LPAQ: Language planning and attitudes in Quebec
The project was part of my larger post-doctoral research, which investigated the interaction between official language policies and their impact on language use at the grassroots in three political entities: Singapore, Wales, and Quebec. The three locations feature different types of top-down language policies and planning, with various different languages involved in the process, English being the common player. Thus, officially quadrilingual Singapore has extensively promoted English, whereas Wales has a much more laissez-faire attitude to the language, and Quebec has taken far-reaching steps to limit its use. The research on Singapore and Wales is being underway, the Quebec component required detailed on-site fieldwork. This project saw data collection in the realms of public displays of linguistic practice (so-called 'linguistic landscaping'), of language attitudes, and, using standard sociolinguistic methodology, of actual language use in practice. The city of Montreal, being particularly well-suited due to its high proportion of Anglophone residents, who are the primary source of informants, has been chosen as the locus of fieldwork. The results from this project not only inform current trends in policy perception, but also bring together issues of language policy, language attitudes, and linguistic landscape, an approach that has so far been lacking.
This research project was supported by a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme (project no. 327100).
