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16 - Ethnocultural and Linguistic Diversity

New Challenges to Canada’s Language Regime

from Part III - The Canadian Context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2019

By
Linda Cardinal  and
Rémi Léger
Edited by
Thomas Ricento
Thomas Ricento
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Summary

The chapter explores the relationship between official and “non-official” languages in Canada by taking as its starting point two Statistics Canada reports on ethnocultural and linguistic diversity released in 2017. Its goal is to examine how demographic trends, combined with recent debates and policy initiatives, are going to impact Canada’s language regime. The first section discusses international immigration. The second section focuses on Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, and Ottawa. The third section reflects on how Canada’s language regime will respond to the challenges raised by the projected expansion of linguistic diversity in the population. The chapter concludes that, while Canada’s language regime shifted from Anglo-conformity to equality between English and French starting in the late 1960s, the projected increase in ethnocultural and linguistic diversity cannot render invisible the persistent pull of English, which could lend support to old Anglo-conformist attitudes and tendencies around language policy and planning in the country as a whole.

Keywords

language regimeethnocultural and linguistic diversityAnglo-conformityimmigrationofficial and non-official languages
Type
Chapter
Information
Language Politics and Policies
Perspectives from Canada and the United States
 , pp. 298 - 315
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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