Vous or tu? Native and non-native speakers of French on a sociolinguistic tightrope
-
Jean-Marc Dewaele
Abstract
Sociolinguistic rules governing choice of pronouns of address are notoriously difficult in French, despite the fact that the number of variants is rather limited: the more formal vous versus the more informal tu. Children with French as L1 learn to use pronouns of address appropriately as part of their socialization process. The learning curve is much steeper for instructed learners of French and many never reach the summit. The present contribution focuses on the effects of situational and sociobiographical variables on the self-reported and actual use of pronouns of address in native and non-native French. Data on self-reported pronoun use in different situations were collected from 125 participants through a written questionnaire. A corpus of conversations between native (n = 9) and non-native (n = 52) speakers of French provided data on the actual use of address pronouns.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Preface
- Variation in the group and the individual: Evidence from second language acquisition
- On the interactional effect of linguistic constraints on interlanguage variation: The case of past time marking
- The relationship between the group and the individual and the acquisition of native speaker variation patterns: A preliminary study
- Acquisition of the internal and external constraints of variable schwa deletion by French immersion students
- Phonetic norm versus usage in advanced French as a second language
- Vous or tu? Native and non-native speakers of French on a sociolinguistic tightrope
- External reviewers
- Index of articles in Volume 42 (2004)
Articles in the same Issue
- Preface
- Variation in the group and the individual: Evidence from second language acquisition
- On the interactional effect of linguistic constraints on interlanguage variation: The case of past time marking
- The relationship between the group and the individual and the acquisition of native speaker variation patterns: A preliminary study
- Acquisition of the internal and external constraints of variable schwa deletion by French immersion students
- Phonetic norm versus usage in advanced French as a second language
- Vous or tu? Native and non-native speakers of French on a sociolinguistic tightrope
- External reviewers
- Index of articles in Volume 42 (2004)
