The French language: monocentric or pluricentric? Standard language ideology and attitudes towards the French language in twentieth-century language columns in Quebec

Abstract

Quebec has a tradition of language columns, articles discussing questions related to the French language produced by a single author and published regularly in the periodical press. This study examines the content and discourse of a sample of these language columns produced by six authors in Quebec during the twentieth century to explore possible changes over time in the variety of French viewed as the standard or ideal French to aspire to. The article explicitly examines this question from the perspective of pluricentricity, little discussed in work on language columns to date, to test the hypothesis that there is a change over time from a strongly monocentric view of the standard to a somewhat more pluricentric view. The results show that while all the authors of language columns examined here adhere in varying degrees to a monocentric view of standard French, there is nonetheless a shift over the course of the century towards an acceptance of a more pluricentric model of standard French. These findings show the value of a small-scale, detailed qualitative approach in highlighting issues that deserve to be further explored.

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