The Sentinelle Affair: a Study in Multilingual Language Practices

University of Rhode Island DigitalCommons@URI Open Access Dissertations 2015 THE SENTINELLE AFFAIR: A STUDY IN MULTILINGUAL LANGUAGE PRACTICES Jason Peters University of Rhode Island, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss Recommended Citation Peters, Jason, "THE SENTINELLE AFFAIR: A STUDY IN MULTILINGUAL LANGUAGE PRACTICES" (2015). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 307. https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/307 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@URI. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@URI. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ! ! ! THE SENTINELLE! AFFAIR: A STUDY IN MULTILINGUAL! LANGUAGE PRACTICES BY! JASON PETERS! ! ! ! ! ! ! A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN !PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR! THE DEGREE OF ! DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY! IN! ENGLISH RHETORIC! AND COMPOSITION ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! UNIVERSITY OF !RHODE ISLAND 2015 ! ! ! ! ! ! DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY! DISSERTATION OF! ! JASON PETERS ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !APPROVED: !Dissertation Committee: !Co-Major Professor: Nedra Reynolds !Co-Major Professor: Caroline Gottschalk-Druschke ! Kim Hensley Owens ! Kenneth Rogers Nasser H. Zawia ! DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL ! ! ! UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND 2015 ABSTRACT Rhetorical historiography needs to disrupt existing archival arrangements of language differences. These arrangements preserve an ideology of linguistic modernity that effaces and oversimplifies the complex multilingual practices of actual language users. By disrupting the principles of selection and arrangement that make up an archive’s evidential value, rhetorical researchers can undermine ideologies of linguistic modernity and can recover an array of rhetorical resistance strategies that multilinguals have historically taken towards the political and socioeconomic dominance of English. This project does this disruptive work by analyzing the multisitedness of Mount St. Charles, a Catholic high school in Rhode Island. In its original planning and construction, Mount St. Charles was viewed on one hand as part of a system of English-language diocesan high schools and on the other hand as part of a system of French-language écoles des hautes études. The project thus constructs Mount St. Charles as a site of interaction for local linguistic and material economies through which the socioeconomic value of French literacy and English literacy were negotiated in relation to each other. The project opens a space in which researchers in rhetoric and composition can begin to write translingual histories of language difference in the United States. Using the disruptive and multisited methods of this project, other researchers can critically engage the historical suppression of multilingual identifications in the construction of whiteness. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the tireless support of my co-major professors, Dr. Nedra Reynolds and Dr. Caroline Gottschalk-Druschke. I hope that seeing the development of my thought has been as rewarding for them as their guidance and advice has been helpful for me. Dr. Kenneth Rogers first directed me to the archives of the Emmanuel d’Alzon Library at Assumption College. These archives—both the collections of the French Institute and the USJB collections held there—were central to this dissertation. I would not have embarked on this project without the encouragement of Dr. John Trimbur. Our conversations over the years have had an enormous impact on my ability to think translingually. The influence of those conversations is on every page of this dissertation. Many scholars and archivists of Franco-American history guided me in my attempts to navigate the multilingual seas of French-English relations in North America. In particular, the work of Robert Perreault, former archivist for the Association Canado-Américaine (ACA), was helpful to my analysis of Daignault’s writing style in chapter three. Dr. Leslie Choquette, director of the French Institute at Assumption College, guided me in my attempts to understand the ideology of la survivance. Dr. Choquette and Nina Tsantinis, the archivist for the French Institute, pointed me to the Paul P. Chassé Papers, which form the basis of chapter four. Elizabeth Maisey—the archivist in charge of processing the Union St. Jean Baptiste Archives for the d’Alzon Library—arranged permission for me to photograph five of the scrapbooks in the USJB Archives in their entirety. I cannot describe how important !iii it was for me to have complete digital copies of these scrapbooks while writing. The depth of my analyses and my ability to cross-reference a range of historical artifacts are due in large part to Liz’s assistance. The many librarians of the Robert L. Carothers Library at the University of Rhode Island; the John D. Rockefeller Library at Brown University; and the James P. Adams Library at Rhode Island College all cheerfully fulfilled two years worth of semi-weekly interlibrary loan requests on my behalf. The librarians at the Rhode Island Historical Society guided me through the Society’s unmatched collection of Rhode Island newspapers in both French and English. The U.S. Department of Education’s Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program substantially funded four years of doctoral study. The Javits Fellowship enabled me to pursue a wide range of coursework throughout the humanities and social sciences over the first two years of my degree. This firm grounding in rhetoric and composition; linguistics; history; and English literary study helped me formulate this dissertation as a truly interdisciplinary project. Finally, I want to thank my wife, Amy, and my two children, Elliot and Phineas. My wife is the only person who really knows what this work demanded from us and the only person who can see how much of me is in it. Her unconditional love and unwavering support is a daily gift. In a way, I wrote this dissertation to explain to our children why their mémere speaks French but their father does not. Kids, I finally “did my dissertation.” Now on to our next adventure. !iv ! ! ! ! ! ! ! For Amy and pour nos enfants v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………iii DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………v TABLE OF CONTENTS………………………………………………………………..vi LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………….vii CHAPTER 1……………………………………………………………………………..1 STUDYING LANGUAGE IN THE ARCHIVES………………………………..1 CHAPTER 2……………………………………………………………………………37 LANGUAGE IDEOLOGIES AND LINGUISTIC PURIFICATION ………….37 CHAPTER 3……………………………………………………………………………74 LANGUAGE PRACTICES IN LOCAL ECONOMIES.……………………… 74 CHAPTER 4…………………………………………………………………………..104 DISRUPTING REGIMES OF LINGUISTIC MODERNITY…………………104 CHAPTER 5………………………………………………………………………..…137 WRITING TRANSLINGUAL HISTORIES………………………………..…137 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………….163 vi LIST OF FIGURES FIGURE PAGE Figure 1. Woonsocket Harris Public Library . .1 Figure 2. Page 193 of La Controverse du Rhode Island, Volume 3, scrapbook XVI of the USJB archives, d’Alzon Library, Assumption College (MA) . 18 Figure 3. Page 183 of La Campagne du Mont St.-Charles du Sacré Coeur, scrapbook XIII of the USJB archives, d’Alzon Library, Assumption College (MA) . .19 Figure 4. A Sentinellist demonstration at Cass Park in Woonsocket, RI . .37 Figure 5. A chronology of the Sentinelle Affair . .42 Figure 6. An artist’s rendering of Le Mont St-Charles du Sacré Coeur, or Mount St. Charles Academy . .45 Figure 7. William A. Hickey, bishop of the diocese of Providence during the Sentinelle Affair. (La Tribune). .47 Figure 8. Front page of the first issue (4/4/1924) of La Sentinelle, bearing the motto “For Our Children” (Pour Nos Enfants) and containing a benediction from Cardinal Begin, Archbishop of Québec. The first headline reads “In Support of the Language Spoken by Our Fathers.” . 50 Figure 9. Central figures of the French élite involved in the Sentinelle Affair: Daignault, Vézina, Jalbert, Hémond, and Foisy.. .53 Figure 10. English language high schools in the Providence diocese during the Sentinelle Affair. .77 !vii Figure 11. A small sample of secondary and post-secondary schools across the US- Québec border during the Sentinelle Affair. Belanger (1922) lists forty academies, séminaires, and collèges located in New England and Québec. 79 Figure 12. The stratification of language varieties in Woonsocket during the Sentinelle Affair. .89 Figure 13. Historical trajectories of L2 writing and composition studies. .145 Figure 14. Multilingual writing in the convergence of composition studies and ESL/L2 writing. .148 Figure 15. Re-imagining institutional structures and pedagogical practices for writing instruction.. .153 !viii !1 CHAPTER 1 ! STUDYING LANGUAGE IN THE ARCHIVES ! Re-arranging the Archive Woonsocket, Rhode Island, is a small, former textile manufacturing city in the Blackstone River Valley of southeastern New England. Its Harris Public Library is housed in a sprawling, 1970s-era brick and concrete building in the city’s Social Flatlands, a central district of incredibly flat land that was redeveloped in the 1960s into a small financial center. The library’s building looks like most suburban office space from the period (see Figure 1). Rows of large, rectangular plate-glass windows Figure 1. Woonsocket Harris Public Library. (Photo courtesy of the author) !2 convey a kind of institutional order and stability

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