Over the past twenty-five years, French singer-songwriter Renaud has emerged as his country's leading exponent of chanson sociale, a rich and diverse tradition of popular song which has helped to rally, educate and galvanise dispossessed groups in French society since the first half of the nineteenth century. Renaud became well-known in the second half of the 1970s by singing about zonards (delinquent youths) from the housing estates of suburban Paris. Since then, he has tackled …showed first 75 words of 944 total…

…showed last 75 words of 944 total…ud's songwriting through a linguistic study of another song, Dans mon HLM. French linguist and popular song theorist Louis-Jean Calvet has written a number of articles on Renaud's contribution to the spoken French idiom. A great deal has also been written about Renaud in the French musical press.9 Quotations from French secondary sources are translated into English in the main body of this thesis and reproduced in their original form in the footnotes