This book discusses the on-going exchange of ideas between variationist linguistics and sociology by extending the debate to post-war France. It describes the extent to which France's apparent exceptionalism in a number of areas is real, imagined, or an artefact of the mode of analysis.

Introduction Part I: Language and Social Class 1. Instruments de travail and the Travails of Instruments: Reflections on the Cross-national Measurement of Social Class 2. Social Stratification in France: Measures and Trends 3. The Sociological Discourse on Inequality and Social Class in France 4. Class and Culture in Contemporary France 5. On Levelling and Counter-Levelling in French: A Phonological 6. The Social Differentiation of Grammar in France 7. Hyperstyle Variation in French: Yet Another exception culturelle? Part II: Language, Space and Social Ch ange 8. Exception française? Levelling, Exclusion, and Urban Social Structure in France 9. Banlieues as a Social Problem: Changing Discourse on Space, Class and 10. Race in France, 1985–1995 11. Locating Variation in French: Geolinguistic Patterns, Levelling and the ‘French Exception’ 12. Sociolinguistic Change in the City: Gentrification and its Linguistic Correlates in Marseille 13. Space, Language and Minorization: The Urban Character of Gallo (Rennes) 14. Collecting a New Corpus in the Paris Area: Intertwining Methodological and Sociolinguistic Reflections Part III: Renvois 15. Studying Language and Society in France: Contemporary Developments at the Intersection of Sociology and Sociolinguistics 16. Studying Variation in Urban France: The State of Play and Prospects for the Future