Does social identity play a role in the L2 acquisition of French intonation? Preliminary data from Canadian French-as-a-second-language classroom learners

This exploratory study seeks to examine the role of social identity in the acquisition of French intonation, specifically in the realization of the final pitch accent and overall shape of the pitch contour of non-final accentual phrases, among Canadian L2 learners of French. The primary objectives are to investigate the potential role of a social group-based accommodation effect in the acquisition of non-target-like speech and to identify any unique features in the French intonation contours of French immersion versus core French speakers. To such ends, two groups of six Anglophone learners of French having graduated from either a French immersion or a core French program completed a social identity questionnaire and a delayed sentence repetition task. The questionnaire results suggest that French immersion speakers have greater ingroup identification with their French program than their core French counterparts, particularly as concerns their emotional and psychological attachment to their program and peers. Due to the small sample size, differences in the French intonation contours of these learner groups were not significant and require further investigation. The results of this study expand our understanding of the role of sociological factors in the present instance social identity as a potential difference between L2 learner groups, and it is the first study to suggest a potential interaction between social identity and the production of linguistic features in an L2 context