The Sociolinguistic Competence of Immersion Students

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In previous studies, the team of Mougeon, Nadasdi, and Rehner has contributed greatly to our understanding of variation in second language learners' speech. The Sociolinguistic Competence of Immersion Students sets a new standard for researchers in the sociolinguistics of L2 speech and represents a major contribution to both second language acquisition and sociolinguistics. * Robert Bayley, University of California, Davis, USA * Here's a very informative book in which variationist sociolinguistics is made relevant to second language teaching! Assuming correctly that native linguistic competence includes knowledge of how forms and structures vary under specific structural and pragmatic conditions, Mougeon, Nadasdi, and Rhener offer teachers of (Canadian) French as a second language (FL2) a book that they will find very useful. Covering a wide range of linguistic variables with the relevant patterns and rates of variation, it exhorts FL2 teachers to aim at producing speakers not of bookish French but of real, natural, non-monolithic French, i.e., speakers that are aware of both the structural and social principles that govern variable linguistic communication. This is a book that will also be invaluable to students of French variationist sociolinguistics, as it synthesizes years of fieldwork and insightful analyses from a long litany of scholars who have applied the Labovianist paradigm to Canadian French. The book is richly documented about French immersion students in Canada, including dozens of figures and tables that summarize the authors' findings. -- Salikoko S. Mufwene, The Franck J. McLoraine Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics and the College, University of Chicago. Mougeon, Nadasdi and Relmler's study of immersion students' acquisition of native norms of spoken French ofters a fresh and stimulating contribution to the relatively under-researched field of sociolinguistic competence in an inunersion context. Where the volnme is particularly successful is in presenting the findings of a major research project whilst integrating a diversity of approaches to the phenomenon. As a result, the intended readership is broad: graduate students interested in sociolinguistic variation within the field of SLA, teachers of French as a second language keen to reflect on the factors which condition their students' learning of variation, and finally policy makers for whom it is important to be aware of the 'variable use oflanguage' (p. xi) if they are to develop pedagogical materials which take the acquisition of variation by learners into consideration. * Alain Wolf, University of East Anglia in The Journal of French Language Studies, Volume 21 (2011) *