By Marie-Eve Bouchard, Assistant Professor of French
“CJFCB put together the Linguistic Security Committee whose mission is to offer interactive workshops to young people in order to raise awareness and increase linguistic security within the French-speaking community of British Columbia.”
Linguistic insecurity has become an important area of concern in recent years among French-speaking minorities of Canada. This insecurity, expressed as discomfort or anxiety when speaking, can lead to a loss of confidence in speaking a language, and eventually to the erosion of knowledge and ability in this language.
To address this issue of linguistic insecurity, the Conseil jeunesse francophone de la Colombie-Britannique (CJFCB) put together the Linguistic Security Committee—a committee by and for the youth whose mission is to offer interactive workshops to young people in order to raise awareness and increase linguistic security within the French-speaking community of British Columbia.
Research Project
Funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Partnership Engage Grant) and Association francophone pour le savoir (Research Cooperation in the Canadian Francophonie Program), Marie-Eve Bouchard has developed a research project in collaboration with the CJFCB. The goals of this partnership are to explore and identify factors contributing to the youth’s feeling of language (in)security in the classroom, generate knowledge about the specific beliefs the teachers hold about the variety of French spoken in British Columbia through interviews with them, share findings with the CJFCB and co-develop a workshop proposal based on results to ensure greater accuracy in language security training.
Marie-Eve and the CJFCB are committed to developing a collaboration centered around the common goal of fostering linguistic security among the French-speakers of British Columbia. They will jointly enhance the ties between school and other francophone life spaces in BC and support the ongoing training of the CJFCB members.
To support this project, Vincent Bédard will be working with Marie-Eve Bouchard as a visiting graduate student at the Department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies (FHIS). Vincent is a PhD candidate in Education at the Université du Québec à Montréal and is doing an internship in sociolinguistics with Marie-Eve from January to April 2023.
