Abstract

Studies of French in Normandy often talk of a single ‘Normandy accent’ (Walter 1982, Carton et al 1983, Lepelley 1999) – that is, when the French (as opposed to the Norman) spoken there is considered. In this talk, I will consider the points for and against this way of seeing things, taking evidence from my PhD work in Normandy in 2006-7 (Hall 2008). The talk will aim not to decide whether there is or is not a single Regional French of Normandy, but to present different ways of investigating the question, and to show how each of them leads to valid and useful conclusions (depending on the angle of the investigation). At the end of the talk, I will present a project on the dialectology of Northern France on which I am about to embark, and show how its phonetic and phonological approach (which is an extension of the approach taken in my PhD) will bring another angle to the discussion of regional varieties of French.