French digital discourse
Résumé
In this chapter, we present French Digital Discourse from historical and terminological perspectives and indicate how it is perceived specifically by the general French-speaking public, including a tendency towards protectionism and conservatism of the French language. We then provide a research overview of written language appearing in electronic messages (SMS, Facebook Messenger, Viber, WhatsApp, Twitter…) in the French-speaking world and also briefly suggest methodological approaches for data collection, corpora building and analysis. Furthermore, in order to understand the visible impacts and changes that digital discourse has brought in relation to standardized language, we highlight several Francophone projects as case studies. These include (socio-)linguistic, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and soci(et)al initiatives. Finally, we suggest future research directions for French Digital Discourse.