Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 888
Part of Session 180: New Speakers in the City (Other abstracts in this session)
« Moi j’suis pas francophone! » - Discourses, language practices and identity representations from a French elementary school students perspective in Vancouver, Canada
Authors: Levasseur, Catherine
Submitted by: Levasseur, Catherine (Universite de Montreal, Canada)
In a Canadian French minority context, French schools are expected to function as unilingual spaces, which can counter or slow down the linguistic assimilation process. Schools have as a mission not only to instruct and educate children, but also to socialize them as a new generation of French speakers. Schools are expected to contribute to protecting, supporting, promoting, and reproducing the “francophone identity” and the francophone local community. However, many questions can be raised from that situation: Who is or can be considered francophone? Who benefits from the French schools? How can the school contribute to pass on the francophone identity to youth and how is identity discursively constructed in schools in the minority context?
The paper is largely inspired by the critical sociolinguistic field (Heller 2001, 2002; Jaffe 2007; Martin-Jones 2007) and it aims to present and analyze discourses, identity representations and language practices from children (6 to 10 years old) who followed “francisation” courses (French as second language) in a French elementary school in Vancouver area, British-Columbia, Canada. The paper will present data extracted from a doctoral ethnographic research that occurs in 2010-2011 (8 months) in a school setting. Data from focus groups, workshops, interviews and observations will be drawn upon in the presentation.
Our findings show that children in “francisation” are challenging the traditional notion of French speakers in a Canadian minority context, being often considered within the school as non-francophone based on their language competencies. Indeed, to be enrolled in a French school, children have to be recognized as francophone as defined by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but many of them fail their French competency test after their first year of schooling in kindergarten and are then sent to the “francisation” program. Children have to follow these French courses in addition to their mainstream education classes until they succeed at the French competency test. Facing a growing number of francisation students, school educators are questioning the authenticity of their francophone status.
It seems thus relevant to have a closer look at how these children negotiate with the francophone identity(ies) that the school and the parents hope to pass on to the next generation, and inversely to examine how these students contribute, by their own discourses, representations and practices, to the way schools are redefining concepts as “francophone” and “francophonie”.