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A Case Study of Tu and Vous Use in the French Dubbing and Subtitling in an American Film
Translation and subtitling has always been a complicated dimension of the motion picture industry for years. The problem of dealing with linguistic elements in films and conveying them to audiences of different languages across the globe encompasses many difficulties regarding forms and structures of other languages. One of the more highly researched topics in French linguistic studies has been the use of address pronouns and a range of aspects related to their use and interpretation. Many studies have been conducted over the last sixty years in order to determine and understand these variables. An analysis of several of these studies reveals the many complexities involved in second-person pronoun choice in the French language and the development of the idea of pronoun choice as an act of social identity. The focus of this study is to provide an analysis of the use of formal and informal address pronoun use in the French subtitling and dubbing of an American film, Maid in Manhattan, in order to add, on a broader level, a way to differentially examine perceived norms in a variety of contexts within this medium.
Daughters of the King and Founders of a Nation: Les Filles du Roi in New France
The late seventeenth century was a crucial era in establishing territorial claims on the North American continent. In order to strengthen France's hold on the Quebec colony, Louis XIV sent 770 women across the Atlantic at royal expense in order to populate New France. Since that time, these women known as the filles du roi, have often been reduced to a footnote in history books, or else mistakenly slandered as women of questionable morals. This work seeks to clearly identify the filles du roi through a study of their socioeconomic status, educational background, and various demographic factors, and compare the living conditions they had in France with those that awaited them in Canada. The aim of this undertaking is to better understand these pioneer women and their reasons for leaving France, as well as to identify the lasting contributions they made to French-Canadian culture and society.
L'emploi variable des signes diacritiques dans le français tchaté : une étude variationniste en temps apparent .
After providing an historical overview of the French spelling system and orthographic variation, this study analyzes selected internal (i.e., linguistic) factors and one external (i.e., social) factor that can influence the use of diacritics in online French-language chat sessions. From a corpus of synchronous computer-mediated communication, 3,855 tokens of graphemes capable of bearing diacritics were coded with the following scheme: Letter, Diacritic, Grapheme (i.e., Letter and Diacritic combined), Date of Participation, and Age Group of Participant. A multivariate (VARBRUL) analysis determined that Grapheme exerts the most influence on variation.
France and the United States: Borrowed and Shared National Symbols
This thesis analyzes and demonstrates the similarities and differences between some of the national symbols of France and the United States. This includes the shared and borrowed aspects of each one and the ways in which each culture is reflected through, and built around them. The flags, national anthems, and several national icons such as France's Marianne and Uncle Sam are discussed. This analysis deals with the historical contexts and cultural meanings of the symbols, showing the changes each has undertaken in form and in national and international importance. Through the study of national symbols, this thesis reveals the similarities along with the differences between the two nations, which are often perceived as being highly dissimilar and even opposing in belief systems, cultures, and histories.
Integrating Online Discussion Forums into the Foreign Language Curriculum: A Case Study of Advanced Learners of French
This exploratory case study aims to develop a set of best practices for integrating online discussion forums into the foreign language curriculum, focusing specifically on a group of learners in an advanced French grammar course at a large, public U.S. university. During a period of two months, 26 participants completed a series of tasks designed to provide three different types of data: 1) exploration and analysis of interactional, linguistic, and social features of Web forum discourse; 2) participation in Web forums; and 3) feedback from students. Since the feedback received from two questionnaires was ultimately the most consistent and reliable type of data collected, this study focuses on students' participation patterns and their perceptions of Web forums as a communication space having the potential to provide opportunities for learning French. Although some students indicated that they would neither consider visiting a French-language Web forum nor actually visit one, in both cases, more than half of the participants who completed these questionnaires indicated that they would both consider visiting a French-language Web forum and might actually visit one. Since encouraging students to use French beyond the classroom and to engage in the lifelong use of French for personal enrichment (following the Communities standard of the U.S. Standards for Foreign Language Learning in the 21st Century), at least one goal of this study-the main goal-has been partially achieved.
Mosques in France: The Visible Presence of Islam
Numerous laws are being directed toward subduing the visible presence of Islam throughout France, and in return French Muslims are becoming bolder in the projection of their faith. This thesis examines the presence of Islam in France throughout history and in contemporary French civilization. Specifically, this thesis addresses the issues regarding the visible presence of Islam in France through such institutions as mosques and how they are the key symbols representing the prominence of Islam in France. It looks at what lies in the collective French mind that creates such an influence on today's policies and outlook, as well as identifies the key characters that dominate the current affairs surrounding Islam in France. The thesis reviews the country's past relations with the visible presence of Islam through the controversies surrounding the construction of famous mosques. In addition, this thesis underlines key areas where both the State and the Muslim population must make concessions in order to avoid further conflict.
Présentations de la Grammaire et Représentations du Discours Dans les Manuels de Français Publiés aux États-Unis: une Étude Diachronique
This study partially replicates and re-explores specific dimensions of a textbook analysis of the presentation and use of specific grammatical elements and sociolinguistic variants in textbooks published in the United States for learners of French. Authenticity is situated as a central construct in the analysis of interrogatives, relative pronouns, and the negative particle ne in selected textbooks and ancillary materials. The findings reveal that little progress has been made over the past twenty years in integrating authentic representations of discourse into French-as-a-foreign-language textbooks.
The Variable use of ne in Negative Structures: An Apparent-Time Variationist Study of Synchronous Electronic French Discourse
This study of the variable use of ne in synchronous electronic French discourse follows the methodological guidelines and the theoretical framework proposed and subsequently elaborated by Labov for analyzing variable features of language. This thesis provides a quantitative variable rule (i.e., VARBRUL) analysis including age as a factor group (i.e., independent variable), thereby making a new contribution to this area of inquiry. The data (50,000 words from the vingtaine 'twentysomething' channel and 50,000 words from the cinquantaine 'fiftysomething' channel) are a subset of 100,000 words from a corpus of one million words collected in 2008 by the thesis director from the public chat server EuropNet. This study aims to answer the following overarching question: To what extent does age-compared to other factors-influence the variable use of ne in verbal negation in synchronous electronic French discourse? In order to answer this question, and possibly others, the VARBRUL analysis will include age, subject (e.g., noun vs. pronoun), type of second negative particle (e.g., pas 'not', jamais 'never', personne 'no one'/'nobody', and so forth), as well as verbal mood/tense.
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