Language and Dialect Death

This book offers a systematic acoustic phonetic analysis of both language and dialect death in the region of Béarn, southwestern France. Focusing on Béarnais, a localised dialect of Gascon which is under pressure from French, the author explores the socio-political process of language shift, whereby members ofa speech community cease to speak their indigenous language in favour of an incoming dominant language.Gascon is at an advanced stage of this process, making its remaining speakersexcellent candidates for the study of language obsolescence, and this unique study will be of interest toresearchers working in a broad range of disciplines, includinglanguage variation and change, language and dialect contact, Occitanand French, sociophonetics and phonology.