Regards croisés le Dictionnaire historique du parler neuchâtelois et suisse romand et sur le Glossaire du parler français au Canada : analyse des discours de présentation

The differential dictionaries (i.e. registering the differences with reference French) studied in this article were realized in the first decades of the XXth century in French-speaking Switzerland and in French Canada, two linguistic areas of the ‘North’ French-speaking world where the French language spread in two different ways, as a ‘traditional’ language in the first case and as an ‘imported’ language in the second. Both works, the Dictionnaire historique du parler neu châtelois et suisse romand and the Glossaire du parler français au Canada, mark an evolution towards a more scientific and modern lexicographic method if compared with the previous lexicographical traditions. The analysis of their preliminary texts allows to point out the innovations which distinguish them, and to examine these lexicographers’ vision of these varieties of French, as well as their point of view on the linguistic peculiarities which characterize them. The analogies and the differences which this comparison highlights allow in the final analysis to observe the cultural dynamics at work in these ‘peripheral’ areas.