You say 'Bonjour', and I say 'Salut'

Is it ça va or quoi de neuf?

For a native French speaker, the choice is easy; an unconscious lightening-quick assessment of the social situation, its level of formality, and the image the speaker wishes to portray.

Yet for a student learning the language, even a simple greeting can be fraught with the potential of social censure.

“There are two ways to look at language acquisition,” says Katherine Rehner, an associate professor and sociolinguist in the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Department of Language Studies. “Performance is the ability to speak and understand the language. Competence is how well the speaker understands the underlying rules about what is appropriate in a given situation.”

Rehner is currently focusing on the latter in a three-year study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The goal is to determine why French-as-a-second-language (FSL) learners have difficulties adapting their language to the appropriate levels of formality.

Rehner says sociolinguistic variation--the ability to assess the social facets of a conversation--can be visualized on a scale. On one end are hyper-formal variants: reserved and proper language. On the other are extremely casual vernacular variants. She calls these “marked”, meaning socially stigmatized as negative markers of social status.

Between are neutral variants, which cause no bias in listeners, and mildly-marked informal variants, which are informal but not as highly stigmatized as the vernacular.

As an example, a hyper-formal variant would be good day while a neutral one would be hi. Vernacular could be wassup and mildly-marked informal, hey. “Although each has the same meaning – a greeting – they are wildly divergent in their social nuances,” says Rehner. “To use a hyper-formal greeting in a casual environment or a vernacular greeting in a formal one such as a job interview would be viewed as inappropriate.”

For the study, Rehner and her team used survey questionnaires and interviews in two Canadian universities (one a bilingual institution, the other English language). First through fourth year undergraduate FSL students were asked what they know about sociolinguistic variation in French. Researchers then tested their French performance to see if their stated knowledge was reflected in their actual speech. Francophone students were used as a benchmark.

Rehner says some of the early preliminary findings show how the research will impact the field of language studies. “Until now, researchers have looked at performance data and used it to infer competence. This study is providing evidence of the value in looking at competence on its own.”

As an FSL speaker herself, Rehner understands the frustration of having language performance undermined by competence. “I know that sometimes what I say isn’t what I really mean. The message comes across, but not the subtleties.”

Missing these subtleties is detrimental to students’ ability to communicate, she says. “There is a place for formal and informal language. Students need to know both.” Rehner believes that giving students an awareness of the full range of variants and their contexts of use, combined with experiential learning, will be key to true language success.

Rehner credits the Department of Language Studies at UTM with creating a vibrant research environment open to new ideas that are challenging the status quo.

“If I was in a more conservative department that only defined language through the formal aspects, there wouldn’t be room for the kind of research I am doing,” she says, noting that her work was funded through the Dean’s Office before she received the SSHRC grant. “The excellence of language studies at U of T makes my work possible.”