The University Linguistics Department will feature a guest speaker, Dr. Julie Auger, addressing issues of language concerning French-speaking people, especially in Quebec, Thursday night from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. at the Lucy Ellis Lounge of the Foreign Language Building, 707 S. Matthews Ave.

Auger, an associate professor of French and Linguistics at Indiana University, is a native of the French-speaking province of Quebec, Canada.

Auger, a sociolinguist, will discuss how languages are spoken and perceived by different people and groups in different societies during the talk, entitled, “Languages without an army? The linguistics status of Quebec French and Picard.”

Her research interests include sociolinguistics, variation, morphosyntax, Qu‚bec Colloquial French, Picard, spoken French in general and other Gallo-Romance dialects, Auger said.

Zsuzsanna Fagyal, a French assistant professor at the University’s Linguistics Department who coordinated Auger’s visit, said she is looking forward to the presentation.

One of the topics Auger will cover includes the definition of language, Fagyal said. She cited the famous definition from renowned linguistics scholar Max Weinreich that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”

“While this aphorism accurately accounts for the fact that Norwegian commonly is recognized as a separate language, Cantonese is considered by most Chinese people to be a dialect of Chinese,” Fagyal said. “Linguists are aware of many exceptions, for example, Basque in France and Spain and national varieties of English.”

Auger, who visited the University for the first time in 2002, will also talk about “how Picard and Quebec-French-speaking people perceive the language variety that they speak, and how ideological differences might account for their feeling(s) of pride or inferiority with respect to standard or ‘reference French,” Fagyal said.

“Professor Auger’s work is on informal, spoken varieties of French in Quebec, Canada, as well as Picard, a language spoken north of the greater Paris region in France,” Fagyal said. “She is the author of numerous journal articles and the editor of several collective volumes, the latest of which, French in North America, has just been published in French by Laval University Press, located in Quebec, Canada.”

Auger is also scheduled to participate in a brown-bag, round-table discussion about her newly edited book, “French in North America,” at the French Department in room 2090 at the Foreign Language Building on Friday from noon to 1:30 p.m., she said.

Rich Partin, coordinator for Outreach and External Relations, said the presentation promises to be enlightening.

“The present lecture discusses two Gallo-Romance varieties spoken in communities that lack an army and a navy, Quebec French and Picard, and shows that the linguistic practices in each community reflect different decisions made concerning the status of each linguistic variety,” Partin said.