FREN476

French Language and Societies

This course is an introduction to sociolinguistics, with a focus on French-speaking societies. Throughout the semester, we will discuss basic concepts in sociolinguistics and address main topics in the field, including language variation, language contact and its possible outcomes, standardization, multilingualism, identity questions, and language attitudes and ideologies. This course aims to enable students to analyze, understand and discuss the links between language and society by providing students with the knowledge of sociolinguistic theory, research methods, main concepts and terminology along with developing the relevant application skills. All discussions and work submitted in this course will be in French.

Upon successful completion of this course students will be able to:

• Recognize the challenges of linguistic and sociocultural diversity in the French-speaking world.
• Understand the main concepts and theories in sociolinguistics and apply them to the study of French and multilingual communities.
• Discuss and explain the link between various social factors and language use.
• Conduct their own sociolinguistics research in a French-speaking community.

Language of Instruction: French

Instructor: Dr. Marie-Eve Bouchard

Prerequisite: One of FREN 321, FREN 328, FREN 329 and one of FREN 402, FREN 225.