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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 1167

Part of Session 173: Urban Francophone Language Practices in North America (Other abstracts in this session)

Challenging the Homogeneity of 'Canadian French': Evidence from Urban and Rural Varieties

Authors: Comeau, Philip (1); Grimm, D. Rick (2)
Submitted by: Comeau, Philip (University of Ottawa, Canada)

The term ‘Canadian French’ has long been used in studies of various linguistic phenomena found in French spoken throughout urban and rural Canada. Despite its wide use, the term is restrictive and often designates (implicitly) Laurentian varieties of French, that is, varieties spoken in Québec or in the provinces west of Québec as a result of westward migration. Crucially, the term generally fails to capture the existence of non-Laurentian varieties French rooted in the francophone communities of Atlantic Canada (New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island), known as Acadian varieties. The persistent use of the label ‘Canadian French’ to refer holistically to all varieties spoken in Canada is both problematic and erroneous. Problematic because by falsely absorbing Acadian varieties into this too-inclusive cover term, such varieties have been marginalized (if not ignored) in the national and/or global view of French in Canada. Erroneous because, while they possess many common features (e.g., the interrogative particle -tu/-ti), Laurentian and Acadian varieties do not always share the same underlying linguistic system.
In our study, we conduct a cross-dialectal variationist investigation of a grammatical variable and turn to the results to challenge the view of ‘Canadian French’ as a homogeneous variety. Specifically, we examine the expression of future temporal reference in two varieties of French, one urban Laurentian variety spoken in Hawkesbury (H), Ontario, and one rural Acadian variety spoken in Baie Sainte-Marie (BSM), Nova Scotia. In the communities under study, French is a majority language at the local level though a minority language in an otherwise English dominant province.

There exist in both varieties two main variants to refer to a future outcome, namely the periphrastic future (PF) in 1) and the inflected future (IF) in 2):

1) On a pas congé mais on va fêter pareil. (H2-04)
        ‘We don’t have the day off but we’re still going to celebrate.’

2) Je viendrai te voir demain avant-midi. (GC-18)
  ‘I’ll come see you tomorrow before noon.’

Following multiple analyses of the data, we conclude that the future temporal reference system operating in these two varieties is entirely different. This is substantiated not only by the overall distribution of the variants (e.g., H: PF=86%, IF=14%; BSM: PF=62%, IF=38%), but also by statistical analyses of the linguistic and social factors contributing to variation. For instance, the most influential predictor of variant choice in H is sentential polarity: the IF is strongly favoured in negative contexts and the PF is largely associated with affirmative contexts. In contrast, the polarity constraint is null in BSM, where the most influential linguistic factor is temporal reference: there is a high correlation between proximate outcomes and the periphrastic future. Moreover, we discover that social factors pattern differently: in H, women favour the IF whereas the opposite is found in BSM.

Our research consolidates efforts in an examination of two varieties of French using comparable methodologies and comparable data. In light of our cross-dialectal findings, we conclude that the view of ‘Canadian French’ as a homogeneous variety is empirically unjustified.