Assessing Forty Years of Language Planning on the Vitality of the Francophone and Anglophone Communities of Quebec

Type of resource
Authors/collaborators
Title
Assessing Forty Years of Language Planning on the Vitality of the Francophone and Anglophone Communities of Quebec
Abstract
The authors analyze how language laws favouring French improved the vitality of the Francophone majority relative to the declining Anglophone minority of Quebec. Dividing their essay into four parts, the authors first provide a review of the federal government's efforts to provide bilingual services to Francophones and Anglophones across Canada. Using the ethnolinguistic vitality framework, the authors then review key language policies adopted in Quebec designed to increase the status of French relative to English in the province. The authors next assess the impact of such laws on the demographic vitality of Francophones and Anglophones. Finally they analyze how such laws succeeded in reducing the institutional vitality of the Anglophone minority in Quebec, especially their English schools. They point out that pro-French laws did succeed in having 95 percent of the Quebec population maintain knowledge of French, keeping 82 percent of all its citizens as users of French at home, ensured that 90 percent of Francophone employees used French at work, increased to 70 percent French/English bilingualism amongst Anglophones and reduced the size of Quebec's English school system by 60 percent.
Publication
Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication
Volume
Vol. 36
Issue
no. 5
Pages
627-662
Date
September 2017
Language
en
URL
Citation
Bourhis, Richard Y., and Rana Sioufi. “Assessing Forty Years of Language Planning on the Vitality of the Francophone and Anglophone Communities of Quebec.” Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication Vol. 36, no. 5 (September 2017): 627–662. http://salsa.ling.utexas.edu/files/Bourhis_and_Sioufi_2017_Assessing_forty_years_of_language_planning.pdf.
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