La dialectologie perceptuelle: problèmes et perspectives

Abstract

Abstract Dialect variation is perceived and encoded in everyday language situations. Studies in the field of folk linguistic enquiry which has come to be known as perceptual dialectology, pioneered in the 1980s by scholars such as Dennis Preston, showed that beliefs nonlinguists have about language variation can play a critical role in language maintenance and change. This paper is an attempt to rethink the issue of accent identification from the perspective of perceptual dialectology by discussing the methodological hurdles to overcome when assessing folk perception of dialects. Illustration comes from two recent studies tackling the perception of geolinguistics variation in Eastern Canada. A comparison of the most common data collection techniques such as mental mapping, dialect identification tests requiring informants to listen to voices of different degrees of dialect markedness and dialect questionnaires raises several issues that call for a diversification of research design including indirect attitude measurements, especially affective priming.