Place Identity and Language Spaces : Anglophone Quebecers and the Negotiation of Linguistic Frontiers within the Context of Bill 101 at 40

The author notes that the Charter of the French Language (Bill 101) is a dynamic site for the ongoing production of French, English, bilingual, multilingual, and Allophone identities, giving the English-speaking communities of Quebec (ESCQ) a spatial and social platform to challenge the cultural and political hegemony of the French majority. She explains that while Bill 101 functions to protect and promote the French language, the English-speaking population as a group use the Charter as a place for identity building and to question the integration or not of their communities within the institutions and discourses of Quebec. Through two conceptual frameworks — the “language group vitality perspective” (Giles et al., 1977) and the “cultural autonomy model” of Landry et al. (2007), along with a “socio-geographical approach,” the author investigates how English-speaking Quebecers live and imagine their identity as a linguistic minority on a daily basis at the organizational level. The author argues that, in the wake of Bill 101, a number of grassroots and community groups have emerged over the past forty years whose purpose is to negotiate the language frontiers among and between Anglo-Quebecers and the French majority with the ultimate goal of constructing their identities as participatory members of society.

La Charte : La loi 101 et les Québécois d’expression anglaise / The Charter : Bill 101 and English-Speaking Quebec

Québec

Presses de l’Université Laval

2021

397-416

en

978-2-7637-5436-9