Bilingualism and Language Contact

JULIA SWAN REED COLLEGE 9.22.2016 Structural Diffusion

— Winford Ch. 3 — Heine & Kuteva (2003) Case Study: le Chiac

— Le Chiac is a contact variety emerging from French and English contact in Eastern Canada.

— It is a vernacular variety with significant lexical borrowing and some structural borrowing.

— Perrot (1994 and 1995)’s analysis views it as having Acadian French structure with English borrowings and structures systematically incorporated; King views it as only mildly influenced by English (2000, 2005, and 2008).

— It is widely used in the urban center, Moncton, especially among young people.

— Has been called “a relexified, mixed code” (Gérin 1984). Case Study: le Chiac

Historical Aspects — L’Acadie formerly included territories of the modern provinces of New Brunswick, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. — Francophones from centre-ouest first established colonies in eastern Canada in 1604 , in isolation from Quebecois settlements. — Seven Years War or the French and Indian War led to attacks on French Acadian colonies causing the cessation of French territory to the English (1713 Treaty of Utrecht). — French who refused to declare loyalty to British crown were forced out - Le Grand Dérangement or The Great Upheaval (1755). — Exodus of French population, scattering some to Quebec others to Louisiana, other remote parts of the region.

Tumultuous history for French speakers; long history of contact and conflict with the English. Case Study: le Chiac Case Study: le Chiac

Social Characteristics and Demographics — Native Francophones represented 34.5% of the population of New Brunswick (2001 Census); 31.9% in (2011 Census). — Largest French-speaking minority outside of Quebec. — Only French-English bilingual province. — Unequally distributed throughout the province: Francophones concentrated in the Northwest, adjacent to the Quebec border. — French zones include rural areas, smaller towns; largest urban centers have more English contact and proximity to the U.S. border.

le Chiac: A Case Study

Anglophone prestige — Though possibly mediated by other factors, the French population tends to have lower educational attainment and lower rates of white-collar jobs. — English is increasingly seen as a means to social access, and socioeconomic success. — Prominent in the business world. — Immigrants tend to choose English rather than French.

Case Study: le Chiac

Linguistic Insecurity Bretégnier (1993): “a general feeling of inferiority, or in any case, of discomfort related to using a language or a variety” (translation mine). Standard French and English are both more highly valued than Acadien French or the vernacular le Chiac.

— « parfois j’ai de la misère à trouver soit la bonne la bonne expression le bon mot au bon moment... la plupart du temps, je prendrai, je me servirai d’une expression anglaise »

— « je réalise là que tout suite je trouve pas que je maîtrise ni une ni l’autre, pis pour moi c’est important, comme si je va parler anglais ils vont dire, ah, t’as un accent français, pis si je parle le français il va dire, ah, t’as un accent anglais, ça me dérange vraiment »

Case Study: le Chiac

— Tension between le Chiac as a stigma and as a marker of local identity — Boudreau (1996, 1998) and Keppie (2002) suggest that language attitudes could be changing toward le Chiac. — Metalinguistic commentary about the stabilization of the variety (in particular between Perrot 1991 and 2005); this is ‘real’ Chiac — Positive value for local identity Case Study: le Chiac

Acadien French Standard English French Case Study: le Chiac

Factors in Language Maintenance and Shift Evidence of Acadian French shift: — Exogamy — Languages adopted by new immigrants — Media and popular culture — Generational effects (Allard and Landry 1998) — Language of education (Boucher-Marchand 1997) Evidence of Acadian French maintenance: — Emphasis on folk art/cultural history Case Study: le Chiac

Structural Features Verbal paradigm differs from Standard French or Quebecois French Le Chiac has adopted: English discourse markers (Roy 1979) English quantifiers and pronominal material Nouns Verbs Examples (see accompanying handout) Case Study: le Chiac

— Considering Thomason & Kaufman’s scale, where would you place le Chiac? — What types of speech domains do you think Chiac occupies (think back to Fishman)? — How does this impact its status? — How do we differentiate examples like those in Dekshoo by Radio, Radio from code-switching? — How can we tell when lexical/structural/grammatical change is really “contact-induced?” — If we call this code-switching and not borrowing, is the overall effect on the language different?