Readings:

Required:  Ayres-Bennett, Wendy (1996) A History of the French Language through Texts, London-New York: Routledge

Recommended:

• Chaurand, J. (ed.) (1999) Nouvelle Histoire de la langue française, Paris: Seuil.
• Cerquiglini, B. (2007) La Naissance du français, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
• Huchon, M. (2002) Histoire de la Langue Française, npl., Librarire Générale.
• Lodge, R.A. (1993) French: From Dialect to Standard, London: Routlegde.
• Posner, R. (1997) Linguistic change in French, Oxford: Clarendon.
• Price, G. (1971) The French Language: Present and Past, London: E. Arnold.
• Rey, A., F. Duval and G. Siouffi (2007) Mille ans de langue francaise: histoire d'une passion, Paris: Perrin.
• Rickard, P. (1974/1989) A History of the French Language, London: Hutchinson & Co.

Course Description:

This course covers the history of the French language from its Latin roots through to contemporary usage. Both internal and external history will be considered so that students acquire a firm grounding in the linguistic evolution of the language, coupled with an understanding of its development in relation to a range of social and cultural phenomena. The course will be structured around our analysis of the wide range of texts from different genres presented by Ayres-Bennett (1996) and which date from 842 CE to the present day. We will use the relatively new historical sociolinguistic approach to try to capture what Anthony Lodge (2009) has called “une image multidimensionnelle de la langue du passé”.