Uniquely among the global languages, French is assumed to have a monocentric pronunciation norm, based on the usage of Paris. In the opening chapter of this volume, Marc Chalier challenges this perception and asks whether endogenous norms have emerged outside France. After setting out the normative background in Chapter 2 and presenting his methodology in Chapter 3, the author addresses this question by comparing Paris with two peripheral francophone zones (French-speaking Switzerland and Quebec) from three perspectives, examined in Chapters 4 to 6. The first of these (‘Représentations et attitudes’) reports questionnaire responses, from a representative non-specialist panel in each geographical area, to questions relating to perceptions of ‘correct’ French pronunciation. For Parisian informants, the norm is viewed in centre–periphery terms within France, with Paris, then Tours, and finally a general ‘Nord de la France’ seen as a model. Away from Paris, Canadian respondents showed greater acceptance of an endocentric norm than their Swiss counterparts. All three panels identified broadcast news presenters as representatives of the spoken norm, and it is to these that the author turns in Chapter 5 (‘Productions’). Twenty radio or television journalists in each site were asked to read aloud the stimulus text from the Phonologie du français contemporain project and a separate word list, their production then being subjected to phonetic analysis with respect to a number of locally variable vowel oppositions. Results from Paris presented rather a mixed picture. Here, traditional normative oppositions such as /a/–/α/, or /ε/–/e/ in open syllables were found to be better maintained in word-list style than in the reading passage, and in some cases appeared to be lexically conditioned, with /ε/–/e/ for example being more consistently realized for the pair épais–épée than for étaient–été. While the Swiss informants showed some adherence to local norms, there was considerable internal variability and evidence of a more general shift towards an exocentric français de référence. Much stronger support for an overt endocentric norm was evident in Quebec, where no fewer than eight of the nine identified local phonological features were found to be regularly produced by Radio Canada news reporters. In Chapter 6 (‘Perceptions’), non-specialist panels were asked to evaluate these recordings, focusing on the ‘correctness’ or otherwise of these same local features, and their suitability for news broadcasting or teaching of French to non-natives. For Paris, something of a disjunction emerged between representation of the norm and actual production: informants — particularly those with high levels of education — positively evaluated maintenance of traditional prescriptive oppositions which were not, in fact, consistently realized. Of the two peripheral francophone communities, Quebec again proved far more ready to embrace the local norm as ‘correct’. The author concludes that French is subject to a ‘tendance bicentrique’ (p. 445), favouring separate European and Canadian pronunciation norms. This volume is an impressive piece of research, and is written with admirable clarity. My one reservation is that its presentation mirrors rather too closely the doctoral thesis on which it is based. A more economical structure might have reduced the length of the volume by about a third, and lent sharper focus to its interesting and important findings.