University of Alabama
Department of Modern Languages & Classics
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0246

Professor of French and Linguistics
Departmental Graduate Director
Doctorate, Sorbonne, Paris

Michael D. Picone has taught French and Linguistics at the University of Alabama since 1988. He organizes courses and seminars on a wide variety of topics (recent seminars include Francophone Louisiana, Franco-Belgian graphic narratives, and advanced French vocabulary). His publications and program of research encompass an assortment of lexicological, phonological, and language-contact topics, as well as contemporary and historical profiles of language use in Louisiana, in Alabama and elsewhere. He is author of Anglicisms, Neologisms and Dynamic French (1996), a detailed study of borrowings and other types of lexical creativity in the French of France. Some of his most recent research pertains to African-American expatriates in France or revolves around linguistic and semiotic approaches to elements of modern culture, such as bilingual songs, comic art in Francophone Europe and Italy, and the photojournalism of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Recent publications include:

Multlingual Alabama , a historical overview of the languages spoken in Alabama, appeared in Tributaries, the journal of the Alabama Folklife Association (Issue No. 10, 2007/2008).

Teaching Franco-Belgian bande dessinee appeared in Teaching the Graphic Novel, an MLA publication (2009).

He was a member of the editorial team whose Dictionary of Louisiana French as Spoken in Cajun, Creole and American Indian Communities was published by the University Press of Mississippi (2010).

Forthcoming: Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by Michael D. Picone and Catherine Evans Davies; Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Book notice: Anglicisms, Neologisms and Dynamic French

Archived Conference Information: Language Variety in the South III, co-organized by Michael D. Picone and Catherine Evans Davies,
held on April 14-17, 2004, at the University of Alabama (funded by NSF), is now consultable as an on-line interactive symposium (funded by NEH), with audio recordings of most of the presentations: LAVIS III.

A broad selection of revised papers from LAVIS III is forthcoming in Language Variety in the South: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. This publication project has also been supported by NEH funding.