Assessing forty years of language planning on the vitality of the Francophone and Anglophone communities of Quebec

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyses how language laws favouring French improved the vitality of the Francophone majority relative to the declining Anglophone minority of Quebec. Part one provides a review of Canadian Government efforts to provide federal bilingual services to Francophones and Anglophones across Canada. Using the ethnolinguistic vitality framework, part two reviews key language policies adopted in Quebec designed to increase the status of French relative to English in the province, while part 3 assesses the impact of such laws on the demographic vitality of Francophones and Anglophones. Part 4 analyse how such laws succeeded in reducing the institutional vitality of the Anglophone minority especially their English schools. Pro-French laws did succeed in having 95 % of the Quebec population maintain knowledge of French, keeping 82 % of all its citizens as users of French at home, ensured that 90 % of Francophone employees used French at work, increased to 70 % French/English bilingualism amongst Anglophones and reduced the size of their English school system by 60 %. Nationalist discourse highlights threats to French, given that Quebec Francophones remain a linguistic minority in North America. Can Francophones accept a ‘paradigm shift’ by reframing their position from a