Official Bilingualism Policy and Bilinguals

Abstract

<bold>Lee, Seung-Ryul. 2018. Official Bilingualism Policy and Bilinguals, <italic>Asian Journal of Canadian Studies</italic>, 24-2. 73-95</bold>. Bilingualism is believed to be one of key identities of Canada. Unlike our expectation, bilingualism may not be a real face in provinces except New Brunswick where English and French are official languages. This paper attempts to look into the data about bilingualism issued by Statistics Canada which reveals realities of bilinguals in terms of regions and ages. The results suggest that the ratio of bilinguals has increased a little since 2011 and has, particularly, increased in the provinces near Quebec. The study also found that, reviewing the bilingualism rate of the school-age populations, the bilingual rate reached its height at the ages between 10 and 14 years old. This is consistent with the so-called critical period hypothesis in language acquisition.