Article after article, analysis after analysis, the idea of the decline of French is based on what is happening in the domestic sphere. Any action plan to reverse the decline of French cannot, however, consider only the mother tongue or the language spoken at home, stresses sociologist Jean-Pierre Corbeil: “We have to get out of this paradigm and stop focusing on French in family space. »
He invited professors, sociologists, statisticians and politicians, including Quebec’s Minister of Immigration, Christine Fréchette, and former MP Thomas Mulcair to discuss it on Tuesday, in Montreal, at 90e Acfas Congress.
As Quebec prepares to announce certain reforms to immigration programs in the coming weeks to put French even more at the heart of the selection criteria, it invites us to broaden our perspectives and go beyond certain clichés on this delicate question.
Linguistic diversity has increased considerably, and a large proportion of immigrants speak several languages at home.
“If we adopt the perspective that we have always adopted, there is a good chance that any additional measure will be a shot in the dark,” warns this former head of Statistics Canada’s language statistics program today. now a professor at Laval University.
The decline of French decried both in the media space and by the party in power at the moment is undeniably verified in a private space between four walls. It is not that “the state has nothing to do in the bedrooms of the nation”, as Pierre Elliott Trudeau had said on a completely different subject, but to find the right levers, one must ” see further” and illuminate the blind spots of these indicators used for more than fifty years, says Mr. Corbeil.
Someone who does not have French as their mother tongue can still use it in the public space, especially in a work context or in their social universe for example. But this segment of the population is not taken into account in the analyses. Many people—including the government—consider that French will never be the public language until all Quebecers speak French “most often” at home, according to the designations used by Statistics Canada in the census. Even the use of French, on an equal basis with another language or as a second language, is not enough to be considered as French-speaking in the eyes of the current authorities, specifies the researcher.
“We must stop always using the same approach, as if we were going to settle these questions by confining ourselves to the same reflexes”, he underlines. Above all, there is no “magic wand” to “reverse the decline of the French language once and for all”, a formula that has become almost a political slogan, believes the professor.
A few clichés to overcome or myths to debunk
Immigrants know how to speak French less and less (graph 1).
Since the implementation of the Charter of the French language, immigrants increasingly report being able to hold a conversation in French: this ability has increased by nearly 30 percentage points since 1971. It stood at 80.5% in 2021, i.e. 4 out of 5 immigrants.
This ability, however, declined slightly among recent immigrants compared to the overall, who became permanent residents in the five years before the 2021 census.
It is here that Jean-Pierre Corbeil points out that there may be an effect of economic growth, rather than “choice” or mother tongue. “Is it an influence that stems from the strong growth in Quebec’s trade with the rest of Canada, with the United States and the rest of the world? There is no research on that. »
On the use of English at work, he also points out that three-quarters of young graduates who work mainly in English come from French-language CEGEPs and universities. The French-mother-tongue population has indeed seen the use of English increase at work, according to data from the latest census. Unlike immigrants, for whom the use of French has increased in this same context, between 2006 and 2021.
Immigrants do not use French in the public space (graph 2).
“There are two camps: those who are convinced that it is absolutely necessary for people to speak French at home in order to be able to use it in the public space. But other people, including myself, believe it’s a two-way relationship. Often, it is the use of languages in the public space that will gradually penetrate the family space”, explains Mr. Corbeil patiently.
The use of French is not a zero-sum game: it is added and combined with English and the other languages spoken. The new reality is multilingualism, also explain the other researchers in his “camp”. Thus, on this graph, the various possible uses add up to offer “a more nuanced portrait”: “The relationship to the French language is complex and diversified. We must take note of these dynamics. »
Immigrants tend to adopt English rather than French (Chart 3).
This graph shows that it is rather French that immigrants adopt as their first official language spoken. This curve is also growing and it intersects with a descent of English. Mr. Corbeil holds the application of the Charter of the French language responsible for this trend. While half of immigrants speak more than one language at home, today 90% of immigrants attend school in French. There is therefore a real contribution of allophones to the French-speaking world.
This long-time observer is not against new legislation, but he believes that “injunctions and prohibitions” will not solve everything. We must also talk about the responsibility of the host society: “Many immigrants perceive that, despite all the efforts they will make to integrate into a French-speaking Quebec society, they will never be considered as Francophones, because they are multilingual, because they have an accent, because they are not ‘native’,” he says.
Mr. Corbeil does not wear rose-colored glasses, but he does not paint an all-black portrait of French, especially among immigrants. “It makes me smile when I’m put in the camp of the ‘carefree'”, he says, because he “cares” on the contrary about linguistic dynamics for more than 25 years. “But we have to have another discussion than saying that everything is going badly. »