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Article: Colloquial vocabulary and politeness in French.
- Article from:
- The Modern Language Review
- Article date:
- April 1, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Modern Humanities Research Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In French, as in other languages, the powerful role played by vocabulary in marking shifts between formal and informal style, and in signalling the social identities of speakers, is well known. Public awareness of the opposition between 'standard' and 'non-standard' in the French lexicon is particularly strong: changing fashions in colloquial vocabulary (conventionally labelled fam., pop., vulg., arg. in the general dictionaries) attract a large amount of comment, from prescriptive guardians of usage, who see them as signs of an impending linguistic Apocalypse, to journalists anxious to demonstrate the depth of their awareness of current social trends; (1) new dictionaries ...