«Variantes palatalisées et affriquées en français parlé hexagonal: quel statut sociolinguistique pour quel destin?»

Recently, several surveys carried out in various urban contexts in France (La Courneuve, Fontenay-sous- Bois, Marseille), with different methodologies, have shown that a tendency to produce plosive dental (t, d) (and also velar (k, g)) consonants as palatalised can be observed in spoken hexagonal French (see, among others, Jamin, 2005; Jamin, Trimaille & Gasquet-Cyrus, 2006). These surveys have shed some light on the social, geographic and stylistic distribution of these affricated variants, revealing that the non standard variant has a supra local extension and is often
a feature used by teenagers linked to street culture. Other research has tried to describe the perception and the social categorization associated to the palatalised variants, showing the apparent
lack of identification and stigmatisation (Vernet & Trimaille, 2007). Thus, the primary aim of this paper is to summarize results of these studies. However, most of the studies afore-mentioned have essentially observed palatalised pronunciations among working-class peer groups from immigration backgrounds. In order to test the hypothesis that palatalised variants are not only used within these working-class groups but also outside these groups in the mainstream, we collected a corpus based on the speech of speakers from various geographic and social origins (the corpus is also controlled for stylistic variation). Showing evidence of the presence of the non-standard variant amongst speakers from very different backgrounds, the second objective of our work is therefore to offer interpretations which could
explain the use of the palatalised variants in such a wide range of speakers of contemporary French. In order to propose answers to that question, and also to discuss the spread of the non standard
variant, we will finally try to link micro and macro levels, examining identity’s features of several informants.