Sociolinguistics Symposium 19
Freie Universität Berlin | August 21-24, 2012
Programme: accepted abstracts
Abstract ID: 894
Part of Session 173: Urban Francophone Language Practices in North America (Other abstracts in this session)
Welland's Francophone Minority: Cultural and Linguistic Erosion in a Small Industrial City, 1970-2012
Authors: Frenette, Yves (1); Mougeon, Raymond (2)
Submitted by: Frenette, Yves (University of Ottawa, Canada)
Located in central Ontario, the small industrial city of Welland attracted hundreds of francophone migrants from the neighboring province of Quebec and other North American Francophone areas between 1918 and 1960, but the strongest migratory wave took place in the 1950’s when the size of the francophone population tripled. Representing then 17% of the city’s population, Francophones expanded their institutional and social networks. However, cessation of the migratory flow towards the end of the 1960’s triggered the onset of linguistic and cultural decline.
During the 1970s several sociolinguistic surveys documented aspects of the above-mentioned process of linguistic and cultural decline (e.g. Mougeon & Hébrard, 1975; Beniak, Mougeon, & Valois, 1985; Mougeon & Beniak, 1989; Schneiderman, 1975). Our paper focuses primarily on data collected in the 1970s via : i) interviews recorded among individuals who were in charge of institutions either controlled by the local Francophone community or shared with the rest of the local population; ii) surveys carried out among the local Francophones in general and investigating their patterns of language use in domains such as the home, the school or the work world. Our paper documents the fact that the different institutions under study showed variable levels of resistance to penetration by English. For instance, while the local Canadian French Credit Union remained a staunchly francophone institution, the French Catholic church and the French schools evidenced patterns of linguistic accommodation—some school subjects were taught in English and sacramental ceremonies were performed in English, upon request. As for the language use surveys, they revealed, among other things that nearly all of the students enrolled in the local French-language high school communicated in English among themselves and close to 80% of them communicated mostly or always in English with their siblings at home.
In 2012, as part of the major research project Le français à la mesure d’un continent: un patrimoine en partage, several of the surveys carried out in the 1970s in Welland will be replicated in order to assess the extent to which the various processes of language and cultural shift underway in the 1970s have intensified, a reasonable hypothesis, since during the last four decades Francophone migration to Welland has remained marginal.
References:
Beniak, É., Mougeon, R. & Valois, D. 1985. Contact des langues et changement linguistique: étude sociolinguistique du français parlé à Welland. Quebec City: International Centre for Research on Bilingualism.
Mougeon, R. & Beniak, É. 1989. Language contraction and linguistic change: the case of Welland French. In N. Dorian (ed.). Investigating obsolescence: Studies in language contraction and death. Cambridge University Press, 287-312.
Mougeon, R. & Hébrard, P. 1975. Aspects de l'assimilation linguistique dans une communauté francophone de l'Ontario. OISE Working Papers on Bilingualism, 5, 1-38.
Mougeon, R. & Canale, M. 1978. Maintien du français par les jeunes élèves franco-ontariens de Welland. In B. Cazabon (ed.). Langue maternelle langue première de communication? Sudbury: L'Institut franco-ontarien, Laurentian University, 23-28.
Schneiderman, E. 1975. Attitudinal determinants of the linguistic behavior of French-English bilinguals in Welland, Ontario, PhD dissertation, SUNY/Buffalo.