Gabriel, en visio — Gabriel, on Video

Québec French and Linguistic Insecurity

French in Québec has its own pronunciation, vocabulary and range of registers, from the informal speech of Montréal's working-class neighborhoods, long called joual, to a formal standard used in the media and in schools. For much of the twentieth century, many Québécois were told, at school and by commentators, that their French was inferior to the French of France, and sociolinguists have documented the resulting linguistic insecurity: the feeling that one's own way of speaking is not quite legitimate. Attitudes have changed considerably since the 1960s and 1970s, with the rise of Québécois literature, theater, song and cinema, and with language laws that made French the official language of the province. Younger generations generally speak of their French with much more confidence. Some tensions remain visible in encounters with speakers from France: Québécois visitors sometimes report being answered in English or having their accent treated as charming or exotic, and the subtitling of some Québécois films for French audiences has been a recurring source of irritation and jokes. The word perler, used in Québec for someone who adopts a European French accent, shows the other side: adjusting your speech to sound French can be judged as pretentious at home. Speakers navigate between these pressures, which is exactly what makes the subject interesting to sociolinguists.