Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Keywords
Language, bilingualism, duality, language use, linguistic rights, official bilingualism, New Brunswick, Canada
Department
International Studies and Languages
Major
English Literature
Abstract
In the province of New Brunswick, English and French have shared co-official status since 1969, with the approval of the Official Languages Act. Francophones (French-speakers) make up a little over 31% of the population, and Anglophones (English-speakers) are the majority at 69% of the population. Even with equal linguistic rights, the Francophone minority often struggles to receive equal treatment in areas such as health care and education. From May-July 2013, I worked with Professor Keating Marshall on a SURP project, collecting 17 months’ worth of op-ed articles and letters to the editor from two of Southeastern New Brunswick’s Anglophone newspapers, The Telegraph Journal and The Times and Transcript. We used the following search terms: language, bilingualism, duality, etc. in order to find Conversations (Gee, 2010) related to language use, linguistic rights, and the province’s official bilingualism. I then conducted a discourse analysis on the data from February 2012- April 2013 in order to discover the Conversations regarding language rights and legislation, and the linguistic ideologies manifest in the discourse of Anglophone and bilingual Francophone contributors. I uncovered nine conversations for the two months I analyzed in depth. Some of the topics that were prevalent in the research I conducted included health care, education, government officials and revisions to the Official Languages Act. For this presentation I will be focusing on the issues related to bilingualism in the health care system as its leaders strive to make it being cost effective and timely, providing the best health care to all citizens, while at the same time fulfilling the mandate to hire equal numbers of employees from each official language and to serve people in their language of their choice.
Faculty Mentor
Kelle Keating Marshall
Funding Source or Research Program
Summer Undergraduate Research Program
Presentation Session
Session B
Location
Plaza Classroom 189
Start Date
21-3-2014 3:45 PM
Equality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: The price of duality and bilingualism
Plaza Classroom 189
In the province of New Brunswick, English and French have shared co-official status since 1969, with the approval of the Official Languages Act. Francophones (French-speakers) make up a little over 31% of the population, and Anglophones (English-speakers) are the majority at 69% of the population. Even with equal linguistic rights, the Francophone minority often struggles to receive equal treatment in areas such as health care and education. From May-July 2013, I worked with Professor Keating Marshall on a SURP project, collecting 17 months’ worth of op-ed articles and letters to the editor from two of Southeastern New Brunswick’s Anglophone newspapers, The Telegraph Journal and The Times and Transcript. We used the following search terms: language, bilingualism, duality, etc. in order to find Conversations (Gee, 2010) related to language use, linguistic rights, and the province’s official bilingualism. I then conducted a discourse analysis on the data from February 2012- April 2013 in order to discover the Conversations regarding language rights and legislation, and the linguistic ideologies manifest in the discourse of Anglophone and bilingual Francophone contributors. I uncovered nine conversations for the two months I analyzed in depth. Some of the topics that were prevalent in the research I conducted included health care, education, government officials and revisions to the Official Languages Act. For this presentation I will be focusing on the issues related to bilingualism in the health care system as its leaders strive to make it being cost effective and timely, providing the best health care to all citizens, while at the same time fulfilling the mandate to hire equal numbers of employees from each official language and to serve people in their language of their choice.