[FISKING] Sociolinguistics for Dummies
Oct. 22nd, 2003 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFrom the inimitable National Post comes this article, "Sun, sand and bilingualism":
There's nothing at all wrong with the first paragraph; that's a simple statement of statistical facts.
The second paragraph, though, misses the whole point about the reasons for the growth of Francophone communities in the United States. For these, see below.
The editorial writers of the National Post seem not to have noticed the distinction between population growth through immigration and popular growth through natural increase. It is quite possible to have extraordinarily rapid population growth--73% per decade, if you'd like--through massive immigration; in the United Arab Emirates in the past half-century, population growth was 7.4 percent per annum. That situation, though, has very little relevance to the situation facing First World populations, which either experience static or even negative growth. In these situations, immigration has only a marginal effect on demographic patterns dominated overwhelmingly by natural growth.
Moreover, the Francophone communities of New Brunswick and Ontario (the former especially) have a much longer history than the Francophone communtiy of Florida. In Ontario, large Francophone communities date to the mid-nineteenth century; in New Brunswick, these date back to the seventeenth century. In Florida, by contrast, the Francophone population seems to have emerged from nothing in the mid-20th century as a consequence of Francophone immigration; the mid-16th century Huguenot settlers didn't survive long enough to leave any progeny. There is a much denser institutional network (public and private) in both Canadian provinces than in Florida, and despite the problems of assimilation and governmental ignorance these two communities are likely to survive in some shape.
(That Franco-Ontarians and Acadians often form cohesive majority populations in their homelands is also a definite plus in their favour.)
Making large language community grow quickly through immigration is easy. This happened earlier with Canadian Francophones, in fact, as the history of the Franco-Americans of New England shows. Keeping them intact, however, is quite another thing, again as the Franco-Americans show.
This is a ridiculously incorrect reading of the reasons for the decline of the French language in Louisiana. Briefly put, Louisiana--50-50 bilingual on the eve of the Civil War--has seen the use of French collapse as Anglo-American influence in the state has expanded, the Créole culture of the lower Mississippi valley and New Orleans has declined, and factors promoting assimilation have grown. To quote the Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture:
Trying to promoting the use of French and trying to institute French immersion programs is, far from being destructive to the French heritage of Louisiana, probably the only plausible way to reserve the decline of the French language. When inter-generational language retention reaches 9%, of course, the future for a language communtiy is fairly low, while the recent Franco-American diplomatic spat might only have accelerated the decline of la francophonie louisianaise.
It matters very little inasmuch as Francophones outside of Québec, and more so Canada, are concerned. It does matter very much, though, inasmuch as Francophones remaining in Québec, and Canada, are concerned.
Yes, there are a third of a million Francophones living in Florida. No one is disputing that. The important question, however, is how long they and their descendants will continue to speak French. To quote Roger A. Roy's excellent thesis (PDF format) on Franco-American history:
Unfortunately, as Franco-Americans became socially mobile and moved outside of their organizations, a coherent Francophone communtiy collapsed. Again, in Roy's words:
And the Francophone community of Florida seems to lack both the dense institutional structure and the cultural difference that kept a Franco-American community alive in New England for a century.
That's a fairly big difference, and important, too, since there are 150 thousand Haitians known to live in Florida, and since between economic and political chaos there's a lot of migration potential in Haiti. To say nothing of the peculiar language situation, which means (among other things) that most Haitians have a Francophone identity despite speaking Creole.
A side note: Louisiana's Francophone population, on the eve of the Civil War, was divided between Cajuns, Creoles, and Creole-speakers of African descent. This division did nothing to reinforce the unity and solidarity of that language community.
Economic gaps beside, Florida has an immense advantage over Québec in that it's much closer to Haiti than Québec. Illegal immigration is so much easier when you need only take a boat and travel a few hundred kilometers than take a plane and travel a few thousand.
In any case, the effect that this immigration has on language policy is irrelevant. Canadian bilingualism seeks to ensure that, where possible, Anglophones and Francophones can receive service in their language of choice. Québec language policies seek to promote the role of the French language in Québec society. Immigration is generally a secondary factor in these, save in Montréal where the provincial government has been trying to ensure fluency in French on the part of immigrants (and, by and large, succeeding).
This paragraph should have been dropped into another editorial--say, one examining the need for the economies of Francophone northern New Brunswick or eastern Ontario to be prosperous, so that they can keep their Francophone populations at home rather than losing them to assimilation in Anglophone-majority settings.
No, I retract this; it's too confused to be put into any single editorial. It seeks to address multiple different, disconnected points:
1. The need for the economies of Francophone areas--especially Francophone minority areas--to thrive in order to discourage emigration and assimilation. (No dispute here.)
2. The question of whether or not it's a good idea (not sociolinguistically, but in terms of political rights) to make the children of non-Francophone immigrants in Québec attend French-language schools, in order to discourage a wholesale shift towards English and to encourage the growth of a multicultural Francophone community in Montreal. (I accept it as a necessary evil.)
3. The need to have attractive Francophone business and cultural opportunities to attract people, whether Francophones or non-Francophones, into joining a Francophone language community. (Again, no dispute here; the National Post doesn't even differ from Québec's official policies.)
I have to wonder why, between the utter lack of knowledge about the formation and maintenance of language communities and the reiteration of standard bromides, this editorial was ever written.
This was fun. Now, back to work.
Looking for growing and thriving communities of francophones? Start your search along Florida's panhandle, or in Vero Beach or Homosassa. Or look in Plattsburgh, N.Y., St. Albans, Vt., or Dover, N.H.
While Canada's French-speaking population inches up slowly, if at all, francophone enclaves in Florida, New York, New England and even California are surging -- and all without cultural subsidies, legal protection, language police or second-language classes for bureaucrats.
There's nothing at all wrong with the first paragraph; that's a simple statement of statistical facts.
The second paragraph, though, misses the whole point about the reasons for the growth of Francophone communities in the United States. For these, see below.
During the 1990s, the number of French Floridians jumped 73%, vaulting the Sunshine State ahead of Ontario and New Brunswick as the largest centre of the French language in North America outside Quebec. During the same decade in Canada, the number of French-speakers grew less than 5%, slower than population growth as a whole. The flourishing of language and culture would seem to have little to do with the billions wasted by governments -- especially by Ottawa -- on linguistic gerrymandering.
The editorial writers of the National Post seem not to have noticed the distinction between population growth through immigration and popular growth through natural increase. It is quite possible to have extraordinarily rapid population growth--73% per decade, if you'd like--through massive immigration; in the United Arab Emirates in the past half-century, population growth was 7.4 percent per annum. That situation, though, has very little relevance to the situation facing First World populations, which either experience static or even negative growth. In these situations, immigration has only a marginal effect on demographic patterns dominated overwhelmingly by natural growth.
Moreover, the Francophone communities of New Brunswick and Ontario (the former especially) have a much longer history than the Francophone communtiy of Florida. In Ontario, large Francophone communities date to the mid-nineteenth century; in New Brunswick, these date back to the seventeenth century. In Florida, by contrast, the Francophone population seems to have emerged from nothing in the mid-20th century as a consequence of Francophone immigration; the mid-16th century Huguenot settlers didn't survive long enough to leave any progeny. There is a much denser institutional network (public and private) in both Canadian provinces than in Florida, and despite the problems of assimilation and governmental ignorance these two communities are likely to survive in some shape.
(That Franco-Ontarians and Acadians often form cohesive majority populations in their homelands is also a definite plus in their favour.)
Making large language community grow quickly through immigration is easy. This happened earlier with Canadian Francophones, in fact, as the history of the Franco-Americans of New England shows. Keeping them intact, however, is quite another thing, again as the Franco-Americans show.
Tellingly, the one place in the United States with a significant francophone presence that has seen that presence decrease in recent years is Louisiana, the one state in which government has intervened to preserve French. In the past decade and a half, Louisiana taxpayers have funded Cajun cultural centres and Creole instruction in public schools. They have paid for French theatre and music, and even aided community programs aimed at encouraging young Cajuns to learn about their roots and ancestral tongue. All of this has accompanied a 25% decline in the use of French in the state since 1990.
This is a ridiculously incorrect reading of the reasons for the decline of the French language in Louisiana. Briefly put, Louisiana--50-50 bilingual on the eve of the Civil War--has seen the use of French collapse as Anglo-American influence in the state has expanded, the Créole culture of the lower Mississippi valley and New Orleans has declined, and factors promoting assimilation have grown. To quote the Encyclopedia of Cajun Culture:
Census data indicates that about eight-five percent of Cajuns born between 1906 and 1910 spoke French as their primary language. In 1916, however, the state board of education banned the use of French in public classrooms; in 1921 legislators confirmed the ban in a new state constitution. As a result, many educators subjected Cajun students to humiliating punishments for daring to speak their traditional language at school. In addition, twentieth-century Cajuns were increasingly exposed to powerful Americanizing forces (such as compulsory military service, radio and television, the coming of interstate highways and "the jet age," and so on). Because of these factors, the percentage of Cajuns speaking French as a first language dropped considerably, particularly after 1940. Today few young Cajuns speak French: of those born between 1976 and 1980, for instance, slightly less than nine percent speak French as a first language. Overall, only about thirty-one percent of present-day Cajuns speak French as their primary language. In fact, most Cajuns speak little or no French.
Trying to promoting the use of French and trying to institute French immersion programs is, far from being destructive to the French heritage of Louisiana, probably the only plausible way to reserve the decline of the French language. When inter-generational language retention reaches 9%, of course, the future for a language communtiy is fairly low, while the recent Franco-American diplomatic spat might only have accelerated the decline of la francophonie louisianaise.
Francophones are attracted by the same inducements that entice other Canadians to move south: low taxes and job opportunities -- and warm sunshine, in the case of Florida. The exhortations and chastisements of Sheila Copps, Ottawa's Heritage Minister, or the government of the day in Quebec City, the federal Commissioner of Official Languages or Quebec's infamous French-language sign enforcers matter very little in the end.
It matters very little inasmuch as Francophones outside of Québec, and more so Canada, are concerned. It does matter very much, though, inasmuch as Francophones remaining in Québec, and Canada, are concerned.
And so, apparently, do efforts that cost hundreds of millions to make government offices bilingual. Not a single government office in Florida formally offers service in English and French, and yet 337,605 French speakers reside in the state.
Yes, there are a third of a million Francophones living in Florida. No one is disputing that. The important question, however, is how long they and their descendants will continue to speak French. To quote Roger A. Roy's excellent thesis (PDF format) on Franco-American history:
As the Twentieth Century began, French-Canadians numbered over 500,000 in New England (Roby, 1990), and over 700,000 throughout the United States (Wade, 1955). They had constructed their own churches, and they had built their own school system. There were seventy five parochial schools (Quintal, 1990). They worked, shopped, studied, and prayed in French. They were segregated into "little Canadas" in every state in New England. They were poor, but beginning to move up the economic ladder (Ducharme, 1943; Roby, 1990). Many were safely established in the middle class. By concentrating on la survivance, they were succeeding in America without being assimilated into the great melting pot. They stood apart, humble but proud. They had survived; they had made it their way.
Unfortunately, as Franco-Americans became socially mobile and moved outside of their organizations, a coherent Francophone communtiy collapsed. Again, in Roy's words:
In my personal experience, from the standpoint of both commercium and commensalitas French-Canadian language and culture is dead throughout New England. Although there are still over 300,000 people in New England who admit to speaking French occasionally in the home, they are dispersed so much that only three cities have concentrations over 10,000. Lewiston Maine, Manchester New Hampshire, and Boston Massachusetts are the three identified in the 1990 U.S. census, but it is only in the first two cities named that the people identified are of French-Canadian descent (Giguere, 1994). Except for a few isolated places like the St. John Valley in northern Maine, it is practically impossible to conduct business or to visit socially completely in French. It is extremely difficult to find families where each and every family member is at ease conversing in French (Quintal, 1996). Even in northern Maine, efforts are being made to restore the French language before it is completely extinct. The efforts of Le Club Francais and the French Immersion Program in School Administrative Districts 24 and 33 and in the Madawaska School District are specifically designed to reinvigorate the French language before it dies as it has in other areas of Maine.
And the Francophone community of Florida seems to lack both the dense institutional structure and the cultural difference that kept a Franco-American community alive in New England for a century.
True, Haitians have recently surpassed sun-seeking Montreal retirees as Florida's prime source of francophone immigrants.
That's a fairly big difference, and important, too, since there are 150 thousand Haitians known to live in Florida, and since between economic and political chaos there's a lot of migration potential in Haiti. To say nothing of the peculiar language situation, which means (among other things) that most Haitians have a Francophone identity despite speaking Creole.
A side note: Louisiana's Francophone population, on the eve of the Civil War, was divided between Cajuns, Creoles, and Creole-speakers of African descent. This division did nothing to reinforce the unity and solidarity of that language community.
But even that fact lays bare the futility of official language policy. Quebec has a deal with Ottawa that permits the province to control immigration in the province. It has always used this control to favour fluently French newcomers -- among them, Haitians. But Haitians could stay home if they wanted a tropical climate. They are attracted to Orlando over Trois-Rivières by the job prospects, and pay not a whit's attention to language policy.
Economic gaps beside, Florida has an immense advantage over Québec in that it's much closer to Haiti than Québec. Illegal immigration is so much easier when you need only take a boat and travel a few hundred kilometers than take a plane and travel a few thousand.
In any case, the effect that this immigration has on language policy is irrelevant. Canadian bilingualism seeks to ensure that, where possible, Anglophones and Francophones can receive service in their language of choice. Québec language policies seek to promote the role of the French language in Québec society. Immigration is generally a secondary factor in these, save in Montréal where the provincial government has been trying to ensure fluency in French on the part of immigrants (and, by and large, succeeding).
If Canada and Quebec want their French communities to thrive, they must first ensure those communities' economies thrive, rather than worrying instead about whether the sons and daughters of non-francophones must attend French public schools or if speeding tickets are printed in both "official" languages. Assimilation of newcomers into the French culture of those communities will come naturally as those newcomers seek entry into the business and social establishments and realize facility with French is the admission price. Languages can no more be centrally controlled than economies.
This paragraph should have been dropped into another editorial--say, one examining the need for the economies of Francophone northern New Brunswick or eastern Ontario to be prosperous, so that they can keep their Francophone populations at home rather than losing them to assimilation in Anglophone-majority settings.
No, I retract this; it's too confused to be put into any single editorial. It seeks to address multiple different, disconnected points:
1. The need for the economies of Francophone areas--especially Francophone minority areas--to thrive in order to discourage emigration and assimilation. (No dispute here.)
2. The question of whether or not it's a good idea (not sociolinguistically, but in terms of political rights) to make the children of non-Francophone immigrants in Québec attend French-language schools, in order to discourage a wholesale shift towards English and to encourage the growth of a multicultural Francophone community in Montreal. (I accept it as a necessary evil.)
3. The need to have attractive Francophone business and cultural opportunities to attract people, whether Francophones or non-Francophones, into joining a Francophone language community. (Again, no dispute here; the National Post doesn't even differ from Québec's official policies.)
I have to wonder why, between the utter lack of knowledge about the formation and maintenance of language communities and the reiteration of standard bromides, this editorial was ever written.
This was fun. Now, back to work.
