Language practices of children in francophone families living in a minority linguistic environment
Chapter 1. Literature review
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1.1 Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities
In 2006, in order to gather information relevant to the measurement and evaluation of a number of key elements of the vitality of minority language communities in Canada, Statistics Canada carried out the Survey on the Vitality of Official-Language Minorities (SVOLM) in collaboration with about ten other federal government departments and agencies. The purpose of this survey was to enhance the language-related information relevant to official-language minorities that is generally available and limited to censuses.Note 1 More specifically, the Survey has two main objectives:
First, it collects information about areas that are top priorities for official-language minority communities such as education, health and justice. Second, it produces information that will assist various departments and agencies in policy development and program implementation.
The work of Corbeil et al. (2007) carried out using the SVOLM data, as well as a number of other studies,Note 2 clearly shows the crucial role of the regional context, region of residence and geographic concentration of the minority on language use by adults or on the transmission of French to children. For example, Corbeil et al.'s study (2007) shows that the predominant use of French is very low or non-existent in the majority of provinces and territories in Canada outside Quebec and that it is present mainly in certain regions of New Brunswick and Ontario, most of them bordering Quebec. Allard (2014) concludes his study by asserting that the proportion of persons who are members of the linguistic minority and their concentration in the community has a strong influence on the opportunity for OLMCNote 3 members to use their language in the public spheres of their lives. Similarly, the Commission nationale d'étude sur l'assimilation (1992) found from its study that the place of French in young people's day-to-day lives fluctuates depending on the concentration of the francophone population in the community (irrespective of whether the francophone population has majority, equal or minority status in the community). In fact, the scientific literature on francophones in a minority language situation highlights the fact that the use of French tends to be strongly tied to the geographic concentration of the minority in the community. In the context of this study, contextual variables and variables relating to the geographic concentration of the francophone minority will be included in the analyses, and we will pay special attention to the scope of the influence of these variables on the language practices of children living in a minority language situation and, in a more general sense, on the use of French.
Some studies based on the SVOLM dataNote 4 address the central themes of our work, that is, the language practices of adults or children. Corbeil and Lafrenière (2010) use the SVOLM data for the study of the use of French by francophones in a minority language situation in the various areas of the public and private spheres (at home, with friends, in the immediate network, at work, in institutions and businesses and in the media). Their results showed that these individuals are least likely to use French when accessing cultural media, for example, when listening to the radio or watching television, reading newspapers or books or browsing the Internet. The authors also show in their study of Ontario francophones that adults mainly use English in their use of cultural media, while French is used primarily while reading books and listening to the radio.
The studies carried out to date with the SVOLM data focus mainly on adults, although an extensive "Child" file is available. Allard (2014) looks at language-related topics with this survey pertaining to minority-language children and shows that they primarily use the majority language, in this case English outside Quebec, in various family-related and other activities.Note 5 Given the limited number of studies dealing with children living in a minority language situation, the purpose of our work is to explore the language practices of these children and to identify the factors behind their language choices. To that end, we propose looking at the factors relating to language transmission and studying how they may or may not apply in the use of French or English in the personal, extracurricular and recreational activities of minority-language children.
1.2 Language transmission
Many studies have looked at the topic of language transmission, that is, the transmission of the mother tongue and of the language spoken at home by a child's parents. Those studies examined this topic from a variety of perspectives while using a range of variables, in minority communities, linguistically endogamous or exogamous familiesNote 6 or specific regions such as French-speaking Ontario, for example. We therefore present some of the determining variables in language transmission that we believe could also be related to the language practices of children in minority language communities in their personal, extracurricular or recreational activities.
The language situation within a family is a topic that has been extensively studied in research on language transmission and dynamics. For example, there are many studiesNote 7 that look at the connections between the types of endogamous francophone families (with two parents whose mother tongue is French) or exogamous ones (with one parent whose mother tongue is French and the other whose mother tongue is English or a third language) and the language transmitted to children or the language used at home. Some of those studies also point to differences in the transmission of French as a mother tongue or in the use of French at home depending on the gender of the francophone parent in a linguistically exogamous couple. The studies carried out by Bouchard-Coulombe (2011) and Vézina and Houle (2014) show that the mother tongue of most children from linguistically exogamous families is English. Those studies also show that mothers play a central role in the transmission of the French language to children. This means that French is transmitted to children in an exogamous family more often when the mother, rather than the father, is francophone. We plan to include the family language situation and the parents' mother tongue in our analyses in order to assess whether these factors are equally as determinative in children's linguistic choices in their personal, extracurricular and recreational activities.
Our study will include variables designed to capture the influence of peers on the language practices of children in a francophone minority setting. Bernard (1991), for example, shows that English is frequently used in interactions among brothers and sisters in francophone minority settings. Similarly, the Commission nationale d'étude sur l'assimilation (1992) shows in its report that the language used with friends varies greatly depending on the setting and the concentration of francophones in a particular community. It is, therefore, worthwhile examining whether these phenomena also come into play in children's personal, extracurricular and recreational activities when interactions among children are numerous and frequent.
A number of studies highlight the strong connections between school and school environment and the status of different languages in minority language communities. Bernard (1991), Corbeil and Lafrenière (2010), Corbeil et al. (2007) and the Commission nationale d'étude sur l'assimilation (1992) indicate in their respective works that the French school in a minority community holds special status because of its unique contribution to the maintenance and transmission of the French language. In particular, Corbeil and Lafrenière's study (2010) shows that there is a strong connection between school attendance and certain language behaviours of children in French-speaking Ontario. We therefore propose including school-related variables in our analyses in order to notice whether there are any connections between school attendance and children's language practices in their personal, extracurricular and recreational activities.
Our study also looks at the children's ages in order to determine whether there is a connection between their ages and their language practices. Corbeil and Lafrenière (2010) observed in their research that language transfers vary by age and that, more specifically, francophones under the age of 15 speak French more often at home than francophones in other age groups.
Earlier we referred to studies dealing with language transmission in francophone minority settings, and it is worth noting that some of those studies also address topics that align more closely with ours. First, the Commission nationale d'étude sur l'assimilation (1992) and Allard (2014) note the popularity of sports and non-sports-related activities among young people from linguistic minorities. They also indicate that the language used in such activities is connected to the francophone minority concentration and the availability of these activities in the community. Bernard (1991) shows that English is the language of choice when young people engage with audiovisual media, regardless of the minority region in which they live or the francophone minority concentration in the community. Bernard (1991) and Bernier et al. (2014) show that the appeal of English is less strong and more adaptive in relation to the reading habits of minority language children. Our study will therefore look at language behaviours in these children's personal, extracurricular and recreational activities, and it will be interesting to ascertain whether they vary in a way comparable to what was observed in the previous studies on this subject. We also consider a number of additional variables that could be related to the language practices of minority-language children as well.
The initial objective of this study is to describe children's language practices in relation to a variety of factors potentially associated with their personal, extracurricular or recreational activities. The study then endeavours to identify the primary determinants of the predominant use of FrenchNote 8 or EnglishNote 9 by these children in their personal, extracurricular or recreational activities, that is, the factors that influence the language practices of children living in OLMCs. It will be interesting to ascertain whether the factors that determine or influence their language practices intersect with the factors associated with language transmission that were referred to earlier.
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