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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 388

Part of Session 100: Montreal, a francophone, anglophone and multilingual city (Other abstracts in this session)

Lambs to the slaughter? Young francophones and attitudes towards English in Montreal today

Authors: Oakes, Leigh
Submitted by: Oakes, Leigh (Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom)

In a recent essay, the academic and political commentator Christian Dufour (2008) turns the debate about the language situation in Quebec somewhat on its head. For many years now, the future of French in this Canadian province has been seen to lie predominantly with the growing number of immigrants and the linguistic behaviour they adopt upon their arrival (see Oakes and Warren 2007). Yet for Dufour, the real threat today lies not with so-called new Quebecers so much as native francophones themselves, whom he claims have become ‘soft, docile and submissive’ (Dufour 2008: 22), like the sheep who unquestioningly accompanies John the Baptist, the patron saint of French Canadians. The finger is pointed in particular at young francophones, accused of adopting an unfettered bilingualism and overly positive attitudes towards the global lingua franca. Such observations have been made especially regarding Montreal, where English has come to be considered as an important component of the city’s complex multilingual identity (Lamarre et al. 2002).

After briefly examining some of the issues that have emerged in recent years concerning the role of English in Quebec today, this talk will discuss the results of a study which made use of a questionnaire distributed in March 2010 amongst 463 francophone university students in Quebec, of which 201 were studying in Montreal. The Montreal participants will be compared with the students studying elsewhere in Quebec with regard to their self-reported competence in English, how frequently they claim to use English, their self-reported strength of Quebec and Canadian identities, and their attitudes towards English. Far from revealing an uncritical stance towards the language, the results expose the diversity and complexity of the relationships maintained with English which serve to distinguish today’s young francophones especially in Montreal from previous generations.

References:

Dufour, C. (2008). Les Québécois et l’anglais: Le retour du mouton. Sainte-Angèle-de-Monnoir: Éditeurs réunis.

Lamarre, P., Paquette, J., Kahn, E. and Ambrosi, S. (2002). Multilingual Montreal: Listening in on the language practices of young Montrealers. Canadian Ethnic studies/Études ethniques au Canada 34(3). 47–75.

Oakes, L and Warren, J. (2007). Language, Citizenship and Identity in Quebec. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.