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This volume provides the first comprehensive reference work in English on the French language in all its facets. It offers a wide-ranging approach to the rich, varied, and exciting research across multiple subfields, with each chapter presenting not only the state of the art but also cutting-edge research.
List of contents
- French and its varieties: Disciplinary perspectives and new horizons
- Part I. Structures of French
- 1: Elisabeth Delais-Roussarie: Phonetics, phonology, and orthography
- 2: Mairi McLaughlin: Morphology and syntax
- 3: Richard Huyghe and Dominique Legallois: Semantics and pragmatics
- Part II. History of French
- 4: Philippe Caron: External history of French
- 5: Wendy Ayres-Bennett: Language policy and planning
- 6: Olivia Walsh and Douglas Kibbee: Metalinguistic texts
- 7: Thomas Rainsford: Historical phonetics, phonology, and orthography
- 8: Sophie Prévost: Historical morphology and syntax
- 9: Sabine Lehmann: Historical semantics and pragmatics
- Part III. Axes of variation
- 10: Nigel Armstrong: Age, gender, and social class
- 11: Jenelle Thomas: Register, genre, text type
- 12: Janice Carruthers: Spoken French
- 13: Rachel Panckhurst, Louise-Amélie Cougnon, and Cédrick Fairon: French digital discourse
- Part IV. French around the world
- 14: Mathieu Avanzi: Regional variation in the French of France
- 15: André Thibault: Francophonie
- 16: Isabelle Racine: French in Europe
- 17: Barbara E. Bullock and Randall Gess: French in North America
- 18: Béatrice Akissi Boutin and Augustin Emmanuel Ebongue: French in Africa
- Part V. French in contact with other languages
- 19: Maya Angela Eipe Smith: Multilingualism
- 20: Georg Kremnitz and Fañch Broudic: French and the languages of France
- 21: Nicolas Froeliger and Rudy Loock: Translation and interpreting
- 22: Thomas A. Klingler: Creoles
- Part VI. Second language acquisition
- 23: Richard Kern: Where, when, and how French is learned
- 24: Sylvain Detey: Acquiring phonetics and phonology
- 25: Dalila Ayoun: Acquiring morphology and syntax
- 26: Henry Tyne and Martin Howard: Acquiring lexical, sociolinguistic, and pragmatic competence
- Part VII. French in literature, culture, arts, and the media
- 27: Sophie Marnette: French language and literature in the Middle Ages
- 28: Gilles Siouffi: Early Modern French language and literature
- 29: Laurence Rosier: Contemporary French language and literature
- 30: Michaël Abecassis: French language and cinema
- 31: Claire Lesacher: French language and vocal music
- 32: Marcel Burger: French and the media
About the author
Wendy Ayres-Bennett is Emerita Professor of French Philology and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. She has published widely on the history of French, sociohistorical linguistics, and the history of linguistic thought, and, more recently, on language standardization and language policy and planning. She was Principal Investigator (2016-2021) on the AHRC-funded multi-disciplinary research project, Multilingualism: Empowering Individuals, Transforming Societies, which promoted the value of languages for key issues of our time and explored the benefits of language learning for individuals and societies. An AHRC-funded follow-on project Promoting Language Policy provided research-based evidence for moving languages higher up the political agenda.
Mairi McLaughlin is Professor in the Department of French and an Affiliated Member of the Departments of Linguistics and Italian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She specializes in French/Romance Linguistics and in Translation Studies. She has published extensively on language contact in French and Romance, on the language of the media, and on journalistic and literary translation. She has held visiting positions at Balliol College, Oxford and at Paris VIII. Her research has been funded by the UC Humanities Research Institute, the France Berkeley Fund, the Hellman Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation.
Summary
This volume provides the first comprehensive reference work in English on the French language in all its facets. It offers a wide-ranging approach to the rich, varied, and exciting research across multiple subfields, with seven broad thematic sections covering the structures of French; the history of French; axes of variation; French around the world; French in contact with other languages; second language acquisition; and French in literature, culture, arts, and the media. Each chapter presents the state of the art and directs readers to canonical studies and essential works, while also exploring cutting-edge research and outlining future directions. The Oxford Handbook of the French Language serves both as a reference work for people who are curious to know more about the French language and as a starting point for those carrying out new research on the language and its many varieties. It will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students as well as established scholars, whether they are specialists in French linguistics or researchers in a related field looking to learn more about the language. The diversity of frameworks, approaches, and scholars in the volume demonstrates above all the variety, vitality, and vibrancy of work on the French language today.
