Regiolect as an intermediate idiom in French and Russian

The article deals with the status and functions of the Russian and French regiolect which is an intermediate variant of a regional form of speech, whose nature refers neither to dialect nor to vernacular language. The author covers the history of the subject and explains that approaches to the secondary forms of regional variation are determined by research traditions and methodological paradigms of Russian and French linguistics. Special attention is paid to common characteristics of the regiolects in the two languages: continuity of the idiom and its urban speech specificity. Feasibility of probabilistic method application is presented.