Je suis franco-ontarienne! (by Dr Caroline Payant)

Caroline Payant, our second guest blogger this week, est professeure au Département de didactique des langues de l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Ses recherches portent sur la mobilisation des ressources linguistiques des apprenants plurilingues dans différents contextes de communication et d’apprentissage ainsi que sur la discrimination linguistique en contextes éducatifs auprès des minorités linguistiques. Elle est la vice-présidente de l’AQEFLS et de l’Association canadienne de linguistique appliquée (ACLA). Depuis 2020, elle est co-rédactrice en chef de la Revue de l’AQEFLS. 

This blog post includes a linked audio file. Just click on the link below if you would like to hear the post read aloud. Scroll down to read the text.

J’ai toujours eu l’occasion de vivre dans des villes et des pays où les gens me demandaient d’où je venais. Encore aujourd’hui, la réponse varie selon le contexte. En tant que linguiste appliquée, je sais à quel point notre environnement social influence qui nous sommes, comment nous souhaitons nous représenter, mais aussi comment les gens nous perçoivent.

Continue reading

Open Sesame: The power of accent (by Dr.Mela Sarkar)

“What accent sells the most cars?” asked Michaela in a post last November. She was wondering about the supposed marketing effect of juxtaposing accents (French and English Canadian, in English) in radio advertising, considering our local context of Montreal. Recently I was reminded forcibly of the very real effect of my own English Canadian accent in a distinctly non-local context. It was in Kolkata, the teeming city where I was born but did not grow up (that honour belongs to Toronto). Continue reading

What accent sells the most cars? (by Michaela Salmon)

When we first started the blog, the BILD group discussed the types of topics and ideas that we wanted to discuss here. Alison spoke about the concept of “sociolinguistic noticing”; here we have a platform to share the little instances of language use that we notice around us in the day-to-day, from our perspective as critical sociolinguists (for example, see Lauren’s post from Australia last year, where she a business was promoting “accent training”, or a collection of Alison’s sociolinguistic noticings here). I would like to contribute something I recently noticed myself, and encourage all of you to consider your own response to this instance.   Continue reading