Le français acadien « moderne » . Mise en registre et revendication du français parlé à la Baie Sainte-Marie dans la musique actuelle

Abstract

The enregisterment of the variety of French as it is spoken at St. Mary’s Bay in Nova Scotia, Canada, has traditionally been heavily focused on highlighting its “conservative” linguistic features with Standard French from France being the ideologically neutralized point of comparison. In the same vein, it has been constructed as a “purified” variety that did not show any or very few signs of the influence of English. However, younger singers and other artists oppose this specific type of its discursive construction and “modernize” the discursive variety by using a more “authentic” and “realistic” picture of what Acadian French at St. Mary’s Bay sounds like. The article analyzes the song Acadian Dream by the group Cy as an example for this new linguistic realism that intends to revalorize the variety as a whole as well as its speakers.