The present study evaluated the effects of explicit instruction on advanced French second language (L2) learners' (n = 18) contextually appropriate use of two stylistic variables (/l/ deletion vs. retention and "ne" deletion vs. retention) using two different task types. A planned and unplanned oral task was used to assess students'…

Code-switching research has focused on spontaneous conversation, and code-switching has often been seen as a consequence of bilinguals attending to and extending the "macro" status and functions of the two languages in society, attitudes towards these languages, and their cultural connotations, for instance, the "we-code" vs.…

A discussion of social factors in language usage in the framework of sociolinguistics as defined by Labov. Some topics considered are: language as social practice, elements of a socio-differential phonology of /r/, variation in formal style, and an outline of a sociology of variation. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

This article discusses the variable behavior of the silent "e" in French, in three different stylistic contexts: lecture, conversation, and reading. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

Discusses an experiment in progress to prove that irony in written texts is discernible to the non-native speaker through logical or linguistic cues. (Text is in French.) (AM)

This study focuses on the use of modes that are dependent on impersonal structures found in the French spoken in Quebec. Six impersonal structures are identified as causing modal variation in the subordinate. This variation is constrained mainly by linguistic factors. Social factors also influence the variation, but the amount of influence exerted…

A study of the spoken French of 120 residents of Montreal. The researchers were interested in the linguistic and social factors influencing the use of "avoir" and "etre." Results show that this usage corresponds to a tendancy to regularize conjugations. (Text is in French.) (AMH)

Special issue devoted to research and the teaching of French in the elementary school. (VM)

A study was undertaken to evaluate the child's capacity to judge the acceptability of French interrogative utterances on three levels--familiar, standard, and educated. A second objective was to consider the resulting observations in the light of certain sociocultural parameters. The test, one that had been used for adults in French second…

This article describes a study attempting to correlate language style in elementary school children with sociocultural factors. (Text is in French.) (CDSH/CLK)

This is a report on a study of the attitudes of French-speaking young people, aged 10 to 17 years, toward French as it is spoken in two sectors of Quebec City. One sector, Sainte-Foy, is mainly upper middle class; the other, Saint-Sauveur, is economically and socially disadvantaged. The research was carried out on the basis of work in French and…

A study was conducted to examine children's use of social factors as bases for evaluating different patterns of code switching in dyadic social interaction. The factors were role-related and social norms, interpersonal accommodation, intergroup biases, and socio-cultural status. An initial study was conducted of monolingual and bilingual English…

Discusses the relationship in language and specifically in French between the standard language norm, the various registers and styles available to native speakers of a given language, and second language learning. (Text is in French.) (CLK)

A study of the writing processes of ten fifth-grade French immersion students examined 22 features of their writing in both English and French. Differences across languages occurred in eight features, and students displayed a wide range of writing process behaviors in both languages. (Author/MSE)