Article published in:
Ethnic Styles of Speaking in European Metropolitan AreasEdited by Friederike Kern and Margret Selting
[Studies in Language Variation 8] 2011
► pp. 75–99
Prosodic style-shifting in preadolescent peer-group interactions in a working-class suburb of Paris
Zsuzsanna Fagyal | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Christopher M. Stewart | University of Texas at Arlington
In this chapter, we study the variable use of phrase-final intonation contours
in French by male adolescents recorded in guided interviews in a multi-ethnic
working-class suburb of Paris. We show that speakers use pragmatically neutral rising or
falling intonation when listing target words depicted on images shown by a fieldworker,
but resort to a characteristic rising-falling intonation attributed to a working-class
youth vernacular in contact with immigrant languages when negotiating the interpretation
of pictures or competing for the floor with their friends listening to the interview.
These instances of intra-speaker prosodic variation are analyzed as style-shifting
(Bell 1984, 2001) where speakers draw on different prosodic resources to signal change
in footing, i.e. their orientation to their own and others’ role in the interaction
(Goffman 1981) or the propositional content of utterances put forward by other participants in the conversational exchange. It is argued that phrase-final rising-falling intonation, typical in certain types of imperative in French, has a much broader pragmatic meaning in working-class youth vernacular where it seems to function as a micro-level style feature indexing common ground and in-group affiliation with members of the adolescent peer group.
Published online: 22 December 2011
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.8.04fag
https://doi.org/10.1075/silv.8.04fag
Cited by
Cited by other publications
Boula de Mareüil, Philippe, Albert Rilliard, Iryna Lehka-Lemarchand, Paolo Mairano & Jean-Pierre Lai
FAGYAL, ZSUZSANNA & EIVIND TORGERSEN
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 december 2020. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.