CSI: Quebec -- Crack French police unit still pursues English-speaking lawbreakers

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on
the Web of Language:

CSI: Quebec -- Crack French police unit still pursues English- 
speaking lawbreakers 30 years after the passage of protectionist  
language law

This summer is the 30th anniversary of the law that makes French the  
official language of the Province of Québec.  Passed in 1977 on a  
groundswell of French-separatist voting, the Charter of the French  
Language gives all Quebecers the right to speak and be spoken to in  
French at work, in school, in restaurants and shops, and just about  
everywhere else.  The province’s francophones point to the increased  
visibility of French on the streets of Canada as evidence of the  
law’s success, while critics of Bill 101 counter that only 17.65% of  
all Canadians can sing the national anthem in both official languages  
and call for decriminalizing English.

Although both English and French share official status in Canada as a  
whole, and over the years the Supreme Court of Canada has restored  
some English-language rights inside Québec, recently Christine St- 
Pierre, the Québec government minister responsible for the Charter of  
the French language, affirmed that the Office of the French Language  
would continue its “zero tolerance” policy toward English.

The Office of the French Language, the body charged with making  
French “the normal and customary language of work, communication,  
commerce, management,” and just about everything else Québecois,  
possesses extraordinary police powers to investigate complaints,  
interrogate suspects, collect evidence, determine guilt, and assess  
hefty fines for violations of the law.

Operating as a kind of CSI: Québec, inspectors from the Office of the  
French Language fan out across high-crime areas of the province --  
typically, the English-speaking suburbs of Montréal and its downtown  
shopping district -- looking for errant apostrophes, a sure sign of  
an English infraction, since there are no possessive apostrophes in  
French.  These forensic linguists measure business signs with laser- 
guided graphomètres to see if French lettering is at least twice the  
size of everything else.  After pausing for a croissant and a caffè  
latte at Le Starbucks on rue Ste Cathérine, they seize gallons of the  
contraband Italian coffee and take it back to headquarters in venti- 
sized evidence cups.  And they raid bistros in le Quartier Chinois,  
lining their pockets with dim sum in grands sacs Ziplocs and  
threatening servers who can’t speak English, let alone French, with  
deportation for offering them “spareribs à l’ail” instead of “travers  
de porc.”

Find out more about this, and Quebec's new no-francophone-left-behind  
policy, on

www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage


DB



Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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