The notion of norm in spoken French

The chapter starts out with a reminder of the essential distinction between objective, prescriptive, and subjective norms. It goes on to summarize the main historical stages in the emergence of a standard in metropolitan France, its expansion in scope, and the rise of multi-centric norms beyond the Hexagon, illustrated with the vowel inventories typical of Belgian French, Swiss French, Midi French, Central-African French, and Laurentian French. The second half of the chapter shifts from a production-oriented to a perception-oriented approach to the spoken norm, and reports the results of recent studies in French perceptual dialectology, some of which were carried out within the PFC project (Phonology of Contemporary French). It concludes that Reference French(es) do exist, but may vary depending on the communities and the objectives at stake.