CIRLM:
The National Research Hub on Official Language Minority Communities

What’s new in the third edition of the Linguistic Minorities and Society journal? - April 2014


The new Minorités linguistiques et société / Linguistic Minorities and Society journal has released three thematic editions so far:

« Quelle autonomie et quelle reconnaissance pour les communautés de langue officielle en situation minoritaire? / What autonomy and recognition for official language minorities? » (Éric Forgues et Rodrigue Landry, rédacteurs invités), « Petits dérangements : minorités linguistiques et migrations / Minor upheavals: Linguistic minorities and migrations » (Joel Belliveau, rédacteur invité) et « La francophonie canadienne en mouvement : continuité ou rupture? / The Canadian Francophonie on the move: Continuity or rupture? » (Pierre Foucher, rédacteur invité).

In order to allow for the publication of research papers that do not fit within a particular theme but that nevertheless coincide with the mandate of the journal, the publication’s editors recently created a section that will henceforth be devoted to articles that do not fit within a particular theme. In addition, the journal will occasionally publish editions entirely devoted to research papers that do not have a common theme.

It is therefore with great pleasure that we announce that an enhanced version of the third edition of the Minorités linguistiques et société / Linguistic Minorities and Society journal is now accessible on-line. Three “off theme” articles as well as new reviews have been added to the initial content of this edition. In the first article, Andrew Gibson discusses the cultural aspects of recognition and of the French-Canadian experience. Christiane Bernier, Simon Laflamme and Sylvie Lafrenière examine data collected in order to analyze the effect of media availability and the density of the minority population on the language of media exposure. As for Hubert Tote Alimezelli, Anne Leis, Chandima Karunanayake and Wilfrid Denis, they examine data collected in the same postcensal survey in order to analyze decisive factors having an impact on health self-assessment among minority francophone seniors in Canada.

It is useful to note that the articles in the thematic section of this third edition all relate to the issue of language continuity or break among minority French speakers in Canada. As emphasized by Pierre Foucher, guest editor of the section: “The very nature of the themes discussed brings us to places that we don’t normally go to as scholars of the francophone identity in Canada, among them its political aspirations, its motives and its trends. Lucie Hotte analyzes the role or artists in minority francophone settings, both the role that they give themselves as well as the one that the community would seek to give them. Elke Laur studies the concepts of majority and minority, which do not always have a clear meaning in the Canadian context. Mourad Ali-Khodja presents his reflections on the place of intellectuals and scholars in minority settings, shaped by the constraints of their condition’s exiguity. Rodrigue Landry, Réal Allard and Kenneth Deveau analyze this new bilingual “identity” that many of our youth claim to have, with the goal of determining whether it is in fact tied to identity or language ability. Laurence Arrighi and Annette Boudreau reflect on what it means to be “fringe” francophones, i.e. francophones living far from those places where so-called standard language is defined, as well as on the consequences of being on the fringe. Finally, as mentioned by Mr. Foucher, in a literature review, Joel Belliveau draws five portraits of North American francophonie, from a perspective from which it is rarely looked upon.

We wish you a good reading of this enhanced edition.

To access the enhanced third edition, click on this link.

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