Malbay: A Sociolinguistic Community Study

The results of the author's eight-month study (circa early 1970s) of the small, linguistically-mixed (bilingual) community of Malbay in the county of Gaspé East. His study is divided into three parts. The first deals with the three related questions of bilingualism, language maintenance and language use in Gaspe and in Malbay. The study of Malbay involves a detailed comparison of all the households of the community at two different points in time (1925 and 1970). It provides a clearer understanding of bilingualism and language maintenance. The two phenomena are shown to be primarily conditioned by a combination of demographic, economic and attitudinal factors. In the second part, the language attitudes of the community are described in detail. The author found that Malbay Anglophones and Francophones hold a number of fairly homogeneous and stereotyped attitudes to the local language varieties, to standard English and standard French, to the local language use and to the various aspects of bilingualism. The third part of the study is a description of the pronunciation, vocabulary and syntax of Malbay English. The author points out that Malbay English exhibits a number of features which have already been found to characterize other varieties of Canadian English. Interestingly, he argues, it also contains a substantial proportion of linguistic items which have probably been borrowed from the French language.

PhD dissertation

McGill University

Montreal

1973

xii-196p.

en