The Status of French Among Youth in a Bilingual American-Canadian Border Community : The Case of Madawaska, Maine

The Status of French Among Youth in a Bilingual American-Canadian Border Community : The Case of Madawaska, Maine

From Price: "This study examines the status of the French language among young residents of Madawaska, Maine, a US-Canadian border community with a long history of bilingualism and contact with French speakers. This study views language status as having two distinct yet interrelated components: (1) code role, or characteristics associated with the use of a given language or variety, such as attitudes of speakers toward the variety and its use, the proficiency level of speakers, language use patterns, and so forth, and (2) code nature, or the state of the variety in question in terms of syntax, phonology and lexicon. The data, collected by means of four interview tasks, targeted both code role and code nature and sought to determine the general status of French among the younger residents of this community. In addition to the younger subject population, a small adult baseline population was also included in order to compare data across generations, so as to identify not just possible differences in code role, but also in code nature, including the possibility of language loss....The data suggested several trends. First, in terms of code role, young subjects generally reported lower levels of language use, proficiency and exposure to French than did adults. Secondly, not only did high-proficiency young subjects generally report higher scores in these areas than did lower-proficiency subjects, but males tended to score higher than females in this regard. This would suggest that exposure to French, context, language proficiency and gender correlate with language use among this population. Conversely, attitudes do not generally appear to be a salient factor motivating French language use. With regard to code nature, the study found that even the most proficient young speakers demonstrated some important gaps in their grammatical competence, and that the young subject population as a whole exhibited features in their production consistent with language loss. The study concludes that although there are still many individuals with ability in French, the differences between younger and older speakers in terms of both code role and code nature suggest that local French will be lost unless further action is taken to reverse the progress of French language loss among young bilinguals in the community."

Price, Joseph Edward

2007

en; fr

Thesis/Dissertation

20th century-21st century; Madawaska, Maine

No

493

Bloomington, Indiana

Ph. D., French

Indiana University

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