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Language Ideologies in Canadian Print Newspapers

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Language and Canadian Media

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Abstract

This chapter is the first of four chapters detailing findings concerning language ideologies in different Canadian media data. This chapter focuses on findings pertaining to language ideologies in English and French Canadian print newspapers. Data consist of articles drawn from 12 English and 5 French Canadian newspapers collected over a 3-week period in 2009. During this period, there were no salient “language ideological debates”, and this relative “linguistic peace” allowed for a more balanced account of the ideologies that are embedded in quotidian Canadian media discourse. Ultimately, the findings suggest that English and French Canadian print newspapers contain divergent language ideologies that contribute to Canada’s “two solitudes”.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In English, these “references to language” included the following: anglo, anglos, anglicize, anglophone, anglophones, bilingual, bilinguals, bilingualism, English, franco, francophone, francophones, francophonie, French, language, languages, linguistic, linguistics, monolingual, multilingual, and unilingual. In French, these “references to language” included the following: anglais, anglaise, anglaises, anglicisme, anglicise, anglo, Anglos, anglophone, anglophones, bilingue, bilingues, bilinguisme, français, française, françaises, franco, francos, francophone, francophones, francophonie, langage, langages, langagier, langagière, langagières, linguistique, linguistiques, langue, and langues.

  2. 2.

    wpm = “words per million”. Frequencies are normalised per million words, which facilitate comparisons of frequency across corpora of different sizes.

  3. 3.

    In French, these “references to language” included the following: anglais, anglaise, anglaises, anglicisme, anglicise, anglo, Anglos, anglophone, anglophones, bilingue, bilingues, bilinguisme, français, française, françaises, franco, francos, francophone, francophones, francophonie, langage, langages, langagier, langagière, langagières, linguistique, linguistiques, langue, and langues. In English, these “references to language” included the following: anglo, anglos, anglicize, anglophone, anglophones, bilingual, bilinguals, bilingualism, English, franco, francophone, francophones, Francophonie, French, language, languages, linguistic, linguistics, monolingual, multilingual, and unilingual.

  4. 4.

    The differences in frequency between these references to identity categories are similar to the differences in frequency between identity categories across the French corpus more generally, where references to French-speaking identity (e.g. FRANCOPHONES and FRANCOPHONE, 313 occurrences and 238 occurrences, respectively) are more frequent than references to English-speaking identity (e.g. ANGLOPHONES and ANGLOPHONE, 87 wpm and 23 wpm, respectively), and far more frequent than references to the identity of speakers of other languages (e.g. ALLOPHONES, 5 wpm).

  5. 5.

    Although the French-language article (Bélair-Cirino 2009) was obtained through downsampling procedures detailed in Sect. 4.3.3, the English-language articles were specifically selected from the English corpus for comparison rather than by using downsampling procedures.

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  1. Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

    Rachelle Vessey

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  1. Rachelle Vessey
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Vessey, R. (2016). Language Ideologies in Canadian Print Newspapers. In: Language and Canadian Media. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53001-1_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53001-1_4

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