Joual et registre — Joual and Register

Joual, and the politics of a vernacular

This lesson sits at the centre of the block because joual is where the argument of lessons 54, 58 and 60 becomes concrete and literary. What it is, descriptively: the urban working-class French of Montréal, with the phonological features of lesson 55 at their strongest, heavy contraction, a substantial layer of English borrowings from a century of anglophone-owned industry, the sacres, and syntactic patterns that differ from standard French. Linguists describe it as a sociolect — a class variety rather than a regional one — and most Québécois speak something between it and the standard depending on who they are talking to, which is exactly what Gabriel demonstrates in the first three lines. What it has been, politically, is contested ground. In the 1960s joual became a literary and political instrument: writing in it asserted that the lives of the people who spoke it were worth representing, and that the shame attached to it was imposed. Tremblay's plays, the poetry and songs of the period, and the 'Parti pris' writers used it deliberately. The reaction was fierce and came from more than one direction. Some argued that celebrating a vernacular shaped partly by English domination was celebrating the damage — that the answer to linguistic insecurity was mastery of a full standard French, not pride in a reduced one. Others argued that calling it reduced was precisely the prejudice under examination. That argument has never entirely ended, and you will find educated Québécois on both sides of it today. This course takes no side on whether joual should be celebrated or corrected. It observes only that both positions are held by people who care about the language, and that a foreigner is in no position to arbitrate. What is not in dispute is the linguistic fact that every language has registers, that moving between them is a skill rather than a failing, and that the standard register exists and is used by the same speakers when the situation calls for it. The practical advice is Gabriel's and it is firm. **Comprehension: everything. Production: very little.** Understand joual because you will hear it constantly, in television, in music, among friends, and because not understanding it cuts you out of most real conversation. Produce standard-to-courant French, because that is what a learner's register should be and because the familiar register is not yours to borrow yet. The specific thing to avoid is the sacres: a learner deploying them is doing an impression, and the people being impersonated can tell. If you want one marker of local speech that is entirely safe, use 'c'est correct' from lesson 56 and leave it there. One encouraging note. The thing that actually signals integration is not vocabulary but the switching itself — noticing that your interlocutor has moved up or down and following them. Doing that badly is still better than not doing it, and nobody expects a learner to get it right early.