Le français au contact d’autres langues par Françoise Gadet, Ralph Ludwig (review)

aussi cinq articles qui examinent les questions métalinguistiques des espaces et des analyses des discours à travers les espaces francophones en Acadie, en Louisiane et en Belgique mais aussi dans d’autres espaces linguistiques comme le Mexique. Enfin, telle une fenêtre ouverte sur l’avenir de la sociolinguistique contemporaine, la grande variété des espaces et des pratiques linguistiques qui constituent l’objet d’analyse des neufs articles de la troisième partie témoigne de la vitalité, de la créativité et de l’ouverture de la discipline sur d’autres champs d’études.Ainsi, les analyses de la langue à travers les collaborations interdisciplinaires entre, par exemple, les lexicolinguistes et les sociographes peuvent entre autres mener à l’émergence de la sociolexicologie. Les nouvelles technologies permettent désormais aux experts de compiler des atlas linguistiques qui rendent compte de manière plus précise de la complexité des diglossies. Globalement, ce volume propose un état des lieux de la recherche actuelle en sociolinguistique, de l’Europe à l’Amérique du Nord en passant par le Sénégal ou l’Inde, ou dans des espaces non francophones: la langue koalib au Soudan ou le créole capverdien santiagais. Il inclut aussi des articles dédiés à certains espaces considérés comme des non-lieux (Augé, 1992) tels les camps de concentration ou les camps nomades de Roms en Italie. University of Massachusetts, Lowell Carole Salmon Gadet, Françoise, et Ralph Ludwig. Le français au contact d’autres langues. Paris: Ophrys, 2015. ISBN 978-2-7080-1362-9. Pp. 134. 18 a. Departing from the idea that languages are continually and unavoidably in contact, this book examines various past and present contact situations of French, a language with worldwide distribution and a large population of second-language speakers. Through a series of thematic case studies, it establishes the diverse oral and written effects of such contact on different facets of the language, most notably the lexicon, grammar, and phonology. The analysis takes a multilevel approach, first guiding the reader through the historical stages leading up to the standardized and present-day European forms, then examining several of its diasporic contexts in North America and Africa, involving contact with Indo- and non Indo-European languages. The discussion culminates with a treatment of French in intense, prolonged contact with indigenous languages, the outcome of which has been diglossia, in the case of Haiti, and full-scale creolization, in the case of Guadeloupe and Martinique. Adopting an ecological approach to language contact, the authors frequently remind their readers that the phenomenon is more than just linguistic structures in contact. For a comprehensive understanding, analyses must also take into consideration the social, historical, economic, and attitudinal parameters of both the speaker and the borrowing community . Each chapter is structured with the educator in mind—prose explanations with interspersed example sets, followed by theoretical footnotes for situating the 258 FRENCH REVIEW 90.1 Reviews 259 details of the discussion at hand in the larger body of language contact literature.A list of primary sources for exemplified data follows, with two flavors of bibliography (fundamental and detailed) to accommodate readers of different interests and abilities. Linguists will delight in the added bonus of an online corpus, which features a clickable map, playable audio samples, and accompanying transcripts for all examples collected during the completion of the book. In a conservative linguistic landscape where variation from normative European French is often construed as deviant or, at best, categorized grossly under a single heading of “other,”this text is a thorough and much needed compilation of the nature of linguistic variation among world Frenches. It not only fills a gap in the literature on the evolution of the French language, but, thanks to its concise historical backdrops, reviews of theoretical concepts and illustrative example sets, also assumes its own position in the larger body of literature that serves as introductory texts for contact linguistics. As such, its value for both linguists and French language pedagogues is considerable. On the one hand, it is the ideal format for linguistic researchers to begin their inquiry on contact studies involving the French language. On the other hand, its stand...