Aims

a) To familiarize the students of the 3rd and 4th year with the variations of French in the French-speaking areas, and more specifically from a diatopic point of view (space), but with also some diastratic variations (according to the social groups) and diaphasic ones (according to the communication situations) ;
b) To get the students familiar with the oral corpuses, their components and uses.

Main themes

The course describes the variations of French in the different French-speaking areas, whether as an endogenous language (Wallonia, Switzerland, Québec, etc.) or as an imported language (Black Africa, Louisiana, Oceania, etc). The approach, mainly based on lexical and phonetic/phonological data, is integrated in the historical, cultural and social context of each studied era.

Content and teaching methods

The course is based on a lot of documentation coming from different French-speaking areas ( Belgium, Canada, Africa,etc) and is either written or oral and visual. Part of this documentation, coming from the database VALIBEL, will allow us to get an introduction on the computer processing of linguistic data.

Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)

Prerequisite : an introductory course on general linguistics.

Evaluation : The assessment is mainly based on a personal essay, in which the student proves she/he can go deeper into the study of the linguistic variation by explaining a concrete example.

Other credits in programs