When we talk about the history of Quebec, we often rightly mention the miracle of the survival of the French fact in America. The struggle of our ancestors for the preservation of their language, the foundation of our national identity, deserves, in fact, all our admiration, especially when we consider all these calls to renounce which they had to resist in order to continue the fight. Our history, in fact, is replete with Elvis Gratton, inspired by Lord Durham, who, through all ages, have enthusiastically pleaded for national denial by telling us to switch to English or else be downgraded.
In English in debate in Quebec (PUL, 2021, 224 pages), Virginie Hébert, doctor in public communication, reviews the relationship between Quebecers and English since the Conquest of 1760. Her illuminating study illustrates that this relationship has always been marked by an ideological confrontation between two camps: that of those for whom English is an essential tool for Quebecers and that of those for whom this language is a threat to national identity.
Hébert shows that, in order to defend their respective point of view and to gain public opinion, these camps used specific discursive “frames” and myths, that is to say “sacred truths”. The history of the relationship of Quebecers to English, establishes Hébert, can be summed up in the clash between the “globalizing” framework, which presents English as a tool of openness to the world and economic success, and the framework nationalist, which recalls that English is the “language of Lord Durham” and threatens, therefore, the Quebec identity.
The words of two emblematic intellectuals of the 1930s set the scene well for the debate. In 1937, in his first newspaper editorial The day, the writer and journalist Jean-Charles Harvey does not make in the nuance by affirming that the alternative which is offered to Quebecers is to “know English or die”. The same year, Lionel Groulx denounced this “fetishism” of English. “In all tones, he writes in Guidelines, we shouted to the people that he needed, to succeed in life, not intelligence first, character first, work first, but English, always more English. “
The result of a doctoral thesis, Virginie Hébert’s essay strives to stick to a certain objectivity in the presentation of the great historical moments of this secular debate, but one cannot fail to note that the heart of the The essayist leans towards the nationalist framework, in particular when she concludes that the opposite framework, basically, does indeed reproduce the thought of Lord Durham making English the language of progress for French speakers.
As I am not a doctoral student, but a simple columnist, in favor of extending Bill 101 to CEGEPs, I can allow myself a few remarks which do not hide their inclusion in the nationalist framework.
I am not against the presence of English in Quebec or against its teaching. I refuse, however, to treat this language as a fetish and I reject the discourse which makes it an essential tool for opening up to the world as well as a necessity for all. According to the Swiss economist François Grin, quoted by Hébert, 70% of the world population does not speak English, a figure which rises to 75% in the European Union. Speaking English is therefore essentially opening up to the Anglo-Saxon world, especially the business world, and not to the world in general.
Nobody, of course, is against individual bilingualism, but it is important to remember that there are many other ways of opening up to the world – music, in particular, a true universal language – and what to choose from. teaching English intensively to children comes at an opportunity cost. During this time, in fact, we do not play music, sports, French, etc.
In Quebec, the enhancement of English is passed off as a strategy of openness, whereas it is rather the often unconscious manifestation of a fear of social and economic downgrading. English, it is said, is necessary for doing business abroad; it is true, but it is the business of a minority of Quebeckers. Even in a company that does international trade, communications with foreign countries are handled by a small group of employees.
The problem arises when English becomes necessary to work and to live in Quebec itself. “If a man who knows two languages is worth two, a man who is obliged to speak the language of the Other to eat is only worth half a man”, wrote the independentist Marcel Chaput. Too often, we are already there, and the “reasonable compromises” of Bill 96, as Prime Minister Legault put it, will not be enough to reverse the trend.