- Spoken French has diverged from written French in a way which has not happened in English.
- There is also a distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ usage, which is greater in French than it is in British English.
- ‘Register’ is a socio-situational variation i.e. dependant on setting and relationship of interlocutors.
- Cannot simply be reduced to social class, age or text type – though may be linked to all of these.
- There is an accepted check-list of items at the levels of morphology and syntax which indicate register; e.g. presence or absence of ne; method of indicating the interrogative.
- Populaire – interrogative particle –ti
- Familier – no inversion, voice inflexion.
- Courant – est-ce que + subject + verb
- Soutenu – inversion of subject + verb
- Académique/Littéraire – certain other formulae
- What input determines choice of register?
- Context of communication
- Spoken
- Written
- Subdivisions of both categories
- Face to face or distance
- Degree of permanence of medium
- Nature and degree of mechanical intervention
- Utterance intended for individual or large audience?
- Context of situation
- Type of event (formal meeting/family gathering, lecture, seminar, café discussion
- Physical location
- Subject matter
- Social role being fulfilled at time of utterance
- Interlocutors speaker/writer & addresse
- The speaker/writer will take into account the social class, age, sex, regional and (possibly) ethnic affiliations of addressee
- The degree of formality between them – length of acquaintance or intimacy – solidarity (use of tu/vous)
- There may be some overlap between the above.
- Context of communication
- Caput (1975) represents register in both written an spoken on a five point scale (see copy page 32)
- N.B. familier/populaire version is not confined to the spoken language
- For several centuries (esp. from 16th -19th) the written language was regarded as an idealised ‘norm’
- Variants conceptualised as ‘deviation, deficiency, error’
- Written French is marked for number and gender – the same is not true of spoken French
- Leurs livres étaient ouverts
+ + + +
[lœr livr zetɛ uvɛrt]
– + – –
- Register exists independently of socio-economic groups
- Register can be indicated not only by the phonology but also by the level of syntax
- Difficulties of obtaining data for spoken language
- Not easy to cover a range of registers
- Difficult to get unselfconscious recordings in a relaxed or intimate setting
- Large corpora needed to obtain data on levels of syntax
- Difficultly in recording and transcribing oral language
- Paralinguistic phenomena – modified by interaction – presence of interviewer – recording venue etc.
- Interpretation of recording – unconscious modification – quality of recording etc – putting in what researcher expects to hear
- Word boundaries in spoken language not obvious – high percentage of homophones
- Danger of assuming that the speaker has used a deviant form – better to assume the form closest to the norm and note alternative interpretations
- Register use and the vocalic system
- /i,y,u/ remain stable
- Oppositions of mid-vowels /e,ɛ/ /o,ɔ/ /œ,ø,ǝ/ and /a,ɑ/ have not been maintained
- /A/ vowels have undergone as series of changes
- 1945 – study by Martinet – posterior /ɑ/ = educated and soigné speech; drawled posterior /ɑ/ = working class Paris suburban speech
- 1970 & 1979: study by Mettas; generation gap between older speakers in haute bourgeoisie (G1) & bourgeoisie (G2); older speakers keep /a,ɑ/ distinction; younger speakers different. G2 speakers tend to front posterior /ɑ/ – replacing it with velar /a/ to replace anterior /a/.
- Greater use of /e/ or an intermediate sound in places where /ɛ/ is expected
- /A/ vowels have undergone as series of changes
