Department of Global Communication and Cultures

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Minorités linguistiques de langue officielle au Canada : citoyenneté, pouvoir et frontières linguistiques
(Wißner-Verlag, 2025) Lebel, Marie Elaine; Garon, francis
In this article, which combines political science and critical applied linguistics, we analyze how linguistic boundaries in Canada, more specifically in Quebec and Ontario, have evolved and influence the power of so-called ‘official language’ minorities in the exercise of citizenship. We aim to better understand how language issues contribute to shaping the contours of a political community, how they can foster inequalities, and how they are related to power relations. We are particularly interested in the effective power of official language minorities within the French-English boundaries, according to Tollefson's (2015) three conceptions of power: state power, ideological power, and discursive power. After examining the issue of citizenship in relation to linguistic boundaries and the formation of French-English linguistic boundaries in Canada from a historical perspective, we provide an over-view of Quebec’s anglophone minority and Ontario’s francophone minority, where the mismatch between the three forms of power are indicators of a hierarchical citizenship within the respective provinces.