The Language Crisis: An Exchange of Views

Abstract

This is a brief response to the two articles by Charles Castonguay and Roderic P. Beaujot which appeared in the Winter 197 9 issue. Although readers may be growing weary of linguistic problems and policies, a topic on which this journal has published five articles in less than a year, I hope they will bear with me for one more comment. My reason for asking them to do so arises from the fact that the Castonguay and Beaujot articles are almost identical in viewpoint and my conviction that the alternative point of view deserves to be heard. The essential argument of both Castonguay and Beaujot can be summarized in four propositions, as follows: (1) The French language is weak, and growing weaker in most of Canada. (2) Therefore, most of Canada should be officially English unilingual. (3) The English language is strong, and growing stronger, in Quebec. (4) Therefore, Quebec should be officially French unilingual. Since logic is often alleged to be a French virtue, the fallacy of this argument is presumably apparent to the authors, although they may have hoped it would escape the attention of anglophone readers. Moreover, the factual basis for the argument is just as weak as the logical connections between its parts. It is probably true that the French language outside of Quebec is still in danger, although we will only be able to assess the real effect, if any, of the Trudeau policies when we are in a position to compare the 1981 census data with those of 1971.However, there is no basis at all for the assertion, frequently made by Quebec nationalists, that French is losing ground in Quebec itself. Castonguay actually refers to an 'existing net trend towards anglicisation in Acadia and even in Quebec itself, especially in the core Montreal area.' However, the first of the tables that accompany Beaujot's article suggests a different conclusion. If the numbers of Quebec residents having English, French, and other mother tongues in 1976 are compared with the numbers in 1971, a simple calculation reveals that French mother tongue increased by 4.4 per cent in the five year period prior to the victory of the Parti Quebecois, while English increased by only 3.3 per cent and 'others' actually decreased (for the first time in history) by 8.4 per cent. Since the English group in Quebec augments itself by assimilating immigrants, and not to any significant extent by assimilating francophones, this indicates that the pool of potential anglophones in Quebec is diminishing. In fact the table also reveals that the absolute number of persons with mother tongues other than French diminished slightly in Quebec between 1971 and 1976. It will probably have diminished considerably by 1981. One problem in attempting to conduct a rational dialogue with Quebec nationalists is the fact that almost any assertion about Quebec's anglophone minority can be used as the basis for a nationalist argument. If the anglophone minority is strong, the nationalists argue that this proves the existence of undeserved privileges that should be taken away from it. If the anglophone minority is weak, the nationalists argue that it can be ignored as part of some new accommodation between Quebec and the rest of Canada. Castonguay indeed assures us that a sell-out of the Quebec anglophones (euphemistically described as 'a language policy based on the principle of territorial bilingualism') could 'help to alleviate the basic