ABSTRACT
The changed economic and social conditions of the twentieth century created a momentum among the general population in favour of the national language from which the dialects and regional languages never recovered. Minority or low-prestige varieties generally seem to have survived best in peripheral areas, where contact with the outside is usually limited. While there can be no doubt that physical distance from the centre has facilitated dialect maintenance in the past, a nationally peripheral position need not of itself imply isolation. Dialect was regularly used, for example, at the Vieux Quatre and Sans Soucis clubs, both located close to the corons and frequented largely by former or working miners, and miners’ wives and widows, but it was rarely heard at the centrally located and more occupationally heterogeneous Joie de Vivre club. By 1988, however, the coal industry already represented Avion's past.
