Too much French? Not enough French?: The Vancouver Olympics and a very Canadian language ideological debate
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Rachelle Vessey
Abstract
This paper discusses a language ideological debate that took place in Canadian national newspapers following the opening ceremonies for the 2011 Vancouver Olympics. Reports on the insufficient use of French during the opening ceremonies sparked protest from politicians, official commentators, citizens and online newsreaders alike. Previous research has suggested that language ideological ‘debates’ (i.e. overt manifestations of ideologies) are a useful site for studying the role that languages play in the construction of social groups (see Blommaert 1999a, b). In Canada, a national cliché is that Canadian identity is fractured both linguistically and geographically. Thus, the debate over the status of French in the Vancouver Olympics involves not only ideologies of language, but also ideologies of identity and belonging. An analysis of this language ideological debate, then, can shed light on the often naturalised and commonsensical understandings of Canadian national identity. The data consist of articles and commentary drawn from two national newspapers (The Globe and Mail and Le Devoir). The findings suggest some of the ways in which languages are represented as unifying and dividing characteristics of Canadian identity, representations of which often differ according to the language of the newspaper.
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Masthead
- Articles
- Bilingual voicing: A study of code-switching in the reported speech of Finnish immigrants in Estonia
- How to talk about languages: The venues metaphor
- Maya the Bee, Scooby Doo and other stories: How the public and private distinction is depicted in children’s bidialectal interactions in kindergarten
- Too much French? Not enough French?: The Vancouver Olympics and a very Canadian language ideological debate
- Children’s language input: A study of a remote multilingual Indigenous Australian community
- Book reviews
- Obituary for Shoshana Blum-Kulka
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Masthead
- Masthead
- Articles
- Bilingual voicing: A study of code-switching in the reported speech of Finnish immigrants in Estonia
- How to talk about languages: The venues metaphor
- Maya the Bee, Scooby Doo and other stories: How the public and private distinction is depicted in children’s bidialectal interactions in kindergarten
- Too much French? Not enough French?: The Vancouver Olympics and a very Canadian language ideological debate
- Children’s language input: A study of a remote multilingual Indigenous Australian community
- Book reviews
- Obituary for Shoshana Blum-Kulka
