Discourse‐pragmatic features of spoken French: analysis and pedagogical implications

Abstract

My research focuses on selected discourse features of spoken French, especially those typical of present-day youth language. The dissertation has two main parts: 1) Analysis of features typical of spoken language, based on my corpus of recorded data from young people aged 20 to 30, speaking to each other in spontaneous informal conversations. The analysis focuses particularly on features with discourse-pragmatic functions, including discourse markers, general extenders, presentational constructions and dislocated structures. I also address the question of how some of these typically spoken features develop in French youth language and the extent to which they may be considered innovative. 2) Discussion of the role of spoken language in foreign language teaching and learning, based partly on the results of a questionnaire for university learners of French as a foreign language aimed at investigating their knowledge of spoken features. This section addresses the question of whether features of spoken language generally, and of youth language in particular, are available to foreign learners.