Lambs to the slaughter? Young francophones and the role of English in Quebec today
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Leigh Oakes
Abstract
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of fears concerning the status of English in Quebec. Unlike in the past, many now claim that it is francophones themselves who risk undermining the achievements of 30 years of successful status planning. The finger is pointed in particular at young francophones, accused of adopting an unfettered bilingualism and overly positive attitudes towards the global lingua franca. In an attempt to explore the veracity of the accusations, the present study makes use of a questionnaire distributed amongst 463 francophone university students in Quebec. Far from revealing an uncritical stance towards English, the results expose the diversity and complexity of the relationships maintained with the language, which serve to distinguish young francophones today from previous generations.
© 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Imbodela zamakhumsha – Reflections on standardization and destandardization
- Lambs to the slaughter? Young francophones and the role of English in Quebec today
- Can parallelingualism save Norwegian from extinction?
- Using folk songs as a source for dialect change? The pervasive effects of attitudes
- Language contact and language conflict in autochthonous language minority settings in the EU: A preliminary round-up of guiding principles and research desiderata
- Is there a European language history?
- Language variation, language change and perceptual dialectology
- Will Dutch become Flemish? Autonomous developments in Belgian Dutch
- Chaos and standards: Orthography in the Southern Netherlands (1720–1830)
- Book reviews
- Publications received
- Contents Multilingua Volume 29 (2010)
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction
- Imbodela zamakhumsha – Reflections on standardization and destandardization
- Lambs to the slaughter? Young francophones and the role of English in Quebec today
- Can parallelingualism save Norwegian from extinction?
- Using folk songs as a source for dialect change? The pervasive effects of attitudes
- Language contact and language conflict in autochthonous language minority settings in the EU: A preliminary round-up of guiding principles and research desiderata
- Is there a European language history?
- Language variation, language change and perceptual dialectology
- Will Dutch become Flemish? Autonomous developments in Belgian Dutch
- Chaos and standards: Orthography in the Southern Netherlands (1720–1830)
- Book reviews
- Publications received
- Contents Multilingua Volume 29 (2010)
