LingLunch : Emma Humphries

Emma Humphries (Cardiff University)
Prescriptivism on French-language Twitter: The case of croivent

This presentation will explore online language commentary on the French language on Twitter. The internet has provided a much wider opportunity for all French-speakers, from ‘experts’ to laypeople, to discuss and criticise the language use of others. Furthermore, whilst lay language commentary has presumably long taken place in spoken language, the internet gives us previously unprecedented access to the attitudes of a broader spectrum of society. I analyse a corpus of French-language tweets which contain one of two non-standard conjugations: croivent (ils/elles croient) and voyent (ils/elles voient). The discussion focuses specifically on those tweets that comment on another person’s use of non-standard language, examining the recurring tropes and imagery used. The analysis demonstrates how online language commentary connects to a long tradition of printed language commentary in France, which dates back to, at least, the 17th century.