Das Französische als Pinguin unter den Diglossien? : Eine empirische Untersuchung lexikalischer Alltagsdubletten vor dem Hintergrund der Diglossie-Hypothese (Volume 21)

Tanja Prohl

• Publisher: Bamberg University Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9783863097011
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The analysis of spoken and written French has a long tradition in Romance linguistics. Depending on the temporal and regional background of the authors, it can be observed that the two varieties are described differently, often in comparison to further linguistic registers. This paper argues that the paradigm of diglossia is well suited to represent the relationship between conceptually spoken and conceptually written French. The classification is based on a prototypical understanding of categories inspired by cognitive linguistics, which corresponds better to the process of human categorization than a dichotomous organization. The theoretical argumentation is supported by an empirical analysis on lexicology, as there are already numerous studies on grammatical phenomena. By means of a discourse analysis based on a YouTube corpus, it is shown that contemporary French is characterized by the regular use of an (spoken unmarked) everyday vocabulary, which - in combination with grammatical and phonetic phenomena - is constitutive for the français parlé. The totality of the conceptually spoken characteristics in contrast to the conceptually written ones gives rise to the diglossic character of contemporary French, which lacks of a 'neutral' register. Instead, the appearance of high-frequency indicator elements quickly assigns any kind of communication to one of the two 'main' registers. The totality of the conceptually spoken characteristics in contrast to the conceptually written ones gives rise to the diglossic character of contemporary French, which lacks of a 'neutral' register. Instead, the appearance of high-frequency indicator elements quickly assigns any kind of communication to one of the two 'main' registers. The totality of the conceptually spoken characteristics in contrast to the conceptually written ones gives rise to the diglossic character of contemporary French, which lacks of a 'neutral' register. Instead, the appearance of high-frequency indicator elements quickly assigns any kind of communication to one of the two 'main' registers.