The sociolinguistic competence of former immersion students at the post-secondary level: the case of lexical variation

Abstract

This paper examines two sociolinguistic lexical variables, ‘work’ and ‘to dwell,’ in the spoken French of former immersion students in their first or fourth year at a bilingual university in Ontario, Canada. Their patterns of use are compared to those of non-immersion graduates in the same institution, to Ontario high school immersion students, to former immersion students living in daily contact with French in Montreal, Canada, and to native speakers of Canadian French. The results suggest that, while under-performing in relation to the Montreal learners and the native speakers, the former immersion university students are at an advantage over their non-immersion university and their high school immersion counterparts in mastering socially stratified lexical variants, but that this advantage does not extend to socially neutral variants. The results are discussed in light of the relative levels of exposure to ‘naturalistic’ French experienced by the various speaker groups.

Keywords:

• immersion education
• communicative competence
• second language
• sociolinguistics
• French
• Canada

Notes

1. Members of Francophone communities in the English-language province of Ontario generally come into more sustained and intense contact with English than do members of such communities in the French-language province of Quebec.