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Copyright by Elizabeth Anne Mayne 2020 The Dissertation Committee for Elizabeth Anne Mayne Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Dissertation or Treatise: An Old Tradition in a New Space: A Critical Discourse Analysis of YouTubers’ Metalinguistic Commentary on Quebec French Committee: Carl Blyth, Supervisor David Birdsong Dale Koike Hervé Picherit An Old Tradition in a New Space: A Critical Discourse Analysis of YouTubers’ Metalinguistic Commentary on Quebec French by Elizabeth Anne Mayne Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2020 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my dissertation committee members, for their support, and for offering helpful suggestions and feedback along the way. Special thanks to Dr. Blyth for his encouragement througout the dissertation process, and for meeting with me many times to help me sort out my thoughts and organize my ideas. Thank you to my family, friends, and boyfriend for your emotional support. Thank you to Fanny Macé for some native speaker judgements on French from France and for formatting help, and Rozen Neupané for some judgements on Quebec French. Thank you to Caitlin O’Neil for consulting on some of the translations. Thank you to Jessica Luhn for all her help. iv Abstract An Old Tradition in a New Space: A Critical Discourse Analysis of YouTubers’ Metalinguistic Commentary on Quebec French Elizabeth Anne Mayne, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2020 Supervisor: Carl Blyth Quebec French (QF) has a long history of language commentary in the form of newspaper columns and letters to the editor, particularly coming from within its own community, and directed toward its speakers. This has been fueled by QF speakers’ history of linguistic insecurity. YouTube is a new space where metalinguistic commentary comparing QF and French spoken in France (FF) is taking place. This study presents a qualitative critical discourse analysis of 10 YouTube videos comparing QF and FF, examining how YouTubers use language to discuss QF vs. FF. Methods from Systemic Functional Linguistics were used to analyze these videos at three levels of analysis: discourse, genre, and style. Results show that although some YouTubers engage in language “activism” and draw on a reporting style similar to traditional journalistic genres, others focus their talk on actions in and related to the videos, and in engaging with the audience. YouTubers participating in language activism largely framed QF as new information for the audience. Thus, although some YouTubers engaged in language commentary that continues in the vein of older forms via new media, the audience is imagined to be unfamiliar with QF, rather than the QF-speaking community as a “call to arms” to protect their v language. That some YouTubers focus their talk more on the actions in and surrounding the video and engagement with the audience suggests that language commentary serves more as a “vehicle” for their channel, to create content, collaborate with another YouTuber, and potentially expand their audience. Therefore, metalinguistic commentary on QF has been recontextualized and repurposed in this new venue. YouTubers draw both on orders of discourse associated with traditional mass media forms of language commentary, and those associated with the new practices and expectations of the YouTube community. This dissertation shows that a multitiered analysis, accounting for choices made at the levels of discourse, genre, and style, is crucial for understanding what discourses are represented in a metalinguistic text, and why discourses which are represented and expected in metalinguistic commentary in some spaces are excluded from others. vi Table of Contents List of Tables .................................................................................................................... xii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. xiii Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................1 Studies on metalinguistic discourse on YouTube .......................................................4 The Rise of The Social Media Influencer ...................................................................5 Relevance and Contribution to the field .....................................................................8 Framework for analysis ............................................................................................10 Critical Discourse Analysis ..........................................................................11 Systemic Functional Linguistics ...................................................................12 Research questions ....................................................................................................13 Organization of the dissertation ................................................................................13 Chapter 2: Literature review ..............................................................................................14 Metalinguistics ..........................................................................................................14 Folk linguistics: its interests and why it matters .......................................................15 Folk metalanguage ........................................................................................16 Overview of methodologies in folk linguistics .............................................18 Argument for performing discourse analysis of metalinguistic discourse ...21 Folk linguistics methods as a contribution to critical sociolinguistics .........24 Application of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) ......................................25 Relevance of CDA to the present study ........................................................26 Accessing evaluative repertoires of the folk .................................................27 Linguistic insecurity in Quebec ................................................................................28 vii Language attitudes studies on QF, 1960 to present ..................................................29 YouTube ...................................................................................................................33 YouTube: birth, growth, and popularity .......................................................33 What is YouTube’s content?.........................................................................34 Three dimensions of use ...............................................................................36 Who uses YouTube? .....................................................................................38 Lens for analysis .......................................................................................................39 Jenkins’ five features of participatory culture ..............................................39 YouTube as a community of practice ...........................................................40 Imagined communities and affinity spaces on YouTube ..............................43 Androutsopolous’ participatory spectacle ....................................................45 Predictions ................................................................................................................46 Chapter 3: Framework and Methodology ..........................................................................55 Theoretical Framework: Social Semiotics ................................................................55 Orders of Discourse ..................................................................................................56 Three levels of analysis.............................................................................................57 Discourse: the “what” of communication .....................................................57 Discourse as social practice .................................................................58 Genre: the “how” of communication ............................................................59 Style: the manner of communication ............................................................60 Individual style.....................................................................................60 Social style ...........................................................................................61 Lifestyles ..............................................................................................62 Restatement of Research Questions ..........................................................................63 viii Tools for analysis: CDA and SFL.............................................................................63 Halliday’s three metafunctions .....................................................................65 Corpus .......................................................................................................................67 Videos and YouTubers: ................................................................................67 Data extraction ..............................................................................................71 Advantages of working with online data ......................................................72 Limitations of online data .............................................................................72