Publications

Publication details [#56099]

Compernolle, Rémi A. van and Lawrence Williams. 2012. Variationist sociolinguistics, L2 sociopragmatic competence, and corpus analysis of classroom-based synchronous computer-mediated discourse. In Koike, Dale April and J. César Félix-Brasdefer, eds. Pragmatic Variation in First and Second Language Contexts. Methodological issues. (IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society 31). John Benjamins. pp. 239–270.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins

Annotation

This paper explores a number of issues related to analyzing second language (L2) sociopragmatic variation in a corpus of classroom-based synchronous computer-mediated discourse (SCMD) from a variationist sociolinguistic perspective. Building on the authors' previous work in this area, the paper examines variation between the second-person pronouns tu and vous among US university learners of French at different instructional levels who engaged in a series of six small-group SCMD tasks. The paper has two main goals: (1) to explore whether, and to what extent, selected external (social) and internal (linguistic) factors influence learners’ use of tu and vous; and (2) to problematize the methodological and theoretical assumptions of the application of variationist sociolinguistics to L2 sociopragmatics and SCMD.