This paper addresses the role of bottom-up prescriptive pressures in language policy debates and their interplay with institution-driven, top-down influences. I approach this issue through an analysis of social media data concerning debates surrounding recent orthographic reform in France. Building on Heyd's (Lang Soc 43: 489-514, 2014) discussion…

The many permutations of spoken English have called for an interrogation into the notions of 'standard English' and 'native accents'. Despite their problematic nature, these terms remain commonly used, and familiarity with 'standard', inner-circle varieties of English is typical among L2 English speakers, differences in education and language…

This study examines how language choice in epitaphs in Alsatian cemeteries mirrors language shifts in Alsace, a region in Eastern France that changed nationalities between France and Germany four times between 1870 and 1945. Language choice on tombstones was expected to be made according to the language of the ruling power, but the results show…

Discourses which seek to position different speakers/users of Breton through the use of labels such as 'traditional', 'new', 'learner', 'néo-bretonnant', 'brittophone', etc. draw on persistent essentialist ideologies of language and create, in the process, contested elites and counter-elites in Breton-speaking networks. These discourses can be…

Descriptions of regional pragmatic variation in French are lacking to date the focus has been on a limited range of speech acts, including apologies, requests, compliments and responses to compliments. The present paper, a systematic analysis of invitation refusals across regional varieties of French, is designed to add to the research on…

This article examines the current situation of regional language bilingual primary education in Alsace and contends that the regional language presents a special case in the context of France. The language comprises two varieties: Alsatian, which traditionally has been widely spoken, and Standard German, used as the language of reference and…

The study reported in this article investigated the proficiency in French of a group of anglophone adult L2 learners of the language, all of whom reported passing regularly for native speakers of French. Tests were administered to these learners to gauge their proficiency in different aspects of French, including a lexico-grammatical measure. A…

As part of the attempts to revitalise Corsican, a regional language of France, and to reverse the language shift to French, language activists and academics have sought to apply the model of a polynomic language to what is considered as one language, but what is, in fact, a number of different Corsicans, each with varying levels of mutual…

It has been said that the difference between a dialect and a language is that a language has an international border and a flag. But that is not entirely true. Canada has a border, a flag, and two major languages, somewhat in the fashion of Belgium. Unlike Belgium, where they call the local varieties of French and Dutch "Walloon" and…

This study gathered knowledge on an ill-explored field: attitudes toward French in France. It discusses ways and means to produce empirical data on this issue. Data indicate that the field described deserves investigation because, alongside standard French, the other "parlure" sampled in this study produce a variety of different…

Describes a set of questionnaires administered to 400 French speakers in France and Switzerland to study variation in the position of the adjective in a noun phrase. The first objective was to separate rigidly structured contexts from those affected by fluctuations, the second was to detect regularities and hesitations in individual behavior. (MES)

Outlines a research project conducted in Brittany in 1994 and 1995. The object was to investigate the attitudes of young people in Brittany (ages 8-18) toward varieties of language in the region, using a questionnaire survey and interviews. A brief description of the project is followed by a discussion of the sociolinguistic situation in France.…

Discusses the language situation in the region of Brittany in France, where the Breton language, a Celtic rather than Romance language, is dying out but a Breton ethnic identity is growing. (Author/JL)

Describes a study concerned with distinguishing certain phonological and morphological features of the three dialects of Occitan, a language spoken in the south of France. Results indicate that variations in pronunciation seem to depend on sociolinguistic, as well as geographical factors, and in fact, related dialects and language cannot be…

Focuses on variable /l/-deletion in the French definite articles, subject clitic pronouns, and in one frequent phono-lexical context. Considers whether the sociolinguistic patterns reported indicate ongoing linguistic change or whether the effects observed reveal attitudes to non-standard linguistic forms inculcated in speakers by normative French…