Acceso usuarios
Gaétane Dostie
This paper provides an overview of the lexical changes that have occurred since 1970 in the paradigm of lexemes referring to measurement in Québec French spoken in informal and semi-formal contexts. The study is based on an exhaustive inventory of lexical units, specific to the British Imperial System or English System (ES ; e.g., pouce ‘inch’, livre ‘pound’) and the Metric or International System (IS ; e.g., mètre ‘metre’, kilo(gramme) ‘kilogram’), present in 7 oral corpora, of which the recordings were made between 1970 and 2020. In addition, a survey was carried out in spring 2023 with 12 speakers to determine their use of ES or IS in various everyday situations. It is generally thought that older speakers are partly responsible for the remarkable preservation of a small group of imperial units in Québec French. The data collected in the corpora and in the survey show that this perception is at odds with reality. The paper points out that there are referential contexts in which speakers, regardless of their age, are naturally inclined to use imperial units, and other contexts in which they are led to opt for metric units.
