Publications
Publication details [#48248]
King, Ruth. 2008. Chiac in context: Overview and evaluation of Acadie's Joual. In Meyerhoff, Miriam and Naomi Nagy, eds. Social Lives in Language – Sociolinguistics and multilingual speech communities. Celebrating the work of Gillian Sankoff. (IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society 24). John Benjamins. pp. 137–178.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Annotation
This paper argues that there is little evidence that chiac, an often stigmatized variety of Acadian French spoken in the urban area of Moncton, New Brunswick, differs dramatically from a number of lesser known Acadian varieties in terms of the effects of language contact; and that the degree of English influence claimed is sometimes not supported by the data provided. It begins with a sociohistorical overview of Acadian French. It then evaluates the literature on chiac and compares the findings for Acadian varieties spoken in Atlantic Canada. The relationship between the social context within which chiac is spoken and its lexicon and grammar adds to our knowledge of the linguistic outcomes of language contact, in addition to providing more detail on variation in North American French.