Heller, M - Critique and Sociolinguistic Analysis of Discourse

Critique and SociolinguisticAnalysis of DiscourseMonica HellerOntario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Abstract My point of departure for this paper is that critique is fundamentallyabout identifying and explaining the construction of relations of social differ-ence and inequality (and then deciding what position to take about such pro-cesses, and what, if any, action that might lead to). I focus on one particulartheoretical and methodological dimension of this project; namely the linkagebetween local linguistic practices and processes of social structuration(Giddens,1984). This discussion is based on sociolinguistic ethnographic materi-als exploring how some very local processes (debates over organizational struc-ture and vision in one small community association in Ontario, Canada) arelinked to broader concerns about social difference and inequality.Keywords agency Canada critique language practices structuration

Critique and structuration

My point of departure for this article is that critique is fundamentallyabout identifying and explaining the construction of relations of socialdifference and inequality (and then deciding what position to take aboutsuch processes, and what, if any, action that might lead to). Sociology andanthropology in general have long contained currents of critique; in the1960s especially, one branch of that current began to focus on what ananalysis of language practices might offer to such a project. This interestmight be understood as being motivated by two concerns: one being toidentify the actual social processes involved, the other to understand thereasons why language is so often explicitly a terrain of social struggle.

Since then, a variety of approaches (using labels like sociolinguistics,linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, pragmatics) have worked awayat this project, making headway in some areas, while encountering road-blocks in others. In this article, I focus on one particular theoretical andmethodological problem which has emerged over the years, namely thelinkage between local linguistic practices and processes of social structura-tion (Giddens, 1984). I consider this problem to be important to the projectof critique insofar as the analysis of local linguistic practices can show ussome immediate consequences for the regulation of the production anddistribution of resources, and hence for the construction of social

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difference (what criteria of inclusion and exclusion are used to regulateaccess to resources?) and social inequality (who gets access to what?); butwithout an ability to situate those local practices in time and space it is diffi-cult to know what to make of them. A connected problem is the old socialscience conundrum of the relationship between agency and structure; if itis important to ask how action here is connected to action there and withwhat consequences for whom, it is also important to understand how itcomes to pass that some kinds of people end up with more opportunitiesfor undertaking certain kinds of action while others end up with fewer.

Indeed, North American approaches, under the rubrics of linguisticanthropology or interactional sociolinguistics, have tended to be verysuccessful in uncovering the fine-grained workings of locally situated dis-course, and linking them to a mode of analysis which addresses social differ-ence and social inequality (cf. contributions in Gumperz, 1982a;Cook-Gumperz, 1986; Heller, 1988; Silverstein and Urban, 1996; Schieffe-lin et al., 1998). However, while these approaches are sensitive to the socio-historical conditions of discursive production, they have not alwaysoperationalized that sensitivity and they have sometimes shied away fromusing their tools to develop social and political analyses and critiques of theworld immediately around us. At others, they have had difficulty in doingso in ways which allow us to see the connections between the moment andthe big picture, with the constant danger of moving too quickly from oneto the other.

Within this approach, some have tried to make linkages throughexamining linguistic practices in institutional settings, in law, medicine andnotably in education. These are, as Gumperz (1982b) and others haveargued, sites where it is possible to observe connections between local prac-tices and institutional processes and structures, as well as, importantly, theways in which institutions act as agencies of social regulation, reproductionand control (cf. e.g. Gumperz, 1982b, 1986; Cicourel, 1987; Mehan, 1987;Mehan et al., 1985). Oddly, these institution-oriented approaches are oftenunderstood as distinct from other interactional sociolinguistic or linguisticanthropological work, perhaps as more problem- than theory-oriented;this turns up, for example, in where you find papers at the annual meet-ings of the American Anthropological Association. Nonetheless, it remainsdifficult even in these cases to get a sense of the social and material role ofinstitutions, and of the ways in which actors circulate within and amongthem.

European approaches (notably under the rubric of critical discourseanalysis) have addressed some of these problems, in particular focusingdeliberately on certain kinds of actors and sites of discursive production asa means of producing immediate political analyses and critiques connectedto observable problems of construction of social difference and socialinequality (cf. e.g. Van Dijk, 1993; Wodak, 1996). However, as other con-tributors to this collection have pointed out, these approaches have tended

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to reduce and simplify the discursive processes which are the empiricalheart of the enterprise, and, more importantly, to marginalize as data theactual conditions of discursive production and reception. Arguments areoften based on texts or segments of texts, the significance of which isasserted rather than demonstrated, and while linkages are an importantconcept (notably in Faircloughs notion of intertextuality; cf. Fairclough,1992), it is rare to find empirical illustrations of how processes of con-struction of social difference and social inequality actually unfold over timeand space.

In my view, it is important at least to attempt to discover how these pro-cesses work, and how texts are linked to other sites of discursive productionand interpretation, as well as to demonstrable outcomes, precisely in orderto be able to figure out whose interests are at stake and why, to be able totake a political position based on that reading, and to understand whatkinds of action on our part (including the very asking of questions and pro-duction of knowledge) are likely to have what kinds of consequences forwhom. My goal here, then, is to try to imagine a way to take the best of bothNorth American and European intellectual worlds: to think about how tooperationalize a critical sociolinguistics which is able to turn on a dime torespond to the often rapid developments in the societies we live in (thinkof the Ebonics debate in the United States [Collins, 1999; Ogbu, 1999; Rick-ford, 1999]; debates about language legislation in the European Union;concerns over the spread of English; or debates about minority national-ism), while maintaining the commitment to social theory as well as to thestrong empirical basis of our claims which is in many ways the hallmark ofour work. Such a critical sociolinguistics must also be reflexive, of course;we cannot engage in social and political (or, for that matter, economic orcultural) debate without thinking about the nature and status of the know-ledge we produce, our own interests in that knowledge, and the other inter-ests we may wittingly or unwittingly serve (cf. the many discussions of therole of linguists and anthropologists in language debates in Blommaert,1999).

To illustrate some of these concerns, I will describe here an attempt inwhich I am currently engaged to achieve some of these goals. This attemptis a research programme which at the time of writing is nearing the end ofits 4-year run.1 I will briefly describe the research programmes broad goalsand then turn to an analysis of one particular process under way in one ofthe regions we have been concerned with, as a way of exploring how somevery local processes (such as debates over organizational structure andvision in one small community association) are linked to broader concernsabout social difference and inequality.

At its broadest level, this research is aimed at understanding nothingless than the politics of language in my country (Canada), and in particu-lar the politics of French and English. This is terrain which brings togethertwo major ways in which the study of language is relevant to the study of

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critique in anthropology: language is both a key domain of struggle overdifference and inequality, and a means of conducting that struggle. In thespirit of this double concern, my collaborators and I have called our projectPrise de parole (or in English, Speaking out). The title is also meant toconvey a theoretical and methodological orientation: for us, language prac-tices in Canada are primarily about struggles on a discursive terrain. Theyare about people struggling to produce discourses and to impose them, andto deal with discourses produced by others. (By discourses here I meanprincipally ways of working at understanding the social world, how it oper-ates, how to understand it and what to value in it. Discourses in this senseare obviously linked to the notion of ideology, insofar as ideologies areunderstood as means of structuring and orienting domains of activity, andtherefore inform discursive production and content; cf. Blommaert, 1999.)Language practices are also about discourses informed by interests, inter-ests related to controlling access to the production and distribution of sym-bolic and material resources (the echo here of Bourdieu is not accidental;cf. Bourdieu, 1977, 1982). They are also about doing the business of dis-cursive production under constantly changing conditions, to which, ofcourse, discursive struggles themselves contribute. Finally, in the end theyhave to include our own language practices and discursive production,which are scarcely removed from those of everyone else involved in thisgame.

In Canada, of course, the specific role of language in the social con-struction of relations of difference and inequality is not only central, it ishighly visible and completely explicit. We engage constantly in publicdebate over the relative merits of models of pluralism, over individual andcollective rights, and over the importance of multilingualism and of lin-guistic norms as means of realizing our sometimes conflicting visions ofsociety (cf. Taylor, 1992; Kymlicka, 1995; Bouchard, 1999; Heller, 1999a; LeDevoir, 1999). The best-known and often most salient of these debatesopposes Trudeauian ideologies of Canada as a bilingual state to Qubcoisnationalist concerns about bilingualism as a means of exercising anglo-phone power and as a step towards assimilation, although there are otherviews on this particular issue, and many other important debates as well(such as the debate about the relationship between language revitalizationand the development of new ideas about the organization of Native Can-adian communities, or the debate about whether learning French orEnglish or both is in any way connected to achieving and exercisingcitizenship). The fact that there is a public debate about language makes adifference, but only, I think, a relative one, since it is clear that discoursesabout language in Canada flow easily over into discourses about all kindsof other things, which are also connected to the construction of socialdifference and social inequality (these can range from, say, jobs, as siteswhere linguistic proficiency is connected to access to employment and toprofessional advancement, to, say, painting, which is often linked to the

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construction of national, ethnic and linguistic ideologies), while in otherplaces it may be only those covertly language-related debates that areevident. In any case, Canada serves as a useful terrain for examining pro-cesses relating language practices to shifts in political and economic con-ditions in the context of debates about language and nation in the newglobalized economy. The material I present of course deals with the par-ticular manifestations of those issues in Canada, but can shed light onsimilar processes elsewhere.

Prise de parole

Our research has started from the principle that a major means of organiz-ing difference and inequality in Canada is connected to the constructionof categories that are linked to ethnicity and language. In particular, whatit means to speak French and to be francophone (or French Canadian, orFranco-Canadian, or any number of other labels too numerous to list here),is a window on to major dimensions of difference and inequality. We havechosen to examine ways in which discourses of la francit are connected tothe problem of categorization and power by examining the conditions ofproduction of those discourses and the positioning of actors with respectto the production, circulation and reception of those discourses. This is alsoa question of current social and political importance as this discursiveterrain is currently undergoing a major shift, a shift accompanied by ten-sions and conflicts which so far have been contained in the verbal spherebut which can be none the less violent for that. We set out to map this shift,and to try to understand what lies behind it.

Our assumption, which so far seems relatively on target, was that therelationship of language practices to the production and distribution ofsymbolic and material resources has been shifting because of some funda-mental political economic transformations which position people differ-ently with respect to the impact on their lives, especially in terms of thechanging value of the resources they possess, and their relative ease ofaccess to these and other resources. We started with Ontario and Acadie,as the two major zones of concentration of francophones outside Quebec,and as two areas with very different positions politically and economically,and with respect to ties to other parts of the French- and English-speakingworlds. By examining francophone minority areas, we also had not only theadvantage of doing research where we actually live and work, but also thepossibility of being able to identify sites of discursive production which arerelatively manageable, being located primarily in specific institutions andorganizations of a relatively small scale (which is not the case in Quebec).We started out with a focus, then, on sites of production of discourse aboutFrench and la francit (in its various forms), both supra-regionally andregionally.

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We chose different regions of Ontario and Acadie as examples of variedmanifestations of some common patterns of transformation, and in par-ticular we were interested in the relationship between the traditional heart-lands of French Canada and the new areas into which it is being drawn. Ouridea was to see, first, what kinds of discursive struggles were emerging inthese main sites of construction of what it means to speak and be French,and then to ask both what and who lie behind these struggles? Why arethere competing visions at this moment of what it means to speak and beFrench? What kinds of people participate in redefining this basic social cat-egory, and what kinds of people find themselves marginalized, voluntarilyor otherwise? In other words, who gets to decide what speaking and beingFrench mean in these contexts? And why them? In the end, what kinds ofdiscourses, if any, emerge as dominant new ways of defining la francit? Andwhat kinds of consequences do such newly hegemonic discourses have forthe construction of social difference and social inequality? Who benefitsand who loses? And how, in the final analysis, do we feel about what we claimto be seeing?

The corpus of data, collected over the period 19962000, is based onthe following: (1) over 400 interviews conducted in five regions of Ontarioand five in the Maritime provinces; (2) ethnographic observation in avariety of towns and villages, associations, workplaces and institutions, andlocal, provincial and national events in the private, public and para-publicsectors; (3) tape-recordings of association or institution meetings; and (4)text and visual documents produced by francophone and anti-francophoneassociations, organizations and institutions in the private, public and para-public sectors. What I want to describe here is, first, the broad outlines ofthe competing discourses we have identified and the changing politicaleconomic conditions which we understand to explain the origins and tra-jectories of these discourses; and, second, a specific example of one sitewhere these discourses intersect and compete. While the discourses identi-fied of course are constructed on the basis of data analysis, which thereforeought to be presented first, the constraints of academic writing make itmore efficient to present things the other way around (discourses first, datasecond). I will then go on to consider who gains and who loses what fromthe ways in which events are unfolding in these sites, and what this tells usabout minority francophone society in Canada in general. I will end with abrief consideration of where this leaves us, as a set of researchers engageddirectly with the subject and object of our research. In a fuller expositionthere would be room for the development of more fine-grained analyses ofspecific discourse practices than I can present here. I have chosen to placemy emphasis elsewhere, since, for the purposes of this article, I want to con-centrate on breadth and linkages.

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Traditionalist, modernizing and globalizing discourses

Elsewhere, we have described the major discourses we have identified as tra-ditionalist, modernizing and globalizing (Heller and Budach, 1999). What weintend to convey by these labels is an anchoring of discourse developmentin specific socio-historical conditions, and a relative discursive dominanceat various historical points. These points take their significance from shiftsin the kinds of resources available, and in the ways in which ethnolinguis-tic categorization (here, specifically, what it means to be French Canadian,or Qubcois, or Acadian, or francophone, and so on) is tied to the organiz-ation of the (unequal) production and distribution of those resources(through other kinds of institutional structures and processes as well, suchas education, health care, finance, etc.). However, I do want to point outthat all three are present today in francophone discursive space, and havein some ways surfaced periodically over the course of Canadian history.

What we have labelled a traditionalist discourse has its origins in thespiritual nationalism which was long the French-Canadian response todomination by the English (Harvey [1999] argues that it emerged as aresponse to the failure of the 1837 rebellion which had aimed at establish-ing modern, state-like political structures in Quebec). The discourse istraditionalist in the sense that it refers explicitly to the importance of repro-ducing practices which are identified as embodying significant and histori-cally continuous activities and values. In content, it focuses on the spiritualsuperiority of French-Canadian over English-Canadian society, a resig-nation to economic and political marginalization as a necessary price to payfor survival and spiritual rewards, and on the solidarity of a homogeneousgroup understood as an organic body. While resisting submission, itnonetheless recognizes the necessity of some accommodation to Englishpower.

The political economic conditions of the time provided little in the wayof a power base for most francophones, who were mainly involved as labourin primary resource extraction. Bilingualism has a value here as a means ofmaking ones way in an English-speaking world, while retaining the rewardsof community solidarity. English is about success in the material world,French is about community and family. In many cases, the individual hall-mark of an ability to retain both is a bilingualism in which traces of contactare evident. Mastering English is something to be proud of. The elite ofcourse had a power base, one based on acting as brokers between anglo-phone power and francophone communities; for them, bilingualism was anessential means of exercising what power flowed from that position.

The modernizing discourse has its main origins in 1960s Qubcois statenationalism (although one can see earlier manifestations, notably in thevision held by the leadership of that 1837 failed rebellion). The conditionsfor this shift seem to have resided in increasing emphasis on industry afterthe Second World War, and, as a result, an increasing wealth base in

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Quebec, coupled with a Western expansion of anglophone-dominatedeconomic activity, which drew English-speakers westward, leaving open thepossibility of creating a French-dominated regional market based inQuebec (Clift and Arnopoulos, 1979). It also profited from the growingimportance of the state in post-war life.

The modernizing discourse focuses on the importance of the state increating French monolingual bases of power from which to enter themodern world. One can see how the notion of the organic body laid thefoundations for a new discourse which retains the same notion, but for adifferent purpose: the naturalness inherent in that notion legitimates newgoals of collective political organization, of control over the politicalapparatus for those who can be included in what is essentially an ethnic cat-egory. Just as the nation is understood as homogeneous, so is the social andpolitical space it inhabits, or needs to inhabit. The political, economic andsocial goal of gaining access, as francophones, to the resources controlledby anglophones, is predicated on clear ethnolinguistic, or at least linguis-tic, separation of domains, from territorial and institutional separation, toseparation in individual linguistic practice, to structural distinction ofposited pure and whole linguistic systems. Bilingualism is important, butrequires constant surveillance in order to keep it from flowing over intoassimilation. (Modernizing values of democracy militate against tooethnic an interpretation of these processes, but using language as a cri-terion of inclusion and exclusion accomplishes much the same goals ofreproduction and protection of corporate interests, while appearing demo-cratic.)

The globalizing discourse is only just now emerging, and is a direct con-sequence of the relative success of modernization. The main thread is aninterest in using the notion of the nation and its language as a basis forpolitical and economic success. The difference is that those notions are nowincreasingly both commodified and transformed into debates about citizen-ship in which ideas of the organic group, of ethnicity, are removed. Thereare several reasons for this. One is that political success has entailed theconstruction of political institutions which necessarily have a membershipbeyond the bounds of the ethnic legitimizing discourse, and which them-selves also rest on democratic values of inclusion. A second is that the neo-liberal state is withdrawing from its role in sustaining many community-levelstructures, among them francophone associations and institutions. A thirdis that successful entry into national and international markets has coin-cided with a transformation of those markets. These days French-Englishbilingualism is an interesting path to new jobs in service and informationeconomies with markets in which both or either are useful (somewhat iron-ically, Quebec being first among them). At the same time, globalizationseems to be creating a market for old-style authenticity, manifested in newkinds of heritage tourism, for example, or in trends towards various kindsof cultural fusion in fashion, music and other cultural domains (cf. Le

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Menestrel, 1999, on the commodification of Cajun identity in Louisiana).The problem is to figure out what kinds of language practices are valuable;we are seeing emphasis both on local authenticity and uniformizing stan-dardization, on hybridity and on purity.

These discourses represent ideological orientations which can beunderstood as strategies in which ethnolinguistic categorization is used asa means to organize the production and distribution of resources, and todefend social, political and economic interests with respect to the regu-lation of resources, which can vary according to the positioning of indi-viduals or groups with respect to resources and to boundaries, andaccording to political economic conditions. In what follows I will sketch outthe relationship between these discourses and the political economic con-ditions of one area of Ontario, and show how different kinds of social pos-itions interact with different interests and possibilities with respect to theproduction and reproduction of those discourses. I will focus, that is, onhow sites of discursive production change over time, and on how under-standing the process and conditions of production can help achieve adeeper understanding of the texts produced there.

Discourses of la francit in an Ontario county

A brief historyThe area I want to focus on is located in central Ontario. The informationI have about its history comes from a variety of oral and written sources; theoral ones are from our interviews, and can be understood as oral history;the written ones are mainly documents produced by local historians,notably Marchildon (1984). We have been given access to some primarydocuments, mainly newspaper articles from the post-war period, but wehave preferred to concentrate on history as it unfolds before our eyes, usinghistorical sources as a background rather than as a primary focus (this ismainly a question of intellectual preference and limitations on resources,not a judgement of relative merit, but it does raise the issue of the practi-cal constraints on an ethnographic method which wants to take history seri-ously).

Nonetheless, the locally produced historical texts of course have to betreated as historically and socially situated themselves, and it is importantthat they were produced at or in the wake of moments of political crisis andconsciousness-formation, have played an important role in the productionand reproduction of a modernizing discourse, have been produced bypeople with an investment in francophone institutions, and take largely thesame form whether spoken or written. That is, a certain modernist narra-tive has emerged, and is documented in some of our interviews (withpeople occupying important positions in local francophone associationsand institutions) and in much of the written text produced locally (by many

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of the same people). This narrative constructs a historical tradition whichlegitimizes struggles over current interests, and which is understood as aseries of obstacles which a unified community has had to overcome in itsstruggle against anglophone domination, by means of a modernist strategyinvolving the establishment of autonomous institutions.

This is exemplified in the first paragraph of Sylvestre (1980: 9), a bookproduced as a text meant to commemorate, and therefore legitimize, amodernist stance during a crisis over just such an issue in 1979 (discussedfurther below). It is an excellent example of the kinds of texts I refer toabove, a text created to construct a certain narrative, a text which createsthe reality it purports to reflect. The school crisis in question (a debatewithin the community as to whether or not to fight for a French-languagehigh school, and struggles with anglophone authorities over the resourcesto create it) is linked in this text to a long history of glorious struggle, wagedby a group whose legitimate presence is established by historical right offirst arrival. (The French original is in italics, the English translation followsin regular typeface. Where English was used in the original, it appears therein regular typeface, and is underlined in the text of the English translation.)

Sur les bords de la Baie Georgienne, que Champlain visita en 1615, slve P., la plusancienne ville de lOntario, la premire dexpression franaise. Ce deuxime titre danci-ennet se garde au prix de nombreux sacrifices, de querelles politico-religieuses, voire mmede luttes piques. Les pionniers travaillant sous le zle du Pre Laboureau, ds 1873, lesparents francophones dirigs par le Pre Brunelle, au dbut du sicle, et les tudiantsfranco-ontariens opposs aux volonts assimilatrices de leur conseil scolaire en19791980, tmoignent tous dune vie franaise enracine en Huronie, parfois endifficult mais toujours tenace.

(On the shores of Georgian Bay, which Champlain [a key figure in the coloniz-ation efforts of France] visited in 1615, lies P., the oldest city in Ontario, thefirst to be of the French language. This second title of seniority is kept at theprice of many sacrifices, of politico-religious quarrels, even of epic struggles.The pioneers working under the zeal of Father Laboureau, from as early as1873, the francophone parents directed by Father Brunelle, at the turn of thecentury, and the Franco-Ontarian students opposed to the assimilationistefforts of their school board in 19791980, all bear witness to the French liferooted in Huronia, sometimes in difficulty, but always persistent.)

Here, Sylvestre contributes materially (by providing the words) to thelegitimization of the community through history and tradition, and to theconstruction of an ideology of struggle and resistance which is understoodas historically continuous. The community is constructed as unified, andthe text thus underscores criteria for inclusion and exclusion with respectto that community as well as guidelines for appropriate conduct on thepart of its members.

At the same time as we have to understand the discursive, ideologicallynarrativized nature of many of the data we have to work with, we have also

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pieced together from these same sources our own account (for the mostpart not narrativized in local sources) of the areas political economichistory, an account which can be understood as a set of empirically verifi-able hypotheses requiring better primary source confirmation than we canprovide at this time. I will only provide here the elements I consider neces-sary for the development of my own narrative (leaving aside for examplethe existence in the 17th century of a French Catholic mission, which hasgreat importance for the establishment of authenticity and legitimate pres-ence of the francophone population, as seen in Sylvestres text cited above).My account here begins with the in-migration of French Canadian farmersfrom Quebec in the mid-19th century. The community they established,and which still exists, represents almost an archetype of the traditionalFrench-Canadian community: rural, isolated, Catholic, homogeneous. Thearea was mainly farmed (subsistence, and potato monoculture), butfarming existed side by side with, and was often supplemented by, fishingand lumberjacking (a common economic complex across Ontario,although the relative importance of each activity varied from place to place;cf. Welch, 1988).

The local elite, drawn from families who were able to do relatively wellout of farming, began to organize itself around the parish in the late 1800sand early 1900s. The Catholic Church actively contributed to the develop-ment of this elite, providing elementary education, arranging for promis-ing youth to be sent away to convents and seminaries for higher education,and organizing discussion circles which can be seen as embryonic forms oflater community associations, and which also established the groundworkfor community activism, for example, in the founding of insurance com-panies and credit unions which were essential for the financial stability ofthe community. The Church also contributed to the development of elitesocial networks, whose mission was to safeguard the central values of thecommunity (language, ethnicity and religion), and thereby ensure its ownreproduction. This process was active well into the 1960s, and producedmajor clerical and lay figures of importance today (such as a bishop, and alawyer responsible for suing the province in the mid-1980s in a landmarklawsuit on francophone rights). We can already see here the ways in whichinstitutions like the Church and its education system were linked to otherinstitutions (like credit unions), and to the organization of voice in thecommunity, that is, the organization of who gets to speak about what, andtherefore who gets to define central values and practices, and access toresources.2 Major sites of discourse would have been Church services (ourinterviews contain, for example, verbatim quotes from some particularlyinfluential sermons of the 1950s, which the older generation still vividlyrecalls), discussion circle meetings, organized meetings of the local maleelite, the local Church-run school, as well as a variety of other less struc-tured sites such as social gatherings in neighbours homes on winterevenings, the credit union and so on.

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Those who were unable to make a living from agriculture, or a combi-nation of agriculture and forestry or fishing, went to work for anglophonesin nearby English-dominated towns, at first in sawmills, and later in othermanufacturing industries. These families were marginal to the major sitesof discourse production in the francophone community; they had fewermeans for producing a traditionalist discourse, and fewer reasons for doingso. They are still often held up by others as examples of the ravages ofassimilation.

The early part of the century saw the beginning of the development ofa property-based tourist industry, in which local skills in construction (and,for women, cooking) were seasonally put to use by rich anglophones fromToronto or the United States seeking to build weekend and summerretreats. Agriculture became untenable as a family-based business in the1960s, as a result of mechanization and changes in production systems. Dis-placed sons either followed their uncles into town, or became entrepre-neurs in the cottage tourist industry; the latter is a major source of maleemployment to this day, creating conditions which allow networks of rela-tively poorly educated but often highly skilled male francophones to repro-duce language and local identity, without participating in the structuresand discourses of the elite. Some women work in towns, in industry, shopsor health care; many turn their own country skills to profit selling bakeryproducts, preserves and crafts, and providing various other forms of ser-vices (such as cleaning) to tourists in the summer.

The Church also began to lose influence in favour of the state, a shiftwhich of course had specific effects on the francophone population, sincethe state was anglophone. This can be seen most clearly in struggles overFrench-language education, which I will discuss further below.

The regional industrial base suffered greatly in the 1980s. Only now isit beginning to be replaced by attempts to develop heritage and environ-mental tourism, marrying the regions undeniable natural beauty to itscomplicated English, French and indigenous history and its identity ascountry. There is an explosion of interest among certain francophones inthe Mtis heritage many of their ancestors spent a great deal of effortdenying, at a time when social categorization and inequality was organizeddifferently. Perhaps more importantly, in the last few years, a nearby urbancentre has experienced tremendous economic and demographic growth,drawing many people south, as well as drawing into the region franco-phones from other parts of the country, who often have different ideasabout being francophone and speaking French from those of the localpopulation. Finally, the new globalized economy has produced a new cropof wealthy people (from farther and farther afield) seeking to build countryestates, touching off a small construction boom.

This brief history provides some background for understanding whomight have had some interest in resisting anglophone power, and who not,and what likely sites of discourse production might have been. It also

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provides some sense of why the discourses produced took the shapes theydid. In the next section, I will examine in greater detail three crises whichplayed an important role in the development of local discourses, and whichalso reveal some of the processes underlying discursive shifts.

Three crisesThe three crises I wish to discuss are pivotal to the shift from traditionalistto modernizing and from modernizing to globalizing discourses. The firsttwo occurred in the 1940s and the late 1970s; the third is under way today.The kinds of data we have about each period of course vary. The first twocrises are documented in our corpus mainly in the form of local written his-tories, some primary sources mainly in the form of newspaper clippingsmade available to us by local historians and recorded narratives in thecontext of ethnographic interviews with community members (some ofwhom were alive at the time, others of whom were born later). It is import-ant to note that these crises emerge regularly and spontaneously (in thesense that we did not specifically ask about these periods or events or actors)in the narratives provided by certain kinds of community members abouttheir community and their region, namely those who are currently or whohave been centrally involved in francophone institutions and associations,or who are linked to families with such a tradition of involvement. They thusseem to constitute key elements in a certain local narrative of la francit, anarrative which is dominant and which represents certain interests andcertain perspectives. I should add that, in addition to these sorts of data,we also have our own observations of the physical traces left behind of thoseperiods, often in the form of buildings and photographs which remain ondisplay in institutional spaces. Since there is no room here to present thefull range of data, I will construct my account of these three crises arounddata which helps me make the point relatively efficiently.

The first crisis I want to discuss here shook the community in the 1940s,when the local priest (ironically himself of French Basque origin, a pointmost narrators do not hesitate to make) apparently encouraged the fran-cophone population to assimilate to English for its own good. Many fol-lowed his advice. The local elite, however, fought back, refusing to abandonits power base, and thereby laying the seeds for later forms of political con-sciousness. Important actors at that time included the main insurance agentand others in the liberal professions, as well as members of the main wealthyfarming families.

Two key texts on local history present this period as a crucial one inlaying the grounds for the political mobilization of the population. The firstis Sylvestre (1980); the second is Marchildon (1984), produced not longafterwards as part of a province-wide attempt to institutionalize Franco-Ontarian history in the context of the increasing state organization ofFranco-Ontarian schools. While both treat this era as key, I will focus hereon a passage from Sylvestre (1980: 17):

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Jean-Marie Castex, Franais dorigine mais francophobe de nature, arrive au Canadaen 1910 et stablit P. en 1939, aprs avoir tabli quelques coles catholiques anglaises M. En 1942, il invite les Grey Sisters diriger lhpital. En 1954 il suscite la crationdu Parents and Teachers Association, mais les parents francophones nen veulentpoint, et crent, en octobre 1959, leur propre Association de parents et instituteurs. Castexrefuse de leur nommer un aumonier, et lorsque forc de le faire par son vque, il dlguedabord un prtre unilingue anglais.

( Jean-Marie Castex, French by origin but francophobe by nature, arrives inCanada in 1910, and comes to reside in P. in 1939, having established someEnglish Catholic schools in M. (a nearby town). In 1942, he invites the GreySisters to run the hospital. In 1954 he encourages the creation of the Parentsand Teachers Association, but the francophone parents want nothing to dowith it, and create, in October 1959, their own Parent Teacher Association.Castex refuses to name a chaplain for them, and, when forced to do so by hisbishop, he first names a monolingual anglophone priest.)

Sylvestre uses a number of devices to construct the opposition of Castexand the francophone community. In both content and form (by using theEnglish version of the names of institutions which do have French names),he shows how the priest uses his position to establish anglophone controlover local institutions. He also constructs the francophone community asunified in opposition by using the definite article (les parents francophones),and emphasizes the concept of community control over local institutionsby using the possessive article (leur propre Association). Other accounts wehave collected indicate that in fact the community was divided over theactions of Msgr. Castex, but the construction of homogeneity fits in withSylvestres overall goal of providing a narrative of collective, difficult, butultimately victorious struggle.

At the same time, Sylvestres text does point to the ways in which thiscrisis laid the groundwork for further investment in committee structuresand local associations as an important power base for the advancement offrancophone elite interests. The structures established at that time remainimportant, notably a local chapter of an international benevolent society.Members of the local elite have been meeting for years twice a month forthe club dinner, to which a speaker is always invited. Who is invited to speak,and what they speak about, are crucial matters. In local histories, manyimportant events and institutions are often linked to such talks (where, forexample, someone might explain how a credit union works, or mightpresent an idea for a local newspaper). The dinner always acts, therefore,as an important site for production and legitimation of discourses, as wellas contributing to the construction and reproduction of the local networkswhich are the basis of their diffusion and development.

In other narratives about this period, speakers also construct this crisisas one which served to raise consciousness, consolidate a political positionand lay the groundwork for struggles to come. It is also presented as amoment of recognition of the increasing dangers of assimilation facing the

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community, of division within the community with regard to how to handlethe power of English and, significantly, of the complexity of the relation-ship with the Church, now understood as potentially having a different setof interests from those of the lay elite. Sylvestre constructs a tight narrativein the voice of that elite; other accounts (even those of members of thatelite) point to nuances and complexities which, however, are constructedmainly as mystifying; no one can explain either what motivated Msgr.Castex, nor why anyone should have paid attention to him. Ethnographi-cally, those voices remain to be identified, although we have some glimpsesas to the reasons for their marginalization.

The second crisis occurred in the late 1970s, when members of thelocal elite continued a fight which had begun many years before over accessto French-language education (see also Welch, 1988; Heller, 1994). Thedetails of the crisis are too complicated to go into here, but essentiallyinvolve convincing local education authorities to act on the right estab-lished by law in Ontario in 1968 to high schools in which French is the lan-guage of instruction. The events of that period (concentrated between 1979and 1981) were triggered by the closure of a French-language village schooland the opening of a large, supposedly bilingual high school in a nearbytown. Institutional rationalization, part of a long historic process of cen-tralization and the growth of the state, became an instrument for repro-ducing anglophone power in the region. This occurred at the same time asQubcois nationalism necessitated new ways of thinking about what itmight mean to be francophone in Ontario (cf. Heller, 1994), as well as pro-viding some new discursive means for doing just that.

Some responded by developing a discourse of accommodation, avaluing of bilingualism, or simply a valuing of English over French (whatcertain actors would call assimilation). For those who were alreadyinvested in a more nationalist stance, and who had the local francophoneassociations as a site for discursive production, the schools symbolicimportance as a site of social and cultural reproduction increased as othermeans of reproduction faltered, while the reorganization of educationnecessitated shifting discursive ground and social action to engage the stateas principal interlocutor. This crisis can be seen as the moment of com-pletion of a shift from traditionalist to modernizing discourses, under theinfluence of changing political economic conditions. It is worth noting thatalmost identical crises and discursive conflicts were occurring acrossOntario from the mid-1960s, and are still occurring today in other parts ofCanada, notably, at the moment of writing, in Nova Scotia and PrinceEdward Island.

Bernard Desormiers (all personal names have been changed) was acentral figure in this crisis. His story is interesting in part because he wasnot a member of the traditionalist elite, and, indeed, as he describes below,was not initially oriented to the new modernizing discourse. He becameinvolved in the local crisis, and found a path that apparently struck him as

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more interesting and worthwhile than the one he had been pursuing.Indeed, for many years afterwards, Bernard continued to define himself,and to make his living, as a francophone activist (until current discursiveshifts displaced him, as we will see). Below, Bernard describes to me andone of my colleagues his own discursive transformation at that time(Ronald, referred to in the extract below, is a member of the local elite,and played an important role in defining strategy in the construction andmanagement of the crisis):

Et je sais dans ce temps-l cest ce que je trouvais cest quils poussaient trop fort. Moijtais en faveur des coles bilingues jtais embarqu dans la grande mentalit canadi-enne, tsais le bilinguisme On va tous tre bilingue p(u)is tout va fonctionner bien jai t pogn dans ce courant-l. Alors l je me suis impliqu sur la scne scolaire. Ici oncommenait parler dune cole de langue franaise. Mais voyons donc, des stupidits(de) pareilles sortes cest comme a que je considrais. Cest en mettant les Anglais et lesFranais ensemble dans des coles bilingues, cest a quon va sauver le Canada avec.Mais aprs que je me suis impliqu dans dans quelques mois cest moi qui est devenu leradical puis les gens comme Ronald me disaient Oh, oh, oh, arrte Bernard!

(And I know that at that time what I felt was that they were pushing too hard.I was in favour of bilingual schools, I was on the bandwagon of the greatCanadian mentality, you know bilingualism Were all going to be bilingualand everything is going to work I was in that current of thought. So I gotinvolved in the school scene. Here they were starting to talk about a French-language school. Come on, what kind of stupidity, thats the way I thought.Its in putting the English and the French together in bilingual schools, thatswhat well save Canada with. But after I got involved, in in a few months, I wasthe one who became a radical, and people like Ronald said to me Oh, oh, oh,stop it Bernard!)

The result of this crisis was the creation of the school the modernizerswere after, and the marginalization of those who had accommodated toanglophone structures. Sylvestre (1980: 60) cites some interviews con-ducted by anglophone newspapers from neighbouring provinces coveringthe school crisis, in which one student, happy with the status quo, wasquoted as saying Leave us out of it. It seems significant that the only voicesof such unpoliticized students that we hear should come from such asource, and in English.

This second crisis is alive in local memory, but it holds different placesin different peoples narratives. For people like Bernard, it was a formativeperiod, and it is a key element in the narratives provided by those who playa role in local francophone associations and structures. Others at best willrecall, like one woman now in her 40s, that they wondered at the time whatall the fuss was about; the woman in question, who recounted her memoriesof this period to us in an interview in 2000, remains unclear as to what theactual outcome was. In many ways, this crisis institutionalized a splitbetween the dominant, institutionalized modernizing discourse, and thosewho sought other ways of orienting to the local sociolinguistic relations ofpower.

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The third crisis involves what may have been the second most import-ant institutional legacy of this period (after the school): a cultural andlobbying association, one of many established across Ontario in the 1970sand 1980s. The association was active throughout the 1980s, not withoutsome controversy and difficulty, notably over whom it did or did not rep-resent. However, it ran into some serious trouble in the 1990s, for reasonswhich have in part to do with the dissolution of the political economic basisof the modernizing discourse, and in part with the kinds of paradoxes itcreated itself. Thus, part of this trouble had to do with the fact that theassociations funding came from government sources, which were rapidlydrying up. Indeed, in 1996, the government announced a new reducedfunding plan which required province-wide consensus, thereby triggeringa massive struggle for access to the limited resources left, in each and everyprovince affected. Part of the trouble had to do with the still disaffected tra-ditionalists, who were ostensibly represented by this association but whostubbornly refused to turn up for all but local, cultural and social events.Finally, part of the trouble had to do with the major shifts in the economicorganization of the region, which was increasingly drawn into larger econ-omic circuits, into the orbit of demographically exploding urban centresfarther south, and into new ways of making a living for which it was unpre-pared. The economy increasingly turns on new service and informationactivities based in the larger towns farther south, despite a building boomfuelled by the newly rich or almost retired (mainly from Toronto, but alsofrom as far away as Russia) who are building themselves expensive vacationor retirement homes in a region felt to be particularly bucolic, and despitenew attempts to invest in local community development, notably throughtourism.

The local association is still trying to come to grips with what this meansfor the population it aims to represent, but recent events are telling. Theassociations council is redefining its mandate and its structure and func-tioning. The councils membership has generally been drawn from thelocal elite; increasingly, it draws less from local families (although they tooare present) and more from professional past and present members of edu-cational institutions, as well as other public sector domains and, to a certainextent, from the private sector, with some members from outside the com-munity altogether. It does not include, for example, industrial, farming orconstruction workers, the unemployed, the poorly educated (this is scarcelya surprise, but it bears repeating.) The Church collaborates, but does notparticipate directly: this is a modern, lay association.

Over the last two years, the council has focused on the development ofa more bureaucratized regime, drawing up job descriptions for paid staff,and contracts for them to sign. Activity which, although paid, had emergedout of volunteer labour for la cause, is being turned into wage labour in aservice economy. The council also focused on its own role, and on themandate of the organization, introducing the new idea of understanding

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itself as a service organization. This resulted in some conflict with its long-time director-general (DG), Bernard Desormiers, who, as we have seen, hada very personal investment in the organization as a political lobbying associ-ation, and who understood its (and his) activity as a struggle for la cause,not as the provision of service via wage labour. The modernizing and glob-alizing discourses clashed very directly in this arena.

We followed these developments quite closely, and have a number oftape-recordings of council meetings (usually held on a monthly basis) andsome copies of minutes, interviews with all council members, and copies ofposition papers and consultation documents. The council membersengaged in this activity in quite an intense way over a period of close to twoyears, not only hashing things out in meetings, but circulating draft docu-ments for commentary between meetings, and frequently consulting bytelephone or in person. There is no space here to examine the detailedways in which these new discourses of the organization were constructed,but I will provide three examples here.

The first example comes from the draft mission statement, publishedin a consultation document in January 2000: L(Association) est un organismecatalyseur au service de la communaut francophone (The Association is a cata-lyzing organization at the service of the francophone community). It is sig-nificant that the association even feels the need to publish a missionstatement, a genre with origins in the private sector. Such a statementmakes the most sense in the context of the kind of discourse of publicservice and accountability which is typical of the new economy. And, ofcourse, the content points directly to the same notions of service. Thus, inwhat is probably the most significant single sentence for the establishmentof its orientation, the association sends a clear message.

The second example is from a council meeting held in early 1998. Inthis meeting, the council debates what kind of council it wants to be, basedon some management training documents the members have studied anddiscussed. The models provide for varying degrees of power to be concen-trated in the hands of the council or the director-general, and therefore areclosely linked to the specific relationship between this council and its DG,Bernard Desormiers. As the discussion unfolds, one member raises theissue of this relationship and how to handle it in the context of broaderideological orientations; specifically, the problem is that the council israising the possibility of curtailing the DGs independence for reasonswhich are stated as bureaucratic and democratic (better to have electedmembers make decisions; the council remains but DGs come and go; thecouncil is legally responsible for the organization in ways the DG is not),and which certainly have the effect of concentrating power in the hands ofthe (elected) council. However, the DG, who, it is known, has a differentview on how things should be run, is sitting in the meeting. A makes it clearthat of course it is not a question of not having confidence in Bernard, butan association planning for its future cannot count on the eternal presence

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of one DG. (In this transcript, A and B are council members; C is the DG,Bernard Desormiers.)

A: . . . on peut choisir la structure qui se rapporte nous. Le DG quon atout de suite ou si jamais le DG venait changer, on aurait pas le choix,tsais? On ne pourrait plus rviser quelle sorte de structure on veut.Donc . . .

B: Oui.

C: Bon mais vu que . . .

A: Bien si on peut [faire?] beaucoup de confiance comme cest l Bernard, on peut choisir un modle, tu sais, plus simple. Mais si leprochain qui va le remplacer, on ne peut pas le faire confiance, bienon ne voudra plus avoir le mme non plus.

B: Mais a pourrait changer.

A: Oui?

B: Si on adopte une structure cest pas a quon cherche en ce moment?Une structure fixe pour le CA? On nest pas pour commencer changer chaque fois quon a un diffrent DG.

(A: . . . we can choose a structure which has to do with us [which fits us].The DG (Director-General) which we have right now or if ever the DGcame to change, we wouldnt have a choice, yknow? We wouldnt beable to revise what kind of structure we want. So . . .

B: Yes.

C: OK, but seeing as how . . .

A: Well yes we can [have?] lots of confidence as it is now with Bernard, wecan choose a model, you know, a simpler one. But if the next one whoreplaces him, we cant trust him, well we wouldnt want the same oneeither.

B: But that could change.

A: Yes?

B: If we adopt a structure isnt that what were looking for right now? Afixed structure for the council? We arent going to start changing everytime we have a different DG.)

In addition to the face work accomplished here in aid of the councilsachievement of its goals, there are other dimensions worth commenting on.The actual discursive work is accomplished by A and B, providing a basis forthe council to present itself as united and democratic, not under the thumbof its president or any one other member. Indeed, earlier in the transcriptthe elected president lays the groundwork for both supporting the

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particular model A and B are hinting at, namely a fixed structure inde-pendent of the particular personalities involved, and for building a con-sensus in support of such a structure. He does this explicitly: Jaimerais plusun consensus que consensus ouais? au lieu dun vote majoritaire (I would prefera consensus to consensus yeah? rather than a majority vote). He also doesthis through control over turn-taking and topic introduction, and throughthe frequent use of personal disclaimers which situate the decision as a col-lective, not an individual one. He frequently uses Je (I), and framing devicessuch as suggesting and giving my opinion as a means of stating his ownposition, which he makes available to the group without imposing it. Hedoes not position himself as speaking for the group. In this excerpt, thebuilding of the consensus is taken over by A and B, who do the actualframing of the models to be discussed and the face work needed to accom-plish a collective decision with Bernards consent.

The next turn in the sequence is the presidents; he speaks at lengthabout the importance of arriving at an informed collective decision. A fewminutes later, he calls for a motion. A responds: Mhm, quest-ce que tu veuxque je dise? (Mhm, what do you want me to say?). It is the president whoformulates the formal motion which will then be reiterated and entered intothe minutes as having been proposed by A and seconded by B. The associ-ation moves toward a more bureaucratized organization, less dependent onthe charismatic leadership characteristic of the battles of the modernist dis-course, more focused on service to the community than fighting the com-munitys battles with the dominant anglophone majority. Significantly, itdoes so by eschewing charismatic models of leadership, preferring to accom-plish its goals as a consensual bureaucratic organization.

The third example illustrates what kinds of services might be involvedin the Associations new vision of itself. While the Association still focusesmainly on social and cultural activities, it also uses a discourse of com-munity development. This community development is framed as beingdesigned to develop and maintain pride in francophone identity, but alsoas being about the advancement of shared interests (this is indeed one ofthe ways the Associations consultation document actually defines com-munity; the other defines community as a collection of people withshared resources). The Association has worked in close collaboration witha small organization it in fact helped set up, an organization that has themandate of dveloppement de biens et de services novateurs et de cration dentre-prises et demplois (development of innovative resources and services andcreation of companies and of jobs) (as cited in an article in the localFrench-language newspaper, the Got de vivre, 20 January 2000: 6). The dis-course of resources (biens) and services is shared by both organizations. Inthis discourse, language is less about identity and pride, about rights andstruggles, and more about market value. In the same text, the sentenceabout resources and services ends thus: dentreprises et demplois qui montrentla valeur ajoute des francophones et des bilingues de la (rgion) o lon reflte leur

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impact considrable sur la vitalit de la rgion (of companies and of jobs whichshow the added value of the francophones and the bilinguals of the . . .region and where their considerable impact on the vitality of the region isreflected). French is important because it will help the entire regionemerge from its economic slump. French is important because it has econ-omic added value. And francophones are important because, withoutthem, the region would have no claim to being able to provide that addedvalue.

The crisis of the Association, triggered by changing political (with-drawal of the neo-liberal state) and economic (shift from primary andsecondary to tertiary sector economic activities) conditions, is beingresolved in a globalizing kind of way. The Association is reinventing itselfas a service organization linked to activities which are marketable, andwhich indeed can be seen as providing the authenticity which the touristindustry can effectively exploit (as well as contributing to the maintenance,even to the sense of maintaining, the bilingual linguistic proficiency whichinternationalized markets value). The discursive debates within and aroundthe Association can be tied both to the changing political and economicconditions of its existence, but also to changes in the organization of voicein some highly observable ways. For example, a few months after themeeting discussed above, Bernard was dismissed from his position by thecouncil, whose members one evening asked him for his keys and escortedhim outside the building (the building which, it will be recalled, had servedas headquarters for the school crisis of 197981 in which Bernard hadplayed such an important role). As of this writing, months later, the Associ-ation is still looking for a new DG, one who most likely will have a jobdescription and a contract, the content of which will certainly describeactivities somewhat different from those undertaken by Bernard. Whilethere are many more things going on in this situation than I can recounthere, I think it is possible, and necessary, to draw attention not so much toBernard and the council members as individuals, but as actors with his-torically and socially constrained and contingent possibilities and interests,both in terms of being able to speak out (prendre la parole) and in terms ofwhat they are likely to want to, and be able to, say.

The three moments of crisis illustrate some of the ways in which politi-cal and economic conditions create possibilities for the emergence ofcertain kinds of discourse about language and identity in Canada, and helpexplain why those discourses emerged when and where they did. This onesmall area shows us how complex the battle over language in Canada canbe, and usually is. Clearly, all along the line there are those who have ben-efited from seeing things a certain way and imposing that vision on others(always in the interests of the collective good). Looking at these issues asdiscourses, and as struggles over domination of discursive space, hasallowed us, I think, to get some purchase on what is happening. In orderto explain why, we have had to look further, into the political economic

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conditions of discursive production and reception, at what makes it poss-ible to look at things a certain way, at what makes it make sense for somepeople to do so, but perhaps less so, or not at all, for others. This is clearlynot about what is right or wrong in any absolute sense, but rather aboutwhat is right or wrong for whom, and when.

In this case, we can see how the elite has maintained a vested interestin reproducing a notion of francophone community, although how thatcommunity has been understood, and therefore its criteria of inclusion andexclusion, have changed over the years. Language has come into sharperand sharper focus as the major terrain, so that now the value of linguisticproficiency in French and English is understood as underlying the veryfuture of the community. The question remains as to who will decide whatcounts as linguistic proficiency in both languages, and who will have accessto them, and, indeed, current battles (for example, over access to French-language schools, literacy training, employment; cf. Heller, 1999b) reflectjust that. Those who no longer speak French, or whose families have neverbeen part of the francophone community, have to struggle for legitimacyif they want to be part of the networks defined by the professional elite. Thekind of French you speak, and how you organize French and English in yourlinguistic practices, also become salient indices of social position and dis-cursive orientation, and hence criteria of inclusion and exclusion in thisstruggle.

Conclusion

While I have only sketched the outlines of what a fine-grained analysis ofdiscourse production might look like (as in Sylvestres use of personal pro-nouns and of contrast between French and English to construct voices andoppositions; or Bernards account of how he came to change perspective;or in the Association council meetings construction of collective consen-sus to achieve discursive shift), it seems clear that such analyses allow us tosee how speakers draw on their linguistic resources to accomplish the con-struction of viewpoints, of legitimating arguments and other discursivefunctions in ways that can be explained given who they are, what kinds ofresources they have access to, and what kinds of struggles are relevant totheir concerns. Discourses are grounded, and emerge from political econ-omic conditions that frequently entail differences of interest, and con-comitant, albeit often lop-sided, struggle. As such, analysis of specificpractices or processes is aided by linking them to other kinds of practiceswhich may be ethnographically harder to grasp (such as late-night tele-phone calls, or e-mail messages to which we are not privy) but which remainconceptually important to include.

The final issue that needs to be raised has to do with the problem ofwho is producing what discourse, and who is deciding who benefits and who

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loses out. If that applies to the people of this county, then surely it alsoapplies to us. Just wandering around asking about these issues is partici-pation in the production and reception of discourses. Our interviews areprecisely occasions for discourse production which feed into the discoursewhich we eventually produce in articles like this one. The fact that a teamof university researchers wants to know about these things accords thequestion public status and possible importance, raises the possibility ofa struggle over narrative legitimacy (who produces a better, more crediblenarrative, us or them?) and provides a new set of resources (us andour work) which can be potentially marshalled in the service of one orthe other set of interests, including our own. Publicly announcing ourinterpretations, which we are beginning to do, is even more directly a con-tribution to discursive struggle, especially since we are often called upon toact as commentators in the media and as consultants to those who distrib-ute resources (for example, government agencies, although of course theyhave fewer and fewer resources to distribute).

Nonetheless, I understand this to actually be our role, one to embrace,not to shy away from. It is difficult, especially since the issues are never clearcut, and anyway taking sides is not really what this work is about. Instead, Iwant to argue for a role for our work which focuses on providing critiqueof the kind I have tried to develop here: laying bare the discourses, the con-ditions of their production, and therefore the reasons why they exist, whythey take the shape they do, why they emerge where and when they emerge,why certain categorizations of actors emerge as relevant, and why differentsocial positions are linked in certain ways to certain discourses. Such ananalysis should provide a basis for position-taking, mine as much as anyoneelses, but how I feel about a situation is connected to my political position,and that might not be the same as that of other readers.

This is a stance which attempts to marry analyses of local ecologies ofdiscursive production to a concern for interests and positioning, for out-comes and consequences. It is an attempt to remain located in empiricallyobservable local processes, while aiming at a construction of a somewhatbroader narrative in which language practices are understood as politicalprocesses and elements of structuration. It is meant as a way to find a placealso to speak as an observer and analyst about processes which are of bothlocal and more general concern without having to embrace an identity asan objective expert, but rather as a certain kind of participant in the con-struction of discursive space.

Notes

1 I am co-principal investigator of the project, along with Jrgen Erfurt(University of Frankfurt) and Normand Labrie (University of Toronto).Collaborating colleagues include Annette Boudreau and Lise Dubois (Univer-

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sit de Moncton), and Claudine Mose (Universit dAvignon). Research assist-ants are: Gabriele Budach (Frankfurt), Karine Gauvin and Stphane Guitard(Moncton), Marcel Grimard, Jose Makropoulos, Sylvie Roy, and Carsten Quell(Toronto). The research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Human-ities Research Council of Canada, the German-American Academic CouncilFoundation and the Association universitaire de la francophonie.

2 My thanks to Jan Blommaert for pointing this out.

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Monica Heller is Professor of Sociology of Education at the Ontario Institute forStudies in Education/University of Toronto. She has conducted numerous socio-linguistic ethnographies of bilingualism in Canada. Her publications includeCodeswitching: Anthropological and Sociolinguistic Perspectives, Crosswords: Language, Edu-cation and Ethnicity in French Ontario, and Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Socio-linguistic Ethnography. Address: CREFO, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education,University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada.[email: [email protected]]

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Heller, M - Critique and Sociolinguistic Analysis of Discourse

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