Paul Wald & François Leimdorfer (eds.), Parler en ville, parler de la ville: Essais sur les registres urbains

Abstract

Paul Wald & François Leimdorfer (eds.), Parler en ville, parler de la ville: Essais sur les registres urbains. Paris: Editions UNESCO and Editions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, 2004. Pp. 276. Hb 27,00 €.

As indicated in the title – which can be translated as Speaking in the city, speaking of the city: Essays on urban registers – this multi-authored French-language collection of essays deals with the interaction of speech and the urban environment. It is the third volume in a recently created French series that aims at understanding the city through the analysis of urban discourse in its historical and sociocultural context. This particular book, co-edited by Paul Wald and François Leimdorfer, highlights the back-and-forth process between the city and speech: on the one hand, the urban environment is constitutive of certain “ways of speaking,” and on the other hand, language plays a role in constructing an image of the city. Both facets of the process are well illustrated in the essays assembled here, which are informed by various disciplines: linguistics, history, anthropology, and sociology.