The recent influx of French-speaking immigrants from Africa & the Caribbean into Ontario is redefining what it means to be a minority francophone in that province. This process is breaking down the old dichotomy of official language minority communities vs multicultural groups. By considering the competing discourses of various members of the nouvelle francophonie (drawing on samples of discourse collected during participant observation at francophone events), examined is how civil society concepts such as liberal-individualism vs communitarianism are employed by Afro-francophones to carve out a civic position in English-speaking Canada. Building on Jurgen Habermas's (eg, 1996) concept of deliberative democracy, it is argued that discourse plays an important role in pluralist democracies, both for the conditions in which public debate is carried out as well as for the way in which communities are constituted. Such an analysis conceptually links empirically oriented sociolinguistics with normatively oriented political philosophy. 23 References. Adapted from the source document.