French and English languages in contact: The Chiac case

Abstract

This study concerns the language variation and changes across Borders in a bilingual context: the Acadian French in contact with North American English. In particular, it explores a specific linguistic idiom called Chiac, a language variety of south-eastern New Brunswick (Canada), characterized by strong English influence on the Acadian French substrate. Originally, it was spoken by bilingual teenagers in Moncton, Canada, and it is based on Canadian French but it contains several English influences both in words/morphemes and semantics/pragmatics. Through structural and lexical analysis, the study aims at underlining the social factors that influence speakers’ choices and particularly those who use Chiac as a communication language. In fact, it is recently spoken by a growing number of speakers not only by teenagers. Variation and change across borders will represent a specific Weltanschauung in a bilingual context where Canadian French is less and less important though it is protected by French speakers as an identity status. Finally, some examples of lexical/phonological/phonetic/syntactic variations will be presented in order to remark strong English influence on this Acadian French substrate in a sociolinguistic perspective.