Acquisition of Sociolinguistic Variants by French Immersion Students: The Case of Restrictive Expressions, and More

Abstract

This article investigates the learning of sociostylistic variation by students in French immersion programs in Ontario. It is primarily focused on their learning of the 4 expressions of restriction, ne . . . que, seulement, rien que, and juste, all meaning ‘only.’ Compared with Canadian Francophones, we found the students’ range of variants to be narrower. They used only 2 variants, seulement and juste. Also, the frequency of their use of these variants was affected by a number of extralinguistic and linguistic parameters (e.g., amount of extracurricular exposure to native Canadian French usage, languages spoken at home, social background and gender, and syntactic context). We discuss our findings in the broader context of research on the learning of linguistic variation by: (a) Canadian learners of French as a second language (FSL), including our own previous research on these same students; and (b) second language (L2) learners of other languages. Finally, we touch on the sociopolitical and pedagogical implications of our findings.