In the debate on Bill 96, which seeks to modify Quebec’s language laws, I am periodically seized with a sort of almost catatonic dejection. As I have already written, I do not subscribe at all to the catastrophic theses of the demographer Charles Castonguay and the essayist Frédéric Lacroix, who decry a Frenchman in “free fall”. And when I see the entire journalistic and political class swallowing their alarmism without nuances, I am dizzy.
And then I see a few rays of sunshine in the words of sociolinguist Calvin Veltman, a retired professor from UQAM, and sociologist Jean-Pierre Corbeil, from Laval University, and that perks me up. I tell myself then that there is hope, both for Quebec and for common sense.
In fact, many researchers are beginning to consider other data to paint a much more nuanced picture of the situation of French in Quebec. In this column, we will discuss the ideas of Calvin Veltman, and I will return later to the perspective of Jean-Pierre Corbeil.
Calvin Veltman, an American of Dutch origin, came to study in Quebec in 1972 and never left. He recently came out of retirement to publish a series of studies which first show that the language transfer rate of immigrants to French is much higher than what is generally admitted. For Castonguay and Lacroix, the proportion is 53%, and that’s what everyone believes — it’s even one of the main motivations for Bill 96. Calvin Veltman, considering other data from the same censuses, comes to 75%. In other words, Quebec francizes its immigrants in a high proportion. This gap between 75% and 53% language transfer represents a major difference that calls into question several a priori of Bill 96 aimed at overhauling Quebec’s language laws, starting with the theory of decline and the idea that francization is faltering.
In Montreal, where the number of people whose mother tongue is French has been less than 50% since 2006, 66% of immigrants are heading towards French, according to Calvin Veltman. This shows how the policy that established French as a public, working or educational language is strong enough to counterbalance the exodus of French Canadians to the suburbs. I summarize, but you will enjoy consulting Veltman’s studies, which are very clear and easy to read.
Calvin Veltman, who is a demographer, sociologist and sociolinguist, comes to these conclusions by talking about numbers that others choose not to consider. For example, it takes into account not only the mother tongue and the main language used at home, but also the other language regularly used at home, when there is one. Thereby, a Spanish-speaking couple raising their children in Spanish will be considered Spanish-speaking. However, it is possible that these people also speak French or English with their children (because of the school), neighbours, visitors, etc. This question of language orientation, which Calvin Veltman measures, sheds new light on the linguistic portrait.
“Limiting oneself to the mother tongue and the main language used at home was valid in 1971, at a time when immigrants were fewer in number and did not turn much to French,” he explains. However, since that time, several things have happened. Not only are there more immigrants, but a growing proportion of them are turning to French. We know this because new questions in the censuses allow us to get a clear idea of this, in particular the one asking whether they use another language regularly. »
Yet, precisely, demographers examine little, or not at all, the question of linguistic orientation, which is nevertheless crucial in the integration of immigrants. This issue is squarely within the field of study of sociologists, who have long neglected it in Quebec, and of sociolinguists. “In the 1970s, sociology faculties in Quebec were dominated by Marxists, who considered statistical analysis to be an ideological heresy. It was the demographers who filled the void and captured the discourse. Indeed, most of the demographers who express their views are mathematicians, economists or physicists.
Calvin Veltman explains that language transfer is a sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic problem that demography struggles to grasp. This is due to the fact that demographers examine slow changes over a long period according to constant criteria, whereas linguistic mobility takes place very quickly according to changing criteria in the first five years of an immigrant in the country, as much in adults than in children. “It is a well-known and documented phenomenon in all Western countries. »
Quebec demographers will consider that language transfer has taken place when an allophone declares that French is their main language of use at home. It is in fact a very moderate and even reductive approach: a speaker must have renounced his native language to become French-speaking. In reality, explains Calvin Veltman, linguistic mobility is a process that takes place in stages, over a lifetime — and sometimes even over several generations. The allophone (or his children and grandchildren) is:
1) Initially unilingual in their native language;
2) Then the host language appears in use, but the original language remains dominant;
3) Then the two languages are more or less equal;
4) The host language then becomes dominant, but the original language is still used;
5) The host language is ultimately the only language.
“Typically, the statistician who arrives in front of immigrants who declare themselves to be bilingual allophones-francophones distributes them 50/50 between the two groups. It’s silly, because in fact, these people are on one of the rungs towards full francization. They are in transition to French. However, if we simply cut the pear in half, we introduce a statistical error that increases from one census to another. »
Calvin Veltman’s calculation methods allow him to accurately capture linguistic mobility towards French (and towards English).
So, let’s sum up: Charles Castonguay and Frédéric Lacroix do not hesitate to say that the language laws must be redone because 45 years of Bill 101 have only made it possible to achieve a language transfer level of allophones of 53% and that this percentage should be 90% (without justifying this target). Calvin Veltman shows that in reality, this rate is rather 75%, which is much closer to the target in question. “On the other hand, I would be surprised if the language transfer rate rose above 80% for the simple reason that a quarter of immigrants have English as their first language. It will always be difficult to bring English-speaking immigrants to French. But it shows that the immigrant selection policy is central to their integration. What Castonguay and Lacroix agree on.
The other thing that is poorly studied, according to him, is the interplay between French and English groups — which is also more sociolinguistic than pure demography. For 30 years, the number of unilingual Francophones and Anglophones has been declining very quickly, while the number of bilingual people is increasing very rapidly. The replacement of generations partly explains it, but the demand for bilingualism is very strong among young and old alike. This introduces misunderstood games of communicating vessels, which primarily concern sociolinguistics and even psycholinguistics. “In a way, it becomes tempting to speak of ‘non-allophones’. »
#put #decline #French #language
