French
French is a language with a long history, which developed from the spoken Latin. Spoken language changes all the time. The reasons for this are social, demographic, geographic and/or political, factors that are also valid on modern language change.
In historic linguistics, studies are made on how a language has developed over the time (diachrony) or how it looked during a certain time during the history (synchrony). In philology, text are edited, which are interpreted and evaluated.
Linguists in modern French make synchronic studies of modern French. One can examine how French is used in media and by politicians, discourse analysis, or how persons who do not have French as a mother tongues learn French, language acquisition. In these cases, it concerns both spoken and written French.
French literature has a history of more than thousand years. It is very abundant in France, but also in other French speaking countries in the world. Scholars in literature use material from early modern and modern era including contemporary literature. Research projects are conducted in French literary history, literary theory, reformation, visuality and rhetoric, ecocriticism, narrative theory and genre theory. Research on how works are translated and received, translation and reception studies, is another field. As French is a world language, studies are also made on literature from North Africa and Canada, a field belonging to World literature.
French Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is the study of how language, when used in communication, acquires meaning, purpose and becomes coherent. The meaning of linguistic expressions derive not only from linguistic forms and propositional content, but from the interplay between the text, the situation and the cultural context in which the utterance is produced.
French Discourse Analysis
French Philology
The focus on research in French has been editing texts in Old French. The number of texts is very high and there are several genres and periods, from the 12th century to the 16th, where the period of Modern French begins. These texts are a good base for linguistic studies.
French Philology
French Second Language Acquisition
An interdisciplinary field of research, drawing on linguistics, as well as psychology, education and other social sciences. Research in second language acquisition aims primarily to understand development in an additional language that one learns as a teenager or adult and how second language acquisition differs from first language acquisition.
French Second Language Acquisition
