Language, Politics, and Social Interaction in an Inuit Community
Description
Since the early 1970s, the Inuit of Arctic Quebec have struggled to survive economically and culturally in a rapidly changing northern environment. The promotion and maintenance of Inuktitut, their native language, through language policy and Inuit control over institutions, have played a major role in this struggle. Language, Politics, and Social Interaction in an Inuit Community is a study of indigenous language maintenance in an Arctic Quebec community where four languages - Inuktitut, Cree, French, and English - are spoken. It examines the role that dominant and minority languages play in the social life of this community, linking historical analysis with an ethnographic study of face-to-face interaction and attitudes towards learning and speaking second and third languages in everyday life.
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"[...] a thorough and fascinating ethnography of language use in the multilingual communitiy in Nothern Quebec.2Shelley Tulloch in: Études Inuit 1-2/2005More details
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Content
- Intro
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Language use in Arctic Quebec: Towards a political economic analysis
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Doing Aboriginal research
- 2.1. Collecting data
- 2.2. Historical data
- 3. The study of language choice: Theoretical assumptions
- 3.1. Investigating language choice
- 2 Contextualizing the research site
- 1. The research site
- 1.1. Geographical and social space in Great Whale River
- 1.2. Relations between the three communities
- 1.3. Material and symbolic resources in Arctic Quebec
- 2. Aboriginal politics in Canada: Nunavut, Nunavik, and land claims
- 2.1. The founding of Nunavut and Nunavik
- 2.2. Development of language policy and schooling in Northern Quebec and Nunavut
- 3. Setting the scene: Aboriginal politics in the 1990s
- 4. Conclusion
- 3 History and representation of the Hudson Bay Inuit, 1610-1975
- 1. History, contact, and representation
- 1.1. Early history: Explorers, traders, and the Inuit
- 1.2. The Hudson's Bay Company and the "hostile Eskimo"
- 1.3. The fur trade and the formation of partnerships
- 1.4. Nineteenth century: The arrival of the missionaries
- 2. The twentieth century: The Inuit and Canada
- 2.1. The reality of hardship
- 2.2. Dispelling twentieth-century Western conceptions
- 2.3. Inuit-Cree relations
- 2.4. The early post-war period
- 2.5. Settlement, wage labour, and modernity: 1955-1975
- 3. Conclusion
- 4. Language, power, and Inuit mobilization
- Part 1: Linguistic markets
- 1. Language markets and linguistic capital
- 2. Dominant and alternative language markets
- 2.1. The dominant market
- 2.2. The alternative linguistic market
- Part 2: The dominant language market
- 3. Competition between English and French
- 4. Inuit mobilization and the rise of Inuktitut
- 4.1. Inuktitut and the dominant language market
- 4.2. Inuktitut language use: Education and standardization
- 4.3. Institutionalized practices and the symbolic importance of Inuktitut
- 4.4. Processes of Inuktitut standardization
- 5. Participating in the dominant market
- 5.1. Learning languages at work, home, and school
- 5.2. Language markets and job markets
- 6. Conclusion
- 5. Ethnography of language use
- 1. Who speaks what: The distribution of linguistic resources
- 1.1. English and French
- 1.2. Inuktitut and Cree
- 2. Endangered languages and the "survival" of Inuktitut
- 3. Language survey data: Self-reports of language use
- 3.1. The language survey of Kuujjuarapik
- 3.2. Language choice in Nunavut
- 4. Ethnic boundaries and social space
- 4.1. Ethnicity, social groups, and boundaries in Great Whale River
- 5. Social networks in Great Whale River
- 5.1. Informal family and friendship networks
- 6. Language practices
- 6.1. Social networks and boundary maintenance
- 7. Summary and conclusions
- 6. Summary and conclusions
- 1. Discussion of the study
- 2. Implications of the study
- Notes
- References
- Appendix
- Index
