Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T15:55:41.375Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Evaluational reactions to spoken French and English in Montreal: Does mother tongue really matter?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2016

Elke Laur
Elke Laur*
Affiliation:
Montreal, Canada
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Montreal became famous in socio-psychological and sociohnguistic circles half a century ago, when a group of researchers—Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner, and Fil-lenbaum — invented a new methodology to measure speech evaluations indirectly. They came up with an innovative technique, called matched guise, which allows researchers to access subjects’ reactions without asking for their opinions directly or doing extensive field work. In 2004, another matched guise study of the evaluational reactions of Montrealers added new aspects to the original methodological design in order to test some of its limits. The fundamental methodological difference was to include members of different language groups in a representative sample of the population of Montreal so that multivariate analysis could determine the extent to which belonging to a specific linguistic group could actually account for reactions to spoken language. This analysis reveals that some earlier interpretations should be realigned.

Résumé

Résumé

Montréal est devenu célèbre dans le monde de la psychologie sociale et de la sociolinguistique lorsque, il y a un demi-siècle, un groupe de chercheurs—Lambert, Hodgson, Gardner et Fillenbaum — a inventé une nouvelle méthodologie capable de mesurer indirectement des évaluations linguistiques. Cette technique innovatrice, appelée technique du locuteur masqué (ou faux-couple), permet aux chercheurs d’accéder aux évaluations sans poser des questions directement et sans se livrer à des terrains ethnographiques complexes. En 2004, une autre étude utilisant la technique du locuteur masqué a exploité de nouveaux aspects dans l’approche méthodologique initiale afin de tester certaines de ses limites. La différence fondamentale consistait en l’inclusion de plusieurs groupes linguistiques dans un échantillon représentatif de la population de Montréal pour que des analyses multivariées puissent déterminer à quel degré l’appartenance à un groupe linguistique spécifique peut effectivement expliquer les évaluations linguistiques. Cette analyse indique que certaines interprétations antérieures devraient être reajustées.

Keywords

linguistic attitudeslinguistic perceptionsMontrealmatched guisespeech evaluationattitudes linguistiquesperceptions linguistiquesMontréalfaux-couplelocuteur masquéévaluation linguistique
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 59 , Issue 1: Pratiques langagières et idèologies linguistiques en contexte urbain: Les communautès linguistiques de Montrèal | Language practices and linguistic ideologies in urban settings: Speech communities in Montreal , March 2014 , pp. 3 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association. 2015

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Blair, Louisa. 2005. Les Anglos: La face cachée de Québec. Tome I, 1608-1850. Québec: Commission de la capitale nationale du Québec.Google Scholar
Blair, W.G. Jarvis and Petty, Richard E.. 1996. The need to evaluate. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70:172–194.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1968. Le métier de sociologue. In La sociologie de Bourdieu: Textes choisis et commentés, ed. Alain, Accardo and Philippe, Corcuff, 157–179. Bordeaux: Le Mascaret.Google Scholar
Bourhis, Richard Y. 1983. Language attitudes and self-reports of French-English language usage in Quebec. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 4:163–180.Google Scholar
Bourhis, Richard Y. and Lepicq, Dominique. 1993. Québécois French and language issues in Quebec. In Trends in Romance linguistics and philology, ed. Posner, Rebecca and Green, John N., 345–381. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Calvet, Louis-Jean. 1994. Les voix de la vilte: Introduction à la sociolinguistique urbaine. Paris: Hachette. Google Scholar
Daoust, Paul. 1983. Les jugements sur le joual (1959-1975) à la lumière de la linguistique et de la sociolinguistique. Doctoral dissertation, Université de Montréal.Google Scholar
Dickinson, John A. and Brian, Young. 1995. Brève histoire socio-économique du Québec. 2nd ed. Sillery: Éditions du Septentrion.Google Scholar
Dixon, John A., Mahoney, Berenice, and Cocks, Roger. 2002. Accents of guilt. Effects of regional accent, race, and crime type on attributions of guilt. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 21:162–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Betsy E. 2002. Attitudes of Montreal students towards varieties of French. In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, vol. 2, ed. Long, Daniel and Preston, Dennis R., 71–93. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gaies, Stephen J. and Beebe, Jacqueline. 1991. The matched guise technique for measuring attitudes and their implications for language education: A critical assessment. In Language acquisition and the second/foreign language classroom, ed. Sadtonio, Eugenius, 156–178. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.Google Scholar
Genesee, Fred and Holobow, Naomi. 1989. Change and stability in intergroup perceptions. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 8:17–38.Google Scholar
Giles, Howard and Ryan, Ellen B.. 1982. Prolegomena for developing a social psychological theory of language attitudes. In Attitudes towards language variation: Social and applied contexts, ed. Ryan, Ellen Bouchard and Giles, Howard, 208–223. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica, Bartholomot, Jean-Paul, Lévy, Laurette, and Ostiguy, Luc. 1982. Le processus de francisation dans une entreprise montrealaise: Une analyse sociolinguistique. Gou-vernement du Québec: Office de la langue françhise.Google Scholar
Herrmann, Theo. 1988. Mentale Repräsentationen: ein erklärungsbedürftiger Begriff. Sprache und Kognition 7:162–175.Google Scholar
Labov, William, Ash, Sharon, and Boberg, Charles. 2004. Atlas of North American English: Phonetics, phonology and sound change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lambert, Wallace E., Frankel, Hannah, and Tucker, Richard. 1966. Judging personality through speech: A French-Canadian example. Journal of Communication 16:305–321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lambert, Wallace E., Hodgson, Richard C., Gardner, Robert, and Fillenbaum, Stanley. 1960. Evaluational reactions to spoken languages. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 60:44–51.Google Scholar
Landry, Rodrigue and Allard, Réal. 1990. Contact des langues et développement bilingue: Un modèle macroscopique. Canadian Modern Language Review 46:527–553.Google Scholar
Laur, Elke. 2001. Perceptions linguistiques a Montreal. Doctoral dissertation, University de Montreal.Google Scholar
Laur, Elke. 2002. La qualité, le statut et la perception du français au Québec. Revue d’aménagement linguistique (special issue/hors série): 147–165.Google Scholar
Laur, Elke. 2008a. Comment se conclut un ‘deaf’ en français? L’état de la francisation dans cinq grandes entreprises québécoises á l’ère de la multinationalisation économique. Montreal: Office québécois de la langue françhise.Google Scholar
Laur, Elke. 2008b. Le statut a-t-il un genre? La perception du franços et de l’anglais á Montréal en 1960 et en 2004. In Congrès mondial de Linguistique Française, ed. Durand, Jacques, Habert, Benoît, and Laks, Bernard, 2323–2335. Paris: Institut de Linguistique Françhise.Google Scholar
Laur, Elke. 2008c. Contribution á l’ étude des perceptions linguistiques: La méthodologie des faux-couples revisitée. Montréal: Office québécois de la langue françhise.Google Scholar
McNicoll, Claire. 1993. Montréal: Une société multiculturelle. Paris: Belin.Google Scholar
McKinnie, Meghan and Dailey-O’Cain, Jennifer. 2002. A perceptual dialectology of Anglophone Canada. In Handbook of perceptual dialectology, vol. 3, ed. Long, Daniel and Preston, Dennis R., 277–294. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Montreuil, Annie and Bourhis, Richard Y.. 2001. Majority acculturation orientations toward “valued” and “devalued” immigrants. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 32:698–719.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osgood, Charles E. 1964. Semantic differential technique in the comparative study of cultures. American Anthropologist 66:171–200.Google Scholar
Tajfel, Henri. 1959. A note on Lambert’s “evaluational reactions to spoken languages”. Canadian Journal of Psychology 13:86–92.Google Scholar
Zahn, Christopher J. and Hopper, Robert. 1985. Measuring language attitudes: The speech evaluation instrument. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 4:113–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar