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.

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.

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.

Manuel Machado is known as one of the most innovative Spanish modernist poets of the twentieth century. Despite his recognition as a literary figure in Spain, the mimetic descriptions in Machado's poetics are interpreted as mere innovations in Spanish poetry. Those mimetic descriptions are examples of ekphrasis in Spanish literature. Ekphrasis is both a literary and representational art. The mimetic dimension in Machado's poetry is ignored or misinterpreted by the critics of his poetics. This study written in Spanish investigates the use of ekphrasis in terms of Machado's poetic style. An analysis of Manuel Machado's ekphrastic poems will determine: ekphrastic poetry is a representational art; how visual and acoustic aspects of Machado's poems create enargeia; and the manifestation of ekphrasis in Spanish verse. In using Machado's poems, this project will contribute to future explorations of ekphrasis in Spanish literature.