What is it about?
We use Canadian census and other evidence to assess impact of the 1977 Quebec pro-French law known as Bill 101. After forty years, Bill 101 succeeded in having 95% of Quebec population know French, ensure 95% of Francophones employees use French at work, maintaining 82% of population use French at home, increase to 70% French/English bilingualism amongst Anglophones & reduce size of English school system by 60%.
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Why is it important?
Forty years of language planning succeeded in improving status and use of French while contributing to decline of the English-speaking minority of Quebec. Yet, nationalist discourse highlights that French remains threatened in Quebec. Can Francophone majority accept a 'paradigm shift' by reframing their position from a 'fragile majority' to a 'dominant majority' with responsabilities to better include its linguistic and ethnic minorities within Quebec society?
Perspectives
After a book on conflict and language planning in Quebec in the 1980s and another on the decline and prospects of the English-speaking communities of Quebec published this decade, it was time to assess forty years of language planning in Quebec within a single article honoring the memory and scholarship of Professor Joshua Fishman who did so much for language minorites around the world.
Professor Richard Y Bourhis
Université du Québec à Montréal
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Assessing forty years of language planning on the vitality of the Francophone and Anglophone communities of Quebec, Multilingua, January 2017, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/multi-2017-3048.
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