La transmission de la langue maternelle aux enfants : le cas des couples linguistiquement exogames du Québec

The number of unions where both partners do not share the same mother tongue has grown substantially over the last decades in Quebec. Given that children born to these unions live in a multilingual family setting, the author examines the mother tongue transmitted to these children. Using the 2006 Canadian census long-form questionnaire, she first conducted various descriptive analyses. These were intended to identify the mother tongue transmitted to children born to mixed-language unions, to ascertain whether children inherit either their mother or father's mother tongue, and to determine if a language shift occurs before the age of 18 years old, in other words whether their mother tongue differs from the principal language they use at home. In addition, through logistic regressions, the author examined the contextual, ethnocultural and socioeconomic determinants explaining the choice of the language transmitted to children. Her results show the predominance of the two official Canadian languages in mixed-language families, at the expense of non-official languages. Furthermore, she found that the choice of the mother tongue transmitted is mainly conditioned by the place of residence, the migration path of the parent(s), and the children's birthplace.

Master's Thesis

Université de Montréal

Montréal

2010

fr