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Article published In:
Language Problems and Language Planning
Vol. 45:3 (2021) ► pp.331–356

Pluricentric linguistic justice in Quebec

An attitudinal study of the politics of norm setting in French

| Queen Mary University of London
| McGill University

With the emergence of the notion of Standard Quebec French, debates about linguistic usage in Quebec are today largely shaped by two competing normative models: an exonorm defined for all intents and purposes in France and an endonorm reflecting socially acceptable usage as determined by Quebec­ers themselves. While language attitude research has provided some indication of the normative preferences of ordinary Quebec­ers, the picture remains largely ambiguous. This article seeks to provide some clarity through a reconceptualisation of language attitudes intended to specifically elicit value judgments on norm setting and enforcement. Building on research in political philosophy and theory, it further develops the notion of ‘pluricentric linguistic justice’, proposed as a tool for assessing questions of authority and legitimacy concerning French in Quebec. It then presents the results of an empirical exploration of this notion focused on the attitudes of a sample of franco­phone Quebec­ers towards endonormativity, including as a function of key social variables. The study represents an innovative attempt to develop and test a methodological instrument for interrogating questions of linguistic justice in pluricentric settings more broadly.

Keywords: linguistic justice, pluricentricity, endonormativity, standards, norms, French, Quebec, language attitudes
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Attitudes towards pluricentric variation in Quebec
  • Pluricentric linguistic justice
  • Research questions
  • Methods
    • Instrument
    • Data collection and participants
    • Preliminary analyses
  • Results
  • Discussion
    • RQ1. Based on the moral arguments presented, what are the respondents’ attitudes towards endonormativity?
    • RQ2. How do the respondents’ attitudes differ according to social variables traditionally associated with language use and linguistic variation in Quebec?
    • RQ3. How do the respondents’ attitudes correlate with their reported manner of speaking and degree of identification as Quebec­ers, Canadians and franco­phones?
  • Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lplp.20041.oak
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