Our study presents a variationist analysis of lexical variation in L2
immersion in French. Two variables are considered: a) words referring
to remunerated work, e.g. travail; b) verbs used to
indicate one's place of residence, e.g. habiter.
One linguistic factor, priming in the interviewer's question,
is shown to condition both variables. A number of social factors are
also considered. The only correlation that obtains with a social
factor is speakers' home language for the ‘work’ variable.
The main finding from our study is that in comparison to L1 Canadian Francophones,
the immersion students make use of a limited number of lexical
variants and show no knowledge of highly frequent non standard L1 forms.