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Paris: a sociolinguistic comparative perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2018

DAVID BRITAIN*
Affiliation:
University of Bern
*
Address for correspondence: e-mail: britain@ens.unibe.ch

Abstract

This article assesses the sociolinguistic impact and importance of the other articles in this special issue on Paris, considering three main themes that are evoked. First, the contribution of the articles here to the development of work on language variation and change on Hexagonal French within the variationist paradigm. Second, I address what I see as the important contribution made to our understanding of the ‘city’ as a sociolinguistic site. Finally, I focus on ethnicity as a social construct in recent variationist work in cities and consider what the articles here, and in comparison with cities elsewhere, add to our understanding of the impact of immigration on local manifestations of language variability. In each case, I attempt to show how these articles foreground or even problematize these three issues, and provide a prospectus for further research that can address unresolved questions.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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