Sociolinguistic factors and the pragmaticalization of bon in contemporary spoken French

Abstract

The multifunctional nature of discourse-marking bon (well) is well-attested in the literature (Auchlin, 1981; Winther, 1985, Hansen, 1998a and b, Jayez, 2004). Its adverbial and interjective uses can, according to Hansen (1998a), be related to its canonical adjectival use (as in ‘ C’est bon ’ ‘It’s good’), its discourse-marking and hedging uses being more peripheral extensions of this.Beeching (2007c) charts the remarkable increase in rates of bon usage in both real and apparent time from 1968–2002. The present paper establishes the extent to which bon is pragmaticalizing by investigating its sociosituational variation and distributional frequency in the Corpus de Référence du Français Parlé . The rise in frequency of the compound expressions mais bon and parce que bon suggests a shift towards increased intersubjectivity.

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