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CONTACT, CONTEXT, AND COLLOCATION

The Emergence of Sociostylistic Variation in L2 French Learners during Study Abroad

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016

Kristen M. Kennedy Terry
Kristen M. Kennedy Terry*
Affiliation:
University of California, Merced
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kristen M. Kennedy Terry, Merritt Writing Program, University of California, Merced, 5200 Lake Road, Merced, CA 95343. E-mail: kkennedyterry@ucmerced.edu or kmtkennedy@ucdavis.edu
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Abstract

This study uses a mixed-effects model to examine the acquisition of targetlike patterns of phonological variation by 17 English-speaking learners of French during study abroad in France. Naturalistic speech data provide evidence for the incipient acquisition of a phonological variable showing sociostylistic variation in native speaker speech: the elision of /l/ in third-person subject clitic pronouns (il vient [il vjɛ̃] ∼ [i vjɛ̃] “he is coming”). Speech data are compared and correlated with the results of a social network strength scale designed for the study abroad learning context. Results demonstrate that phonological variation patterns are acquired in a predictable order based on token type and collocation and that social networks with native speakers are statistically significant predictors of phonological variation patterns.

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Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 553 - 578
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

I gratefully acknowledge funding for this research project provided by the Department of French and Italian at the University of California, Davis. I also thank Robert J. Bayley and Eric Russell for their expertise and critical commentary, as well as two anonymous reviewers who provided detailed and constructive feedback on this manuscript. Finally, I am indebted to the participants who shared their experiences with me during their time abroad.

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