Comparing Corpus Data: Evidence, Illusion or Construction?

This article studies the property of comparability, which is too often taken as self-evident. It investigates the relationship between the collection of (large) corpora and fieldwork, and the questions induced by each about language and language variability. After summarizing some approaches adopted by some large corpora of French, one particular corpus recently collected in the Paris region, the Multicultural Paris French, is discussed in greater detail. The study concludes by showing what broad sociolinguistic theoretical questions may be raised through the notion of comparability.