Stylistic and discursive functions of French negative particlenein an educational context

Abstract

This study examines use/non‐use of negative particleneby students and teachers in the high schools of four Ontario Francophone communities. The students were recorded in semi‐directed interviews and in the classroom. The teachers recorded themselves in the classroom. In the interviews,neuse is marginal and its non‐use ubiquitous and not influenced by social class, gender or topic formality. Overall, students do not usenesignificantly more in the classroom than in the interviews. These findings do not support the hypothesis in some studies thatneuse is a hyper‐stylistic variant, which hinged on the prescription ofneuse in writing. In the classroom, however, teachers display markedly different levels ofneuse/non‐use according to subject taught, speaker age, and addressee/discourse functions performed. Thus, there is some evidence thatneuse/non‐use is not entirely devoid of stylistic markedness, at least for teachers in the formal setting of the classroom. Finally, an examination ofneuse/non‐use co‐occurring with two phonological variants of post‐verbal negatorplusreveals findings that are germane to the debate concerning the possibility of analysing stylistic variation in spoken French as a form of diglossic code‐switching.

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