This paper concerns current transformations in the relationship between political and linguistic ideologies of la francophonie based on a sociolinguistic ethnographic study in a French-language minority school in Canada. A dominant modernist orientation, focussing on unilingual social spaces and the authenticity and integrity of French, is being confronted by an emerging globalizing orientation which emphasizes the value of French as an economic resource, or commodity, and which values both pluralism and a common language. The result is a crisis of legitimacy for francophone institutions, struggles for voice among old and new elites, and the marginalization of the working class speakers of the ‘authentic’ vernacular.