Language, Ethnic Identity and the State by William Safran & Jean Laponce

Author:William Safran & Jean Laponce [Safran, William & Laponce, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, History & Theory, Social Science, Ethnic Studies
ISBN: 9781317983835
Google: S0bKAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 20790493
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

The State of Official Languages

Part of the debate on bilingualism in Canada is statistical and not only policy oriented. Given the government’s commitment to the project of a bilingual nation-state, over the years, collecting data on the situation of official languages has become more and more important. It is also a highly political exercise.20 The information provided helps monitor language behavior and especially the situation of official language minorities. Official languages data are thus an important test to the government’s policy.

In the 2001 census, Canada had five questions on official languages and one on non-official languages. They included: mother tongue, home language, the knowledge of official languages, the status of non official languages at home, the language most frequently spoken at home (which is a more subjective question) and the language of work.

The 2001 census reported that there are 17.5 million Canadians with English as their mother tongue, 6.7 million with French as their mother tongue and 5.2 million with another mother tongue (Table 1).21 According to Statistics Canada, there has been an increase of 1.1 percent in French speakers mother tongue compared to the 2.3 percent increase witnessed between 1991 and 1996. The declining birth rate of French Canadians and the aging factor seems to account for this lower increase.

TABLE 1. Mother Tongue, 2001 Counts for Both Sexes, for Canada, Provinces and Territories—20 Percent Sample Data

Source: Statistics Canada, 2001 Census of Canada.

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