Abstract
This contribution presents two different yet complementary possibilities of using the OFROM corpus to study the geographical variation of French. After situating OFROM among French-speaking oral corpora and discussing the difficulties of their exploitation for the study of diatopic variation, we show how direct interrogation of the corpus sheds light on the part that regionalisms may take in actual language in use. Alongside a spontaneous use of regionalisms, analyzing the corpus reveals regionalisms embedded in metalinguistic discourse. In order to provide insights into the relationship between these two types of usage, we follow a sociolinguistic approach to OFROM materials, using a complementary survey on the linguistic representations of French-speaking Swiss that has been partially integrated into the corpus. In particular, we consider the linguistic dimension of the identity divide within the canton of Neuchâtel as an example.