ABSTRACT
John R. Rickford’s research highlights the importance of stylistic variation in panel research. Central to this program are his analyses of five interviews with the pseudonymous ‘Foxy Boston’ spanning more than two decades. Following Rickford’s methodology, this chapter compares speech from three interviews in French with the pseudonymous Montrealer ‘Charles P.’ between ages 21 and 45. As he advances to a senior professional position, Charles is eloquent and assured in deploying formal features appropriate to his age grade. His enhanced stylistic repertoire is marked by increased use of the negative morpheme ne, a feature barely present in his own speech in previous decades. Enjoying a new lease on life in the speech of senior, high status people, ne finds a stylistic niche that contributes to a very long tail in the course of language change, slowing the disappearance of this retreating grammatical variant.
