Urban youth accents in France

Abstract Following previous studies on the production and perception of a type of accent commonly known in France as “accent de banlieue” ( Vernet and Trimaille 2007 ; Devilla and Trimaille 2010 ; Trimaille, Candea and Lehka-Lemarchand 2012 ), we suggest that the emblematic palatalization of /t/ and /d/ is not specific to young urban people. We also examine how stereotypical uses in the media display this feature and contribute to its iconization ( Irvine and Gal 2000 ). The complex dynamics of a potential phonetic change requires a mixed-method methodology, which provides partially contradictory results, and addresses complex methodological issues in the field of sociophonetics. We, therefore, develop a pragmatic and critical perspective about indexical relations that link social and linguistic categories, and in so doing, we highlight that such an unstable linguistic category can only provide an illusion of stability, mainly because it relies on stable social categorizations.