After providing an historical overview of the French spelling system and orthographic variation, this study analyzes selected internal (i.e., linguistic) factors and one external (i.e., social) factor that can influence the use of diacritics in online French-language chat sessions. From a corpus of synchronous computer-mediated communication, 3,855 tokens of graphemes capable of bearing diacritics were coded with the following scheme: Letter, Diacritic, Grapheme (i.e., Letter and Diacritic combined), Date of Participation, and Age Group of Participant. A multivariate (VARBRUL) analysis determined that Grapheme exerts the most influence on variation.

This study partially replicates and re-explores specific dimensions of a textbook analysis of the presentation and use of specific grammatical elements and sociolinguistic variants in textbooks published in the United States for learners of French. Authenticity is situated as a central construct in the analysis of interrogatives, relative pronouns, and the negative particle ne in selected textbooks and ancillary materials. The findings reveal that little progress has been made over the past twenty years in integrating authentic representations of discourse into French-as-a-foreign-language textbooks.

This study analyzes negative particle variation (i.e., the variable presence or absence of the negative particle ne) in synchronous French chat discourse within a labovian-inspired framework. Selected morphosyntactic, lexical, and phonological constraints are considered. Multivariate analyses performed by GoldVarb 2001 revealed that subject type (i.e., NP, [- overt] subject environment, pronoun) and the phonological environment preceding the position of neregardless of its presence or absenceare determining factors in the variation. In addition, discursive-pragmatic effect was explored in a sub-sample of data. The results indicate that ne is seldom present in verbal negation during explanatory discourse style, yet it is very likely to be retained in ludic, emphatic, and proverbial styles.

This study of the variable use of ne in synchronous electronic French discourse follows the methodological guidelines and the theoretical framework proposed and subsequently elaborated by Labov for analyzing variable features of language. This thesis provides a quantitative variable rule (i.e., VARBRUL) analysis including age as a factor group (i.e., independent variable), thereby making a new contribution to this area of inquiry. The data (50,000 words from the vingtaine 'twentysomething' channel and 50,000 words from the cinquantaine 'fiftysomething' channel) are a subset of 100,000 words from a corpus of one million words collected in 2008 by the thesis director from the public chat server EuropNet. This study aims to answer the following overarching question: To what extent does age-compared to other factors-influence the variable use of ne in verbal negation in synchronous electronic French discourse? In order to answer this question, and possibly others, the VARBRUL analysis will include age, subject (e.g., noun vs. pronoun), type of second negative particle (e.g., pas 'not', jamais 'never', personne 'no one'/'nobody', and so forth), as well as verbal mood/tense.

This thesis is an examination of the printed media in France (1955-1963), as represented by two mainstream newspapers: Le Monde (left-centrist) and Le Figaro (right-centrist). Using these newspapers, as well as Gallup polls recorded at the time, this study explores correlations of what was reported in newspapers and how French public opinion evolved during the course of the war. These two major sources of information are shown to have given contradictory information, thus accounting for some of the paradoxes found in public opinion polls. Specifically, the paradoxes analyzed in the study concern the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) and the Pieds-Noirs (the European population of North Africa).

This study analyzes students' use of the French second-person pronouns tu (T) and vous (V) in small-group (2-3 students) inter-learner online chat sessions. The influence of internal linguistic factors (i.e., turn type and morphosyntactic environment) on learners' appropriate vs. inappropriate use of these pronouns is considered. The study also investigates the influence of Instructional Level on tu-vous use and the extent to which students from different instructional levels provide various types of peer assistance (e.g., lexical, morphosyntactic, and sociolinguistic/pragmatic) . Pronoun use was extremely unstable for learners of all levels, and a Kruskal-Wallis analysis revealed that Instructional Level did not significantly affect appropriate T/V use overall. Instructional Level and Syntax did, however, significantly affect interrogative T/V use, as shown through multivariate analyses. Peer-assisted performance was limited to lexical retrieval. Pedagogical recommendations are presented for teaching and learning second-person pronouns in French.

The late seventeenth century was a crucial era in establishing territorial claims on the North American continent. In order to strengthen France's hold on the Quebec colony, Louis XIV sent 770 women across the Atlantic at royal expense in order to populate New France. Since that time, these women known as the filles du roi, have often been reduced to a footnote in history books, or else mistakenly slandered as women of questionable morals. This work seeks to clearly identify the filles du roi through a study of their socioeconomic status, educational background, and various demographic factors, and compare the living conditions they had in France with those that awaited them in Canada. The aim of this undertaking is to better understand these pioneer women and their reasons for leaving France, as well as to identify the lasting contributions they made to French-Canadian culture and society.

Many critics consider Mariama Bâ as a feminist writer, but the reader of her two novels might wonder what characterizes her work as such. Therefore, the aim of each chapter, in order of appearance, is to analyze first the genres, then the elements of African tradition and Western modernity, the characters of both works and the themes of the novels, with the intention of defining the author's feminism, which takes its source in dichotomies, paradoxes and contradictions. In order to expose the author's point of view on the condition of women, it appears important to situate the diegesis in its context. Also, the study is supported by references on the Senegalese culture, by genres, narrative and feminist theories and by critiques on the work itself.

This exploratory case study aims to develop a set of best practices for integrating online discussion forums into the foreign language curriculum, focusing specifically on a group of learners in an advanced French grammar course at a large, public U.S. university. During a period of two months, 26 participants completed a series of tasks designed to provide three different types of data: 1) exploration and analysis of interactional, linguistic, and social features of Web forum discourse; 2) participation in Web forums; and 3) feedback from students. Since the feedback received from two questionnaires was ultimately the most consistent and reliable type of data collected, this study focuses on students' participation patterns and their perceptions of Web forums as a communication space having the potential to provide opportunities for learning French. Although some students indicated that they would neither consider visiting a French-language Web forum nor actually visit one, in both cases, more than half of the participants who completed these questionnaires indicated that they would both consider visiting a French-language Web forum and might actually visit one. Since encouraging students to use French beyond the classroom and to engage in the lifelong use of French for personal enrichment (following the …

Translation and subtitling has always been a complicated dimension of the motion picture industry for years. The problem of dealing with linguistic elements in films and conveying them to audiences of different languages across the globe encompasses many difficulties regarding forms and structures of other languages. One of the more highly researched topics in French linguistic studies has been the use of address pronouns and a range of aspects related to their use and interpretation. Many studies have been conducted over the last sixty years in order to determine and understand these variables. An analysis of several of these studies reveals the many complexities involved in second-person pronoun choice in the French language and the development of the idea of pronoun choice as an act of social identity. The focus of this study is to provide an analysis of the use of formal and informal address pronoun use in the French subtitling and dubbing of an American film, Maid in Manhattan, in order to add, on a broader level, a way to differentially examine perceived norms in a variety of contexts within this medium.

Four themes dominate Balzae's Pere Goriot: Paris, ambition, money, superman. Paris is described physically, socially and morally all strata of society are cruel and corrupt. The contrast between poverty and luxury arouses the ambition of young provincial Rastignae. While his ambition is mainly social, most of the characters of the novel have financial ambitions; money is their only valued Vautrin would kill and Goriot's daughters would reduce their father to pauperism for profit. Beth Vautrin and Goriot are presented as supermen, but while the former is a strong-willed ruthless ex-convict, the latter is a monomaniac, utterly blinded by paternal love. The four themes reflect contemporary society as well as Ralzac's own life and character. They recur throughout the Comdie Humalne but are skilfully condensed in Le Pere Goriot.

This study of the graphic field in notes on space, undated (log 3) focuses on how the white emptiness of a page plays a structural role in the articulation of dissociated fragments of notes. According to the criteria of three theorists (Genette, Lapacherie, Baetens), the distinction between non-linear and tabular proves to be non-exclusive in this particular work. Ostensibly, this non-figurative writing instigates interactive contemplation and lends itself to multiple entries, like an object one contemplates from every possible visual perspective without ever constructing a representation or image. The poetic form that du Bouchet explores renders perceptible the latent materiality of all text.