Variétés, variations et formes du français ed. by Olivier Bertrand, Isabelle Schaffner

Abstract

THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 87, No. 2, December 2013 Printed in U.S.A. Linguistics edited by Stacey Katz Bourns 197 Bertrand, Olivier, et Isabelle Schaffner, éd. Variétés, variations et formes du français. Palaiseau: École Polytechnique, 2011. ISBN 978-2-7302-1586-2. Pp. 466. 29,50 a. Despite the abundance of research conducted over the past few decades on the establishment of a pedagogical norm, the question of how to address linguistic variation in the French language classroom remains an important and contentious topic among linguists and teachers. How many of us remember the first time we went to France and realized that nobody actually spoke the way our textbooks had prepared us to communicate? Although we could write adequately, we had little or no conception of the differences between spoken and written French, or between informal and formal language. If we went to a country other than France, the regionalisms that we heard were often baffling. As the fields of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics have grown, so have inquiries into the best ways to address the issue of teaching linguistic variation. Addressed mostly to scholars and français comme langue étrangère (FLE) instructors and composed of articles by authors mainly affiliated with French universities , this volume seeks to explore the many facets of French linguistic variation and proposes some resources for integrating variation into the FLE classroom. The volume is divided into eight sections, each containing three or four articles. The first seven sections are entitled: Quels français de référence?, Variation entre l’oral et l’écrit, Variations et linguistique, Orthographe et variations grammaticales, Approches sociologique et éducative, Variations francophones et idiomatiques, and Dictionnaires en question. Most of the articles include related pedagogical suggestions. The last section, Outils et ressources, is the most relevant to French teachers who wish to integrate linguistic variation into their curriculum. The authors provide examples of DVDs, corpora, and websites containing spoken French (authentic and pedagogically created); in addition, they discuss methods for implementing these materials into the classroom and point out flaws in some of the activities that accompany these resources. The articles address numerous questions, such as the ultimate goal of these pedagogical interventions. Should these materials be used primarily to hone students’ listening comprehension skills? Or, should the main purpose be for students to work as researchers to develop a more sophisticated understanding of linguistic variation? As studies have shown over the years, native speakers expect foreign students to learn to speak “proper” French, and they do not react well to the integration of “nonstandard ” structures or vocabulary when used by those who have not already achieved a certain level of mastery of the language. The questions then are: how much variation should students learn? To what extent? For what purpose? And at what point in their training? The goals of programs and the needs of students should be paramount in making these decisions, but it is also important for teachers themselves to be aware of linguistic variation and to know where to find innovative pedagogical materials. This volume serves as a useful resource for considering these issues and serves its intended readership well. Harvard University (MA) Stacey Katz Bourns Enderle-Ristori, Michaela. Traduire l’exil: Das Exil Übersetzen. Tours: PU François-Rabelais, 2011. ISBN 978-2-87706-642-6. Pp. 227. 18 a. Bringing together historians and literary critics, this volume addresses the political relationship between exile and translation in a specific geographical space—the cultural transfer from Germany to France—and at a particular historical moment, the years 1933 to 1945. Four essays look at the challenges Jewish German-language writers experienced in French exile and in French translation. Deborah Viëtor-Engländer focuses on Alfred Kerr, who at 65 was forced to flee with his young family to France. Once in exile, the German theater critic was not only cut off from his audiences but also from the language in which he wrote. Thus, Viëtor-Engländer argues, Kerr not only lost his characteristic style but also his social critique. Carl Einstein, as Marianne Kröger explains, had valuable French connections to the art scene—Picasso, Braque...