Sensibility and insensibility to phonetic variation: a perceptive study on the French spoken in the Paris area

Eight Parisian speakers, selected for their varying use of /a/, of palatalized /k/ and /t/ and of reductions of consonantal clusters, have been presented in a perception test for 235 French listeners. The listeners - who were unaware of the origin of the speakers - were asked to evaluate them for a number of factors (origin, educational level, suitability for a job as a newsreader, etc.) and to justify their answers. On the basis of the evaluations, and through an analysis of the justifications made by 40 of the participants, we discuss the phonetic features that seem salient in contemporary Parisian French and that guide listeners in their sociophonetic judgements. The fact that some features pass unnoticed also brings information tell us something about the future of the phonetic norm in France. Adapted from the source document