Wild French in the songs of Édith Piaf – a didactic approach Cover Image

Le français « sauvage » dans les chansons d’Édith Piaf – un aperçu didactique
Wild French in the songs of Édith Piaf – a didactic approach

Author(s): Mieczysław Gajos
Subject(s): Cultural history, Music, Lexis, Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989)
Published by: Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza
Keywords: Piaf; song; language registers; slang; language competence; vocabulary teaching;

Summary/Abstract: Édith Giovanna Gassion, known as Édith Piaf recorded more than three hundred songs. Her repertoire is as rich as her biography. Often, in the texts of Piaf’s songs, we can find some traces of her life, stories that she had told to her lyricists, who made use of them by suggesting that her songs qualified as realistic. While analysing the texts of Édith Piaf’s songs created between 1935 and 1963, we can identify the vocabulary belonging to the slang register. In the linguistic part of our article, we will try to present this lexicon. In the didactic part of our article we will look at the problem of pedagogical exploitation of the slang vocabulary contained in the songs of Édith Piaf.

  • Issue Year: 59/2022
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 144-163
  • Page Count: 20
  • Language: French