Termes d’adresse et insultes: discours sur l’autre ou sur moi?
Roger Baines — Identity, Gender, and Perceptions of Insult Performance in Adolescent French
Kate Beeching — Social Identity, Salience, and Language Change: The Case of Post-Rhematic quoi
Nicolas Pepin — Catégoriser la langue, catégoriser les locuteurs. Variantes, emblèmes et identité située: le cas de septante–soixante-dix, nonante–quatre-vingt-dix
David Cowling — Henri Estienne and the Problem of French–Italian Code-Switching in Sixteenth-Century France
Barbara Von Gemmingen — ‘On voit ... se répandre par-tout, un jargon colon-germanisé’: recherches sur le français des Huguenots à Berlin au xviiième siècle
Dawn Marley — Maghrebians via French
Albert Valdman — Variation et revitalisation du français en Louisiane
Françoise Gadet — Envoi. Identités françaises différentielles et linguistique du contact