Publications
Publication details [#48243]
Daveluy, Michelle. 2008. Language, mobility and (in)security: A journey through Francophone Canada. In Meyerhoff, Miriam and Naomi Nagy, eds. Social Lives in Language – Sociolinguistics and multilingual speech communities. Celebrating the work of Gillian Sankoff. (IMPACT: Studies in Language and Society 24). John Benjamins. pp. 27–42.
Publication type
Article in book
Publication language
English
Keywords
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
John Benjamins
Annotation
The proposed journey focuses on localised groups of French speakers in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Québec and Alberta but also on transient workers that go back and forth to their workplace and military families who are relocated at regular intervals within the country. Linkages between language, mobility and (in)security are assessed through the analysis of linguistic variables that illustrate the enactment of local norms of interaction among mobile Canadian French speakers. Continuities among groups that may superficially appear, and are often theorised, as disconnected become prominent. The paper ultimately suggests that Francophone Canada is best grasped as a set of multilingual speech communities rather than as a unidimensionally conceived series of groups sharing the exclusive commonality of speaking French.