Imagine that you have received a research grant to conduct a linguistic study of your target language and culture. How would you get started,
and what would you investigate? How would different structural components presented in class appear in your work?
I would study the variations of the Parisian dialect. I have always been interested in how dialects are affected by geographic, cultural and social factors. I think that it would be incredibly interesting to see how Paris, a city that is a global epicenter of business and industry, has linguistically diverged from French. When I was abroad I studied Italian language for communication, and it opened me up to the idea that dialects are not only indicative of linguistic variation, but also very much so cultural variation. I have recognized in my study of French how the colloquial terms are different in Paris based on what is important to city life and culture. I think that I would investigate by consuming specifically parisian media and actually travel to Paris to see these mechanisms in action. I think that some of the aspects of our class study on language families would influence my work. Seeing the evolution of a language from its roots is important, and understanding how these transformations occur and continue to occur. Parisian french especially has adopted so many different words from different languages because it is such a global city and many French people believe that this is a process of contamination of the language. This would be interesting to research in these studies as well, sort of the globalization of the language.
Replies
It is definitely interesting to see how dialects in different regions reflect certain parts of the culture and geography. Learning dialects can also be very challenging but it's great that you have the basis for them from Italian. My personal for a long time is to learn as many Chinese dialects as I can. I am halfway there and hope you can also learn more about them!