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Joual is the common name for the linguistic features from Quebec French that are associated with the working class, those receiving public assistance, and even some Quebec nationalists. Attitudes towards Joual range from stigma to exaltation depending on forms and components of human communication such as social setting (formal/informal; public/private), channel (spoken vs. written; broadcast) and so on. Joual is often termed a sociolect of Québec's French-speaking working class. However, it can no longer be strictly considered as such given two major events in the latter half of the 20th century: upward socio-economic mobility among Quebec francophones and a cultural renaissance connected to the Quebec sovereignty movement. At the beginning of the 21st century, Joual now fits the description of a diatype more than any other categorization.
Origin of the name Joual Although coinage of the name Joual is often attributed to French Canadian journalist André Laurendeau, usage of this term throughout French-speaking Canada predates the 1930's. The actual word Joual is the representation of how the word cheval (horse) is pronounced by those who "speak in" Joual. Cheval is usually pronounced as one syllable, , by all francophones in la Francophonie. With this in mind, in the chain of speech some vowels and consonants undergo changes due to their environment. In the case of , the Voiceless postalveolar fricative was voiced to become a Voiced postalveolar fricative , thereby creating . Next, the at the beginning of a syllable in some regional dialects of French or even in very rapid speech in general weakens to become the semi-vowel written "ou". The end result is the word transcribed as Joual. Most notable or stereotypical linguistic features Diphthongs are normally present where long vowels would be present in standard French. Although moé and toé are today considered substandard slang pronunciations, these were the pronunciations of Old French used by the kings of France, the aristocracy and the common people in many provinces of France. After the 1789 French Revolution, the standard pronunciation in France changed to that of the bourgeois class in Paris, but Quebec retained many old pronunciations and expressions, having been isolated from the Revolution by the 1760 British Conquest of New France. Joual shares many features with modern Oïl languages such as, Norman, Gallo, Picard and Poitevin-Saintongeais. Speakers of these languages of France were predominant in settlers to New France. See also | ||||||||
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