ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines debates within Eurostat concerning the use of occupation as a proxy for social class by social scientists in attempting to draw up a common mode of socio-economic classification. It focuses on peculiarities of the relationship between class and language in France. The book explores the way diatopic linguistic variation manifests itself in new ways in a country which appears to show regional levelling to a very high degree. It also explores the peculiarities of France's urban settlement pattern and its consequences for language. The book investigates phonological levelling in two cities in the east and west of France, Rennes and Nancy. It outlines the new and Multicultural London English-Multicultural Paris French project, and describes some emergent syntactic and discourse phenomena in Parisian youth language.
