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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1404

Part of Session 100: Montreal, a francophone, anglophone and multilingual city (Other abstracts in this session)

Do Quebeckers identify Montreal French as a distinct variety? Results of an exploratory perceptual analysis

Authors: Remysen, Wim
Submitted by: Remysen, Wim (Université de Sherbrooke, Canada)

This paper presents some results of a perceptual study carried out to evaluate the ability of French-speaking Quebeckers to identify the geographical origin of Montreal French-speaking natives. Because of its predominant position as the socioeconomic centre of Quebec, Montreal plays an important role in the sociolinguistic dynamics of the province as a whole (e.g. Friesner [2010] points out that changes in Quebec French often tend to originate in the metropolitan area). It thus can logically be assumed that such an influence entails some kind of identification, on the part of Francophone Quebeckers, of Montreal French as a distinct variety. At present, we have yet few empirical data available to confirm such hypothesis and the subject raises some questions.

The analysis presented here is part of a variationist study intended to analyze the use of nasal vowels in Montreal French, more specifically the phoneme /AN/. Most of the utterances presented in the listening test we used therefore contain this nasal vowel. Rather than being a back vowel [ɑ̃], as is the case in Hexagonal French, /AN/ is commonly fronted in colloquial Quebec French and pronounced [ã], especially in open stressed syllables. It is even, in some cases, raised to [æ̃] or even [ɛ̃] (Ostiguy and Tousignant 2008). The phoneme /AN/ has curiously been often neglected in recent sociophonetic work (e.g. Reinke 2005) because it is considered to be of few interest from a sociolinguistic point of view. Yet even though the fronted variant is usually not evaluated negatively by Quebeckers (Tremblay 1990), some speakers tend to avoid it in more formal speech styles (Ostiguy & Tousignant 2008; Émond 2005). We can thus assume that it can convey particular social values.

The perception test we designed uses data from sociolinguistic interviews we recently conducted in the city. In total, 72 utterances produced by 6 female speakers were presented to 50 students aged between 20 and 27 coming from different regions in the centre and the south-west of Quebec (especially from the areas of Montreal, Sherbrooke and Drummondville). Most of them succeeded, in various degrees at least, to recognize some of the utterances as being produced by Montreal-based speakers. It tends to indicate that some elements used in the perception test function as dialect markers and that the use of nasal vowels could contribute to Montreal as a distinct speech community.

References:

Émond, C. (2005). L’analyse de l’antériorisation de la voyelle an chez des présentateurs de nouvelles télévisées. In: J. Bérubé, K. Gauvin and W. Remysen (eds), Actes des 18^es Journées de lingustique. Québec: Ciral. 45-55.

Friesner, M. (2010). Une prononciation “tsipéquement” québécoise? La diffusion de deux aspects stéréotypés du français canadien. Revue canadienne de linguistique 55(1). 27-53.

Ostiguy, L. and C. Tousignant (2008). Les prononciations du français québécois : normes et usages. Montréal: Guérin.

Reinke, K. (2005). La langue à la télévision québécoise : aspects sociophonétiques. Québec: Office de la langue française.

Tremblay, L. (1990). Attitudes linguistiques et perception sociale de variables phonétiques. Revue québécoise de linguistique théorique et appliquée 9(3). 197-222.