Les frontières linguistiques à Québec : le rôle des interactions scolaires

The Quebec English-speaking population has always formed a demographic minority. Comprising twenty-five percent of the population at Confederation, this proportion declined to 8.2 percent by 2006. However, the author argues that English Quebecers only started to perceive themselves as a minority in the 1970s. Until now there have been few studies on their "minority" status from the perspective of ethnic boundaries established by social agents in local interactive situations. The author examines linguistic boundaries negotiated in the context of Quebec City, based on the narrative of young adults who attended English high school there. She claims that the qualitative interviews that she conducted in 2008–2009 with thirty-three young adults suggest a clear boundary between Francophones and Anglophones — a boundary which was reinforced by the very manner in which the Francophone "Other" regarded their English school counterparts in Quebec.

Canadian Ethnic Studies/Études ethniques au Canada

Vols. 41-42

no. 3-1

109-130

2009-2010

fr