[BRIEF NOTE] Speak white
Dec. 30th, 2007 07:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThinking about language-driven nationalist strife one night earlier this month, I came upon the full text of Michèle Lalonde's 1968 poem "Speak White" is available at Everything2. The first two stanzas are reproduced below.
The poem is heavily ironic, beginning in the tone mocking the sort of stereotypical awe that a provincial might be supposed to feel for the metropole and shifting into a sharp criticism of the links of languages--different languages, not just English--with domination. Summaries are quite possible, but as a translator at Everything2 notes the promiscuous mixture of English and French is difficult to translate for a monolingual's appreciation, and--I'd add--outside of the context of the society of "Speak White." Briefly put, Canada in the 1960s and even into the 1970s was one where Canadian bilingualism remained highly unequal, as French in Québec played an unexpectedly minor role in public and business discourse and French outside of that province scarcely counted at all. This poem's title, "Speak white," comes from the not-uncommon response of some Canadian Anglophones to the sound of French.
"Speak White" and sort of the long-buried resentments it expressed motivated radical change in Canadian language policies, with Québec adopting strongly French-promoting language laws and the federal government promoting official bilingualism as a federal government policy and across the country. The idea of perfect English/French bilingualism is likely impossible. As recent statistics indicate, considerably more Francophones speak English than the other way around, and without a massive and wholly unexpected increase in Francophone numbers there is going to be little reason for Anglophones outside of Québec and the adjacent "bilingual belt" to learn French. Even so, these relatively successful efforts at language engineering in the favour of French have arguably helped stave off Québec's secession: If federalists hadn't proved that the Canadian state could comfortably accomodate the French language and its speakers, I suspect that the 1980 referendum vote might have gone the other way. It didn't in 1980, of course, and it didn't in 1995, and I suspect that any future secession from Canada might come about out of the center's simple fatigue with holding onto all of its peripheries. That's sad but tolerable--at least Canadians won't have to confront this issue in the full spirit of resentment of the time of "Speak White."
Speak white
Il est si beau de vous entendre
Parler de Paradise Lost
Et du profil gracieux et anonyme qui tremble dans les
Sonnets de Shakespeare
Nous sommes un peuple inculte et bègue
Mais nous ne sommes pas sourds au génie d'une langue
Parlez avec l'accent de Milton et Byron et Shelley et Keats
Speak white
Et pardonnez-nous de n'avoir comme réponse
Que les chants rauques de nos ancêtres
Et le chagrin de Nelligan
The poem is heavily ironic, beginning in the tone mocking the sort of stereotypical awe that a provincial might be supposed to feel for the metropole and shifting into a sharp criticism of the links of languages--different languages, not just English--with domination. Summaries are quite possible, but as a translator at Everything2 notes the promiscuous mixture of English and French is difficult to translate for a monolingual's appreciation, and--I'd add--outside of the context of the society of "Speak White." Briefly put, Canada in the 1960s and even into the 1970s was one where Canadian bilingualism remained highly unequal, as French in Québec played an unexpectedly minor role in public and business discourse and French outside of that province scarcely counted at all. This poem's title, "Speak white," comes from the not-uncommon response of some Canadian Anglophones to the sound of French.
"Speak White" and sort of the long-buried resentments it expressed motivated radical change in Canadian language policies, with Québec adopting strongly French-promoting language laws and the federal government promoting official bilingualism as a federal government policy and across the country. The idea of perfect English/French bilingualism is likely impossible. As recent statistics indicate, considerably more Francophones speak English than the other way around, and without a massive and wholly unexpected increase in Francophone numbers there is going to be little reason for Anglophones outside of Québec and the adjacent "bilingual belt" to learn French. Even so, these relatively successful efforts at language engineering in the favour of French have arguably helped stave off Québec's secession: If federalists hadn't proved that the Canadian state could comfortably accomodate the French language and its speakers, I suspect that the 1980 referendum vote might have gone the other way. It didn't in 1980, of course, and it didn't in 1995, and I suspect that any future secession from Canada might come about out of the center's simple fatigue with holding onto all of its peripheries. That's sad but tolerable--at least Canadians won't have to confront this issue in the full spirit of resentment of the time of "Speak White."
