Thesis (Ph.D.) - Indiana University, Department of French and Italian, 2022This dissertation examines stylistic variation in the speech of French politicians. Using a variationist approach inspired by the Phonologie du Français Contemporain project (PFC), I provide a quantitative analysis of the linguistic and extralinguistic factors influencing the production of three markers of stylistic variation in French – liaison, schwa, and the negative particle ne – in a corpus of speeches and interviews given by sixteen French politicians during the period 2012-2019. This study also explores the idea that variation in political speech may be attributed to linguistic manipulation. The expression ‘curated speech’ is used in reference to political speech insofar as it is monitored through a filter (i.e., the media) and is not entirely spontaneous; yet, it is intended to sound authentic and convincing to its audience. The three linguistic elements show considerable variation in the corpus, and the conditioning of variation is similar to what has been reported for spontaneous, less formal, speech. Results indicate that politicians produce higher levels of formal variants than what is generally expected in spontaneous speech, and that the more formal variants are more frequent in the speeches than in the interviews and that the contrast between speeches and interviews is clearer for schwa and ne than for liaison. Age emerges as the extra-linguistic factor having the strongest influence on the choice of variants, followed by medium, political affiliation, and sex. While there is considerable variation among politicians in relation to the effect of formality on their speech, similarities are observed for speakers who have similar political affiliation, as well as some individual variation. To account for this individual variation, I use a multifaceted sociolinguistic approach mobilizing elements from the attention-to-speech, audience design, and speaker design models. Some politicians display greater levels of stylistic variation than others, indicating that they are especially attentive to style and formality. Moreover, stylistic ‘deviations’ – such as Besancenot’s systematic overproduction of informal variants or Quatennens’s overproduction of formal variants – represent clear instances of manipulation of the linguistic variables. This manipulation is designed – consciously or not – to enhance one’s performance in the greater game of political chess.