Langues, dialectes et patois – Problèmes de terminologie dialectologique

The article deals with some important issues of terminology regarding the names of certain basic concepts (such as langue or dialecte) in dialectology, as used in linguistic works written in French – the relationship between these concepts not always being clear. Further problems may arise due to the fact that it is not evident what certain French terms (e.g. patois) stand for – as their meanings are not clearly determined and their usage can differ from linguist to linguist. Among other factors, these problems make it difficult to find out the relationship between the Romance idioms spoken in France. The present paper tries to establish a consistent system of the problematic terms in question pointing out that the most important thing is not the term itself used for a certain idiom, but the recognition of the exact position of a certain idiom in an imaginary dialectological hierarchy of closely related idioms.