• • Home
  • About
  • Contact
• • Undergrad
  • Masters & PhD
• • Staff
  • Research & Publications
• • News & Events
  • Current Students

Staff Menu

• Staff A-Z
• By Role
• By Keywords
• Keywords Search

SEARCH using keywords/tags or full text search.

Dr Michael Pickles

Teaching Fellow in French Studies

Degree: BA (Reading) French with Linguistics; PGCE (Southampton); CertTEFL (St Martin's College, Lancaster); PhD (Lancaster)

Current Teaching

• FREN101 : First Year Advanced French
• FREN201 : Second Year French Language (Advanced): written and reading skills
• FREN201i : Second Year French Language (Intensive): written and reading skills
• FREN233 : Shaping Contemporary France: Culture, Politics and the Legacy of History
• DELC320 : Final Year Dissertation (full unit)

Research Interests

Research

Variation, especially phonological, within current sociolinguistic strands - regional and local varieties, standardisation, gender, identity, the incomer.

Doctoral thesis

The spoken French of teenagers in Perpignan: a study of phonological variation

An investigation based on a corpus of recordings of thirty-seven collegiens in spontaneous group conversations and individual interviews; focussed on three phonological features - schwa, nasalisation of vowels, /R/ - in correlation with social variables of gender, ethnolinguistic background and socio-economic status.

Publications

" La mere de mon père est née à Grenade": some phonological features of the French of teenagers in Perpignan'. In Hintze, M-A., Pooley, T., Judge A. (eds) French Accents: Phonological and sociolinguistic perspectives (AFLS/CILT, 2001).

Conference papers

I have presented papers on my doctoral research at the following conferences:

AFLS, University of Surrey, Identités et Politiques Linguistiques, June 1996;

University of Lancaster, Postgraduate Colloquium, November 1997;

AFLS, University of Sheffield, Postgraduate Conference, May 1998;

AFLS, London Guildhall University, Les accents des Français, October 1998;

The Burn Conference, Scotland, October 1998;

University of Lancaster, Postgraduate Colloquium, February 1999;

ESRI, University of Salford, Beyond Boundaries II, February 1999;

University of Durham, International Graduate Conference, April 1999;

University of Bradford, Black, Blanc, Beur II: La langue des jeunes Français, June 1999;

Sociolinguistics Symposium, University of the West of England, April 2000;

French Linguistics Seminar, University of Cambridge, May 2001;

University of Lancaster, Postgraduate Colloquium, April 2003.

Citations of Research

Carton, Fernand. 1999. L'épithèse vocalique et son développement en français parlé. Faits de langue no 13: 35-45. Paris: Editions OPHRYS.

Pooley, Timothy. 2001. Les variantes sociolinguistiques feminines: essai de synthèse. In La langue française au féminin. Paris: L'Harmattan. pp. 53-73.

Blanchet, Philippe and Armstrong, Nigel. 2006. The sociolinguistic situation of 'contemporary dialects of French' in France today: an overview of recent contributions on the dialectalisation of Standard French. Journal of French Language Studies, vol. 16, no. 3, 251-275. Cambridge: CUP.

Jamin, Mikaël, Trimaille, Cyril and Gasquet-Cyrus, Médéric. 2006. De la convergence dans la divergence: le cas des quartiers pluri-ethniques en France. Journal of French Language Studies, vol. 16, no. 3, 335-356. Cambridge: CUP.

Armstrong, Nigel & Pooley, Timothy. 2010. Social and Linguistic Change in European French. Palgrave Macmillan.

Responsibilites and Affiliations

Convenor for Second Year French Language courses: FREN200/201/200i/201i

DELC Assessment & Examinations Officer

Vice-Principal of Lonsdale College. College Syndicate representative to Court

Member of the French Variation Forum

Member of the Association for Language Learning

Member of the Association for French Language Studies.

Additional Information

Head of Modern Languages, Derby: 1978-1991

Director of the Languages Development Centre, St Martin's College, Lancaster: 1991-1993

Lecturer in French Language and Linguistics, University of Cambridge: 2000-2001

Other Interests and Hobbies

My principal leisure activities are music and Christian involvement.

I have been a member of several choirs over the years, including the Palestrina Choir (Reading University), the Derbyshire Singers, the Lancaster Singers.

I am an active organist and pianist. I have an appreciation of a wide variety of composers and styles, both classical and popular.

I am a Church Elder, Worship Leader and Preacher.

I am a Member of the College of Preachers.

From March 2010 I am Interim Moderator for the new pastorate of Forton, Garstang and Preesall United Reformed Churches.

I enjoy concerts, theatre and cinema, food and wine, and am (reputedly) a competent cook.

Associated Keywords: Corpora and sociolinguistics/discourse, Dialectology, European, European languages, French linguistics, Language teaching methodology, Language variation and change, Linguistics, Philology, Phonology, Sociolinguistics, Spoken language corpora

«Back

Save this page: Del.icio.us Digg It Reddit Facebook Stumble It!