Forms of address choices among Finnish and French university students and French teachers

Abstract

This study examines addressing choices by combining university students' and teachers’ perspectives, concentrating on the French pronominal address forms (tu, T and vous, V). Our data consist of a triangulation of an oral discourse completion task (ODCT), retrospective interviews, and focus group discussions among informants consisting of L2 speakers of French and L1 speakers of Finnish and French. In our analysis, we examined the horizontal and vertical dimensions of address forms on production data and relational work on metapragmatic data. Student data showed that advanced L2 speakers of French used address forms in a more L1-like manner than beginner and intermediate L2 speakers, although all L2-speaking groups used the T forms less often compared to speakers of L1 French. Teacher data revealed that address choices were subject to a discursive dispute.