Montreal – Educational Sociolinguistics

Does Bilingual Music Threaten the Future Of The French Language & Culture?

Catherine Shieh

The French language Hip-Hop genre has undergone one of the most interesting and complex transformations amongst other genres of music in the past few decades. In Montreal, the rap scene reflects the city’s location within North America (predominantly English) and inside the province of Quebec (dominated by French), as well as other diverse immigrant communities. Sarkar and Allen studied the multilingual code-switching in Quebec rap and cited in an interview:

“Montreal style… is the only place where you have a cultural mix like that, whether it’s English, [Haitian] Creole, then French, but all the same as Quebec French” (2007).

The mixture of language in the music industry has contributed to the rise of a new unique subculture known as Franglais (French + English) and the French traditionalists of Montreal are afraid the bilingual nature of these songs and its ideologies could threaten the future of the French language and culture within the province.

Among the bilingual rappers of this generation are Loud, FouKi and the Dead Obies. They have received backlash from columnists such as Mathieu Bock-Coté from Le Journal de Montréal who says, “Franglais is a slippery slope toward Anglicization. These bourgeois-bohemian adolescents who think speaking English or Franglais will make Montreal into a New York are deluded because it is the French language that gives the city its cachet” (Soupcoff, 2020). Bilingual artists rapping in Franglais are known to face serious political and social challenges. Quebec’s music industry is heavily subsidized by the Provincial government, but only if artists and record companies are producing music in French. Some groups have lost subsidies from the Provincial government for Francophone artists because it did not reach at least 70% of its lyrics in French. Many rising artists severely depend on these types of grants and need to carefully ensure they meet the French word count requirements in their song. For the sake of language and cultural preservation, bilingual rappers are constantly rejected and are treated unfairly by Commercial French radio stations.

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For bilingual artists, rapping in multiple languages allows for more creativity. In terms of rhymes, it opens the world to more lyrical possibilities and a better rhythmic flow. In my opinion, Montreal being one of the biggest multicultural cities of our country, the music should reflect the state of our modern cultural evolution and space. Sadly, the music industry is still dominated by cultural elites, that are white Francophone artists, and they will continue to suppress the rise of this subculture. Music has long been used by many as a tool to expose social injustices. By restricting and limiting an artist’s freedom to express as they desire, are we preventing the evolution of sociocultural growth?

References

Hornberger, N. H., & McKay, S. (2010). Sociolinguistics and language education. Multilingual Matters.

Sarkar, M. and Allen, D. (2007) Hybrid identities in Quebec hip-hop: Language, territory, and ethnicity in the mix. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 6 (2), 117–130.

Soupcoff, M. (2020). Marni Soupcoff: What’s worse – unilingual labelling or contracting … National Post. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://nationalpost.com/opinion/marni-soupcoff-whats-worse-unilingual-labelling-or-contracting-covid-19

Van Herk, G. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

What is a dialect exactly?

Kevin Anderson

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word “dialect” means a “regional variety of language distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional varieties and constituting together with them a single language”. It also includes the definition “a variety of language whose identity is fixed by a factor other than geography (such as social class)”. The first definition includes three items. Must all three factors be present to determine one dialect from another? In today’s digital world, can dialects form across geographical boundaries?

In some literature, dialect is put into broad and general regions and puts Canada into basically one major dialect area from Montreal to Vancouver Island, and then another for the East Coast. I wonder how different one’s grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation need to be to be considered a regional dialect variety? With internet communication, boundaries are blurred and people’s language is influenced by other dialect varieties around the world. Also, there are long histories of homogenous and heterogenous communities who contribute to the variety of English dialects at more local levels.

Noname — Taken from: Van Herk, Gerard (2018). *What is sociolinguistics?* 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell

This site was made by a linguistics hobbyist that focuses on regional dialects, some confined to very small geographical areas. However, Aschmann focuses mostly on accents to make his claims about dialects. Is accent alone enough to determine one’s dialect? Are there not other factors that influence one’s dialect. For example, someone from New Jersey spends four years studying in Montreal, but has also taught overseas for six years with colleagues from several other countries and regions. With internet communication on top of that, will people’s pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary shift into a more standard variety in the future?

The second definition mentions dialect as the result of other factors including social class. What are these other factors that influence dialect? Can a dialect be temporary depending on who we are talking to or where we are? Even within the city of Montreal, there are different ways of speaking. This article from the Montreal Gazette discusses the way Montrealers speak. You may agree or disagree. What do you think?

Growing up in Montreal, I could sometimes tell from which neighbourhood someone is from, but it is not black and white. It also depends on cultural background, social influence, education and history. I noticed, however, how people spoke differently in my neighbourhood from below the tracks compared to those from above the tracks. I can tell where someone is from, but then again I do not want to generalize.

Is there one way that people speak all the time to everyone they are speaking to? Probably not. If you are hanging out in your neighbourhood, you may change the way you speak compared to when you are in a different neighbourhood. At school and at work you will speak differently as well. But that depends with whom you are speaking with.

As a teacher, I believe it is important for my students to be aware of the different dialects that exist in their neighbourhood, between regions and around the world. They should also be made aware of social justice issues related to dialects that are traditionally less desired at the workplace or in educational institutions. Students should be proud of their own dialects and this should not limit what they are capable of at school or at the workplace in the future.

Mama + Louisiana

Max Jack-Monroe

Preparing to co-facilitate a group discussion on the connection between ethnicity and language brought up a lot for me. The readings helped me to think about how I situate myself in terms of ethnicity and language and how these intersecting forces have impacted my life.

I begin with my family history, specifically on my mother’s side. My mother was perhaps the first person in centuries on either side of her family to be born outside of the state of Louisiana (my grandfather’s side was from New Orleans proper and my grandmother’s side from the neighboring countryside). Before my mother’s birth, my maternal grandparents had moved to Nashville, Tennessee so my grandfather (Pop-Pop) could complete his medical residency at Meharry Medical College. A couple of years after my mother was born in Nashville, the family moved to a place, coincidentally, not too far from Montreal–Buffalo, New York. By the time the family made their way to Harford County, Maryland both of my aunts had been born. My grandmother (Meman) still lives in that house, which, despite going through many changes, still seems, in many ways, untouched by time.

**My brothers, grandparents, and I. Summer 2010**

Thoughts on Accessibility and Tooting My Own Horn

Max Jack-Monroe

Over the past several months, I’ve thought a lot about the idea of accessibility to knowledge. As a student at a renowned university with a plethora of resources at my disposal, I have privilege that most don’t. Especially as someone studying topics such as language and gender and sexuality, which are of worldwide importance, it often makes me feel uneasy to know and talk about things that don’t have the resources and/or space to.

Last semester, I was presented with concrete examples as to how to make knowledge more accessible to people outside of the academia bubble. In my Women’s Studies class, my professor, Dr. Alex Ketchum, an alum of McGill who is now a course lecturer at the school, brought our attention to some of the work she has done throughout the past several years in order to bring her dissertation topic to the masses. She has created websites and twitter accounts that are easy to find, easy to read, updated often. Now anyone, regardless of background, who is interested in learning more about feminist cafés, coffeehouses, and restaurants has access to that information at their fingertips. Dr. Ketchum continues to work hard to make knowledge accessible, which is the theme of one of her latest undertakings, The Feminist and Accessible Publishing, Communications, and Technologies Practices Speaker and Workshop Series.

Seeing Dr. Ketchum’s work and reflecting on my own experience, I decided to make a website related to my research interest of queer language and sociolinguistics. Especially as queer people have long depended on the internet as a safe haven and a knowledge hub, a website seemed like the inherent way to get information out to the masses, queer and otherwise. Queerlanguage.com is still very much in its early stages, but it truly is a labour of love, and, I see it as much more than a simple class project. The website includes information that would otherwise only be available to someone with access to a university database and/or sufficient amounts of time and effort, as well as the words of everyday queer people and their own experiences with queer language and sociolinguistics.

Montreal, Identity, Language, and Isolation

Maxime Lavallee – Post 3

I had an interesting discussion with someone the other night on the subject of English-speakers in Montreal. We were speaking about Quebecois theater and movies, and fell into a discussion about English-speakers in Montreal. We had found that a significant portion (not all of them!) of individuals we know, who had grown up in English-speaking families in Montreal, are completely disconnected from Quebecois culture. They don’t have French-speaking friends with whom they speak French, they don’t listen to French music, they don’t read French literature, they don’t watch French movies, or partake in any other Quebecois French cultural activity. We found it interesting that these individuals, most of whom are able to speak French, seemingly make no attempt to connect with French-language culture. Why is it that in a city, surrounded by so many French speakers, they haven’t made those connections?

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Language integration of anglophones in the Québec French school system: a missed opportunity for research?

Back in September, my group and I presented an article (Allen, 2006) on the integration of immigrants into Québec high schools via the ‘Classe d’Accueil’ program. The article stood out as it highlighted many issues facing how our province handles linguistic diversity and language integration in an ever-changing, multicultural city. It also allowed me to reach out to a friend who teaches ‘Classe d’Accueil’ and get some much needed insight into how difficult it can be for students and teachers alike.

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Montreal code-switching

Natalie Lark

Like most other North American cities, if you wander down the streets of Montreal and through its neighborhoods, you will hear most of the languages of the world spoken and brought to the city by immigrants.

However, Montreal offers a particular twist to linguistic diversity in urban areas by the number of native-born speakers using two languages in their day-to-day lives (French and English), while the immigrants can use three or more languages. So, this final post is dedicated to my favorite topic called code-switching in Montreal, in which I am about to discuss the reasons of code-switching mentioned in the textbook and based on my own observations.

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A Special Case of Language Anxiety?

By Wai In Chan

In one of our last classes, Lauren Godfrey-Smith gave an amazing lecture on language anxiety and the experiences of people who went through language anxiety. It was a really emotional experience for me because I felt that the study was acknowledging and validating my feelings about speaking and learning French in Montreal. Over 25 years of my life I have been learning French as a second language in English as a first language schools, and I STILL feel so much anxiety using the language that I avoid it at all costs even until today.

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Bonjour, Hi! This is so wonderfully Montreal!

Xiaoke Sun

“Language shapes a city” (de la Hosseraye, 2015). While walking around,
Montrealers never feel too surprised to hear the bilingual greeting. I suppose “Bonjour, hi” is the most appropriate expression to depict the uniqueness of this city — of being fairly bilingual. According to Statistics Canada in 2011, the greater Montreal area has nearly 2 million bilingual people. Young Montrealers have a rate of bilingualism as high as 80% (de la Hosseraye ,2015). Beyond the obvious cultural richness that bilingualism brings to this city, it also creates an advantageous environment for learners to acquire French/English as a new language.

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Belonging or not belonging, that’s a question.

Liting Liu

Having been in Montreal for exact four months, now I feel no much difference from the day I landed at the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport. Since I don’t speak French at all and my English is limited as well, the awkwardness I felt at the beginning still haunts me. I live in the community but I doubt if I belong to it.

In the evening of August 12th, I arrived at Montreal. I got a number, waiting to be called by the customs officer. Beyond my expectation, they don’t use any bilingual broadcasting machine to announce numbers. Instead, they shouted out numbers themselves in French, and in the hundred-digit-omitted form (e.g. 230 is read as “trente”). It is only after learning some basic French that I got to understand their omission by that time. As you would have guessed it right, I didn’t know the officer was announcing my number until she called several times and asked my number in English. I heard people in the room snickering. At last, the officer kindly offered me a tip – “If you plan to find a job and stay here, you must learn French.” After passing numerous “ARRET” road signs, I got to the apartment, posted “Welcome to the world of being blind and deaf” on Facebook.

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