Abstract

What’s in a ne? Variable ne Deletion in the Spoken French of Two Canadian Politicians: François Legault and Justin Trudeau
Megan Magisano
The French language in Quebec is deeply rooted in the province’s francophone culture and identity (Oakes, 2004); consequently, some of its spoken features diverge from varieties spoken in Europe. One of these features is the variable deletion of the negation particle ne (Poplack & St-Amand, 2007; e.g., “je ne parle pas”), which can be variably produced depending on a number of linguistic and social factors.
This study investigated whether Quebec French speakers employ variable ne deletion in their speech and the phenomenon’s relationship to sociostylistic contexts (i.e., formal vs. informal styles), hypothesizing that this variable deletion may be connected to expressions of Quebec identity. To test this hypothesis, a variationist analysis was conducted to compare ne deletion in the speech of two prominent political figures in Canada: Justin Trudeau and François Legault. They were selected based on their respective French-Canadian backgrounds and prominence in Canada and Quebec. The corpus used for this analysis was collected and transcribed from a selection of each politician’s political addresses regarding Covid-19. The researchers hypothesized that Legault would be more likely to delete ne than Trudeau, and that Legault would be more likely to delete ne in less formal settings. Following a variationist perspective for examining variable phenomena, an inter-speaker analysis compared ne deletion between speakers (Legault and Trudeau), while an intra-speaker analysis compared ne deletion between sociostylistic contexts (i.e., formal public addresses and informal question-and-answer periods).
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Statistical results (Goldvarb Z; Sankoff et al., 2018) revealed that Legault was significantly more likely to delete ne than Trudeau. Additionally, Legault showed no significant difference in the likelihood of ne deletion in the adopted sociostylistic contexts. The patterns observed in Legault’s speech reflect the variationist literature on Quebec French, in that French- Canadians almost categorically favour ne deletion (Poplack & St-Amand, 2007). One possible explanation for these results is that Legault’s frequent use of ne deletion solidifies his link to the Quebec identity, whereas Trudeau’s patterns deviate from the Quebec French norm, perhaps to reinforce his role as a Canadian leader, thus appealing to Canada’s francophone population on a more national level.