Synopses & Reviews
French 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. All examples and quotations are in French, with a mixture of references given in French and English. At the end of each chapter there are also texts in French, serving as illustration and as pointers to further reading.
Review
"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
Synopsis
An examination of French throughout the French-speaking world, considering prescriptivism, gender, regional languages and dialects.
Table of Contents
Introduction; French: a planned language?; Sociosituational variation; Regional variation in France; The other languages of France; The other languages of France: towards a multilingual policy; The migrant languages of Paris; Gender and language in French; The reform of the writing; Alternative French; New words for new technologies; Language and style in politics; French and French Creoles: the case of the French Caribbean; French in Africa; French in Canada; Sociolinguistic variation and the linguist.