- Imagine that you are a consultant hired by the provincial government of New Brunswick to evaluate indigenous language teaching at the Mah-Sos Elementary School on Tobique First Nation. Based on the description in Bernard Perley’s Defying Maliseet Language Death and other examples of language revitalization efforts discussed in class, assess the strategies and methods of the Maliseet language program in the school. Advise the government on what they should do, and should not do, to assist in revitalizing this language.
- Writing in 1857, the Rev. Archibald Geikie called Canadian English a “perversion of words” and an “injury to the language.” We have examined both the history of English in Canada as well as the diversification of English into different dialects and varieties. Respond to Geikie using the ideas, concepts, and examples from our course. Is the English spoken in Canada a corruption of a pure and proper form of the language? Is there a “Canadian” variety of English?
- The choice of which language or which variety of language to use is often political. Leigh Oakes (2004) describes the shift in Quebec towards the use of Quebecois French as a langue publique commune (common public language), but we have also seen a shift towards multilingualism and the ways local identities are sustained through Acadian French. Describe the politics of French language use in Quebec and in Canada more generally, such as the tension between standard French and minority varieties. How do representations of French in the form of figures like Acadieman highlight these tensions?
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