Dialectology

Objects and methods of the discipline

Internal description

The dialectology can study the dialects by describing them for themselves, by releasing the features (specific or not) of their Phonétique, of their Phonologie, their morphology, their Syntaxe or their Sémantique. In that, dialectal description does not differ from other work of linguistic Description synchronic, with this close which it considers speeches of which variability is a major characteristic.

Contrastive description

It can also compare one or more dialects with the other dialects of same the family or the same linguistic group. She then does it often by resorting to investigations of linguistic Géographie, which make it possible to describe the space distribution of the features specifying the members of the aforesaid the family. These investigations often lead to the development of linguistic atlases, making it possible to distinguish the differences between dialects thanks to the layout from borders between linguistic features, borders called Isoglosse S; another technique describing these differences in more subtle manner is the Dialectométrie, or measures quantified oppositions between several points of the dialectal chart.

The establishment of a linguistic atlas, if it requires a minimum of exhaustiveness, takes time enormously. It is a question of recording the lexical and phonetic differences various areas in a speech community. One indexes the possible alternatives and thus creates charts indicating the dialectal borders (isoglossal). These borders can be variable according to the characteristic feature which one studies, an exhaustive atlas thus asks for an indexing maximum of charts of the alternatives. For French in Europe, there exist several linguistic atlases:

the Linguistic atlas of France (ALF),
the New Linguistic atlas of France (NALF),
the Linguistic atlas of Wallonia.

Genetic description

The study of this distribution is often associated with diachronic studies (or histories) which aim at explaining the formation of the dialects, by showing their differentiation starting from a common source (it is the process of dialectal Différenciation or Dialectalisation ).

Anthropological description

It can still study the uses of the dialectal varieties in a given company, for example by putting the lexicon of the dialects compared to the habits, the uses, the beliefs, the techniques and the organization of this company. In that, the dialectology is close to the Anthropologie (and thus of the Anthropolinguistique) and to the scientific approach of the Folklore.

Sociolinguistic description

The dialectology can finally study these uses from another point of view: the relationship or competition between the various linguistic varieties present in this company (situations of Diglossie). It can, from this point of view, to study the Attitudes and the Représentations that the Locuteur S of these varieties work out as for the dialect. From this point of view, the dialectology is a chapter of the Sociolinguistique.

History and sociology of the discipline

Exit of work of the German linguist George Wenker, the dialectology was established definitively like science by Switzerland Jules Gilliéron.

It developed in all the linguistic groups knowing a linguistic rich person variation and where were established linguistic studies, and was stimulated sometimes by the studies of historical linguistics, sometimes by the advent of the synchronic prospect. She is encouraged in the companies anxious to emphasize their cultural heritage, and in particular in those which solved to give certain rights to their cultural and linguistic minorities (see the European Charte of the regional or minority languages, where the dialects appear under the denomination of regional historical languages). As the public authorities intend to take a voluntarist action on the dialects (action of promotion or, on the contrary, rejection or application), it acts there of a chapter of the Politique linguistics.

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