This paper examines the use of general extenders (GEs), such as and stuff in English and et tout in French, in Paris French and London English. We aim to compare the social and the linguistic conditioning of extender use in the two languages, discuss the different kinds of spread in the two cities and reflect on the specificity of discourse-pragmatic variation.The study shows that GE forms as well as frequencies vary across factors such as gender, age and ethnicity, while some variants also appear to be grammaticalising and acquiring new pragmatic functions. The analysis includes a comparison of different age groups, and finds that different types of generational change may be occurring in both languages.In London, forms such as and stuff and and that diverge along ethnic lines, whereas in Paris et tout is becoming the dominant variant across the board. While different variants in both languages are indirectly associated with different social categories, they perform similar pragmatic functions such as hedging, marking solidarity and appealing to common knowledge between the speaker and the interlocutor(s).

This paper addresses contemporary trends in the use of general extenders in two recent corpora of spontaneous French stratified by age. In these corpora, certain variants (e.g. et tout) are highly prevalent in the speech of young people compared to older speakers, while others are not. Other studies have shown that general extenders’ form as well as frequency tends to vary with respect to speakers’ age, while some extenders may also undergo grammaticalisation. The present study includes a comparison with a late 20th-century corpus of spoken French, and finds that not only age grading but also generational change might be occurring. This conclusion is supported by qualitative and quantitative analysis of the contemporary data, showing that the forms most frequent among young people appear to have acquired new pragmatic functions.

Cet article s’interroge sur les nouvelles tendances dans l’utilisation du discours direct dans deux corpus spontanés recueillis à Paris et à Londres dans le cadre du projet « MLE-MPF, Multicultural London English - Multicultural Paris French ». L’analyse des données françaises révèle des stratégies innovantes qui accompagnent le discours rapporté dans les récits des adolescents. Elle expose des tendances similaires à celles trouvées dans d’autres langues et variétés (pour l’anglais, voir Tagliamonte & D’Arcy 2007, Buchstaller & D’Arcy 2009, Cheshire et al. 2011, Fox 2012 ; pour le français québécois, Levey et al. 2013), mais aussi quelques différences vraisemblablement spécifiques au français hexagonal. Cet article traite des fonctions pragmatiques que les formes émergentes recouvrent dans des contextes variés, et s’interroge sur les forces motrices de leur développement.

We report on a survey of language attitudes carried out as part of a project comparing youth language in Paris and London.1As in similar studies carried out in London (Cheshire et al., 2008), Berlin (Wiese, 2009) and elsewhere (Boyd et al., 2015), the focus was on features considered typical of ‘contemporary urban vernaculars’ (Rampton, 2015).The respondents were pupils aged 15–18 in two secondary schools in a working-class northern suburb of Paris. The survey included (1) a written questionnaire containing examples of features potentially undergoing change in contemporary French; (2) an analysis of reactions to extracts from the project data: participants were asked to comment on the speakers and the features identified.Quantitative analysis had shown that some of these features are more widespread than others and are used by certain categories of speaker more than others (Gardner-Chloros and Secova, this volume). This study provides a qualitative dimension, showing that different features have different degrees of perceptual salience and acceptability. It demonstrates that youth varieties do not involve characteristic features being used as a ‘package’, and that such changes interact in a complex manner with attitudinal factors. The study also provides material for reflection on the role of attitude studies within sociolinguistic surveys.