FR23020 - THE INVENTION OF FRENCH

Module Identifier

FR23020

Module Title

THE INVENTION OF FRENCH

Academic Year

2006/2007

Co-ordinator

Professor David A Trotter

Semester

Semester 1

Course delivery

Lecture

10 Hours.

Seminars / Tutorials

10 Hours.

Assessment

Assessment Type	Assessment Length/Details	Proportion
Semester Assessment	Course Work: Two coursework assignments (c.2,500 words each)	100%
Supplementary Assessment	Resit will be by resubmission of assessed work

Learning outcomes

On completion of this module, students should be able to

understand how one dialect amongst several becomes a language
read critically conventional histories of French
see how and why ideological presuppositions have influenced those histories
understand the principal tenets of variationist linguistics

Brief description

A history of French from a variationist perspective, deliberately stressing the variety which has always existed in reality, and identifying the ways in which diversity has been stifled in the life of the language, and has been camouflaged in histories of French.

Reading Lists

Books
** Recommended Background
Cerquiglini, Bernard (1993) La naissance du francais Paris University Press
Green, John, & Ayres-Bennett, Wendy (eds) Variation and change in French: essays presented to Rebecca Posner on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday
Lodge, R (1993) French: From Dialect to Standard Routledge
Parry, M M, Davies, W V, and Temple, R A M (eds) (1994) The changing voices of Europe: social and political change and their linguistic repercussions, past, present and future University of Wales Press/MHRA
Posner, Rebecca (1997) Linguistic Change in French Oxford University Press

Notes

This module is at CQFW Level 5