Zur Kontroverse um das français parlé. Ein Plädoyer gegen ein säkulares Junktim und für eine Rehabilitierung der Medialität

How to define le français parlé has been a matter of controversial discussions for several decades. The distinction between two different aspects of orality established by Ludwig Söll (1974) and developed further by Peter Koch / Wulf Oesterreicher (1985) has become a well known position in Romance Linguistics even beyond the limits of the discipline, though it has remained far from being generally accepted. According to this approach, the definition based on the use of the medium is insufficient and should rather be based on style and communicative parameters. This article discusses which significant factors may have promoted the conceptual bifurcation and describes the long process of the controversial debate caused by the divergent opinions concerning spoken language. One of the central topics addressed in this contribution is the question which of the two aspects should be considered as primary and can be regarded as the basic category.