Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 15:15:58 -0400
From: Bram Dov Abramson <babramson-AT-telegeography.com>
Subject: Re: Why language is still important


Mac Fenwick <macfenwick-AT-home.com>:
>Through this first year course, I've been able
>to observe the reactions of hundreds of young Canadians coming face to
>face with non-Anglo-American writers for the very first time in their
>lives.

Depends what you mean by "non-Anglo-American writers"; displacing cultural
difference onto the-world-beyond-Canadian-borders is probably unhelpful
though.

>Our retreat
>into a solid wall of monoglot English with the complete rejection --
>rendered politically effective and populist in the western provinces,
>and even, increasingly, in Ontario -- of the "other" Canadian languages
>(French, First Nations', the "new" migrant languages as well as the
>"old") is perplexing to say the least if we think about it purely in
>terms of imperial arrogance.

It sounds like you're arguing that, across Canada, English-speaking people
were once widely accepting of the use of non-English languages by people
living in Canadian territory, but have since come to reject use of said
languages as public languages.  I doubt that this progression is the case.

Similarly, why conflate everything that's not English into " 'other'
Canadian languages"?  They have very different statuses.  French is, after
all, designated politically as an official language, with attendant results
(availability of federal services, bilingual requirements for certain
positions, immersion programmes, etc).  First Nations languages are, for
lack of better term, quasi-official languages -- governments seem of
different minds on different days -- but that means something different
for, say, licensing of broadcast stations.  And other languages are, if
anything, treated as "heritage languages", I guess.  Which means something
different again.

>We have no
>sense of ourselves in the way our cultural masters do (just look at the
>last thirty years of Canadian constitutional debate -- all of it
>centering around the question, "what is Canadian identity?"), so we
>cling to the "universalilty" of English as a way of reassuring ourselves
>that we are, in fact, in the majority and even, perhaps, on the "winning
>side": we have a "real" culture that the rest of the world is slowly
>taking up.

Not sure who this "we" is.  I hadn't been privy to that sense of
"Canadian-ness".  Either way, the answer to whether or not it's *necessary*
to have a sense of ourselves-as-Canadians (the national "thing") is
probably not obvious.

"Eric Dickens" <eric.dickens-AT-wxs.nl>:
>Mac Fenwick is at least honest in saying that, in Canada, he doesn't
>actually need foreign languages. 

Canada is kind of big; different languages (what do you mean "foreign" ;-))
become lingua franca (linguae francae?) in different places.  

>Maybe the Quebequois and citizens of
>Montreal could find fault with that attitude, but North America is hugely
>monolingual.

None of Canada, the U.S., or Mexico is monolingual, though each political
territory indeed has large areas in which a single public language
(English, Spanish, French) is assumed.


Incidentally, since we're on the topic.  One of the things that really
bugged me about Julian Samuel's piece was the way he used the category
"visible minority".  Now, I don't know; maybe that's fine.  But it seems to
me that in different places different racialisations arise -- yes, the
usual comparison of Brazilian and American typologies is a good example.

I can't speak all that well to the different parts of the U.S., but in
French-speaking Quebec (as opposed to English-speaking Quebec, which I'd
argue is a different public space [which, of course, is imbricated with the
French-speaking one etc etc]) cultural difference has a lot to do with
French-Canadians and non-French-Canadians (all of whom are, of course,
Quebeckers, or Québécois, for those deeply interested in terminology
tripping).  

So his article did two things which I'd want to think more about.

One was use the category "visible minorities" at all.  The other was use
the *same* category ("visible minorities") for both French- and
English-language institutions.  That caused me to raise an eyebrow because
cultural difference has played out differently in the two spheres.  The
English-language sphere has integrated and incorporated a lot of different
ethnic groups -- a result of Church history (non-Catholics not admitted to
French-lang institutions since most were Church-run); the French-language
sphere hasn't until much more recently, so should the same markers of
cultural difference really be used across the board? (The old problem of
travelling theory.)

cheers
Bram



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