Social and Stylistic Variation in Spoken French: A Comparative Approach by Nigel Armstrong (review)

Abstract

956 Reviews 'je me sens aussi a l'aise [. . .] qu'un scaphandrier sur un pur sang', I would supply the snappier Scouse 'as comfortable as a cow on a bike'. Foley rightly mocks Dylan Thomas and his probably hypocritical and apocryphal statement that 'comparing one thing with another is like comparing Milton to Stilton'. His dictionary is a splendidly researched, thought-out, and organized work of linguistic passion, of whose author we could not say: 'tu divagues comme une ablette etourdie'. (Jules Renard). I hope this book will not be 'as popular as a fart in a space-suit' (Billy Connolly). It fills in plenteously the large gaps left by standard dictionaries. University of Reading Walter Redfern Social and Stylistic Variation in Spoken French: A Comparative Approach. By Nigel Armstrong. (Impact: Studies in Language and Society, 8) Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 2001. x + 278pp. ?88.49. As the first real synthesis of work undertaken in France within the 'Labovian' or quantitative paradigm normally associated with English-speaking urban studies, this book is timely and welcome. Nigel Armstrong's volume is 'comparative' in two senses. Firstly, it draws on material from a number of sources, including the author's own published work. But the book's principal interest lies in its use of French data, at successive levels of linguistic analysis, to cast doubt on putative sociolinguistic 'universals', largely drawn from studies of English. Fairly recent assimilation to the national language has gone hand in hand in France with a uniquely normative approach to its teaching. Therefore, Armstrong argues, apart from a very clear north-south divide, distinct regional or urban accents simply have not yet had time to develop, in contrast to the UK (and, arguably, Francophone Belgium). So while it is often claimed that French speakers are sensitive to regional but not social class features, data from evaluative tests conducted in Rennes and Nancy in fact suggest rather the reverse. Another axiom of sociolinguistic research, namely that intraspeaker variation (style-shifting by individuals) is generally less marked than interspeaker variation (speech differences between social groups), is similarly challenged in Chapter 3: French seems extraordinarily rich in anomalous 'hyperstyle' variables, for which precisely the opposite pattern obtains. Data from interrogative and negative constructions, reviewed in Chapter 4, also defy AngloSaxon expectations, by demonstrating grammatical variation of a 'quantitative' kind normally associated with phonology (that is, social groups use the same variants to differing degrees), rather than the 'polar' pattern, in which groups show nearcategorical use of a single variant, which is familiar from English studies. Armstrong concludes from these chapters that 'French goes against the intuitive notion that pronunciation will tend to be more resistant to standardisation than grammar'. An anomaly of a differentkind is optional liaison (the presence or absence of a linking consonant in, for example, les trains-(z)-arrivent\ which is unusual in that it shows increased rather than reduced variability as expected among higher social groups: this variable is treated separately in Chapter 5. Finally, in Chapter 6 Armstrong offers some tentative conclusions regarding lexical variation?the domain generally seen as least amenable to the Labovian approach?noting that patterns of correlation with extralinguistic (e.g. age, sex, class) and stylistic factors seem much sharper than those seen in phonology. Armstrong is acutely aware of the difficulties here, however, and the chapter closes with some valuable comments on sociolinguistic methodology. The style of this work is admirably clear and accessible throughout, and focused introductions and summaries are provided for each chapter. While this is one habit one would not wish to discourage, the author can at times be criticized for oversummarizing : 2.5-2.9 are all 'summary and discussion' sections of sorts and to some MLR, 97.4, 2002 957 extent overlap; likewise, sections 7.2-7.5 ofthe final chapter ('Summary and Conclusion ') offerfurther reflections on points already summarized in Chapters 2-6. The occasional want of structural economy, however, in no way lessens the importance of this work, which French linguistics has been needing for some time. It will soon become a standard in its field, and interest specialists and undergraduates alike. University of Kent David Hornsby Fictions of Identity in Medieval...