Summary: | For forty years, Canada has been recognized, represented and renowned as being an officially bilingual and multicultural country with federally mandated educational policies promoting this linguistic duality. However, official language policies in Canada continue to reproduce solutions based on the language-nation-state ideology reminiscent of the 1960s and 70s. In the province of Ontario, the enactment of such official educational policies have brought about two major consequences: (1) the denial and refusal to recognize the linguistic practices of Francophones living outside of Quebec, in contexts where French is represented and perceived as a minority language and is minoritized, and (2) despite immigration and mobility, educational policies and curriculum have not expanded to include the explicit development of multilingual repertoires in classrooms. This contribution provides a unique focus on Francophone, multilingual and multicultural Canadians who challenge such homogeneous conceptions of language and identity.
|