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The sociolinguistic gender pattern in French: a comparison of two linguistic levels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

Nigel Armstrong
Nigel Armstrong
Affiliation:
Department of French, School of Modern Languages, University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, e-mail: n.r.armstrong@ncl.ac.uk
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Abstract

In this article I examine different rates of development, at the linguistic levels of variable pronunciation and discourse, of a sample of French girls aged 11–12. These girls, in contrast to their older counterparts, show variable linguistic behaviour on the phonological level that aligns with the well attested pattern of the avoidance by female speakers of vernacular forms: the ‘sociolinguistic gender pattern’. At the same time, in discourse one female speaker shows a manipulation of conversational tone, as evidenced by her behaviour across speech styles, that is comparable to adult competence. I argue that the disjunction between the girls's communicative competence on these two levels is due to the different social functions that variation fulfils on each level: while variable phonology may serve to express a speaker's location in a social-regional nexus that younger speakers have yet to engage with fully, the discourse level expresses more central aspects of a speaker's identity that can plausibly be assumed to develop earlier.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of French Language Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , September 1998 , pp. 139 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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