Search

The People’s Republic of China (henceforth, PRC) is firmly committed to a language policy of promoting the Chinese language among ethnic minority groups and encouraging ethnic minorities to construct a Chinese national identity through linguistic and cultural assimilation. Running parallel to such assimilationist policies are standardization projects that recognize China’s heterogeneity, and preserve and promote ethnic minority languages that are sponsored by the PRC government and maintained...

‘Earlier they used to speak phohor (unclean) and je pāyo tyehi (unsystematic) Tharu. Now they speak rāmro (good) Tharu, while also learning Nepali’, one of the parents told me as he described his child’s progress in Jana Kalyan Higher Secondary School (JKHSS). JKHSS had been implementing a Multi-Lingual Education (MLE) program since 2010, with the financial and technical support of United Mission to Nepal (UMN) and the Government of Nepal. As a part of the MLE program, the school used Dangaur...

Location: The Greater Himalayan Region. Topic: Language. Status: It’s complicated. The process of building nations has involved the reimagining, recreating and repositioning of the language or languages that are spoken within, and sometimes across, national borders. Across the Himalaya, speech communities hailing from genetically unrelated languages have been in contact with one another across large periods of modern history — for reasons of trade, political alliance and interethnic ritual pr...

This highly original and timely collection brings together case studies from salient areas of the Himalayan region to explore the politics of language contact. Promoting a linguistically and historically grounded perspective, The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya offers nuanced insights into language and its relation to power in this geopolitically complex region. Edited by respected scholars in the field, the collection comprises five new research contributions by established and early-career researchers who have been significantly engaged in the Himalayan region. Grounded in a commitment to theoretically informed area studies, and covering Tibet (China), Assam (India), and Nepal, each case study is situated within contemporary debates in sociolinguistics, political science, and language policy and planning. Bridging disciplines and transcending nation-states, the volume offers a unique contribution to the study of language contact and its political implications. The Politics of Language Contact in the Himalaya is essential reading for researchers in the fields of language policy and planning, applied linguistics, and language and literary education. The detailed introduction and concluding commentary make the collection accessible to all social scientists concerned with questions of language, and the volume as a whole will be of interest to scholars in anthropology, sociolinguistics, political science and Asian studies.

The modern nation-state, emanating from post-Westphalia Europe, is frequently characterized by linguistic homogeneity, if not always empirically then at least ideologically. A common language is ideologized as the glue of the nation, the emotional tie needed to foment a sense of national identity rising above parochial proclivities. Furthermore, the modern state has an interest in impelling linguistic homogeneity: ‘linguistic rationalization’ (Laitin 1988) allegedly promotes administrative an...

Group vitality has long been a framework for the inquiry into language maintenance and the sustainability of ethnolinguistic communities (Smith et al. 2017). Giles et al. (1977) conceptualized the vitality of an ethnolinguistic community ‘as that which makes a group likely to behave as a distinctive and active collective entity in intergroup situations’ (308). They outlined three objective ‘structural variables’ which together may ‘permit an ethnolinguistic community to survive as a viable gr...

Language politics has always been inherently interdisciplinary, as highlighted by the range of disciplines contributing to and represented in the field — and linguistics and political science are not always the primary ones. The scope of the field is further enlarged by the two different ways that the phrase ‘language politics’ can be parsed: the language of politics versus the politics of language. The language of politics traces its contemporary roots to George Orwell’s celebrated and still...

The Canadian federal election of 2006 was a turning point after more than a decade of Liberal reign. Even if it was a new minority government, many analysts suggested that a conservative wind blew on Canada. This text analyses to what extent the parties’ discourses shared conservative views during the campaign and how the media conveyed that discourse. Moreover, it verifies voters’ predispositions to respond to that message by looking at different surveys. Results show that individualistic values are dominant and will therefore predispose voters to choose a party accordingly to a certain conservatism which is close to “red toryism”.

During the federal elections of 2004 and 2006, observers started to emphasize the influence that a group of intellectuals had on Canadian political life. Located at the University of Calgary and referred by most as the Calgary School, it has been said that it plays an eminent role within the Conservative Party and acts as a sort of laboratory of ideas for Western Canadian Conservatives as well as for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. This text analyzes the intellectual influences on the writings of Thomas Flanagan, the leader of the Calgary school. Very much influenced by the Austrian thinker, Friedrich Hayek, Flanagan seeks a major reform on reserves in Canada and sees individual property rights as a way of solving problems faced by the First Nations in Canada. This paper highlights the link that exists between Hayek and Flanagan as well as the influences the letters have on the political orientations of the conservative party when it comes to Aboriginal issues.

In the early twentieth century, most Francophone conservative writers thought highly of the French Academy. In his memoirs, French Canadian author Édouard Montpetit (1881-1954) refers to Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906) and Étienne Lamy (1845-1919). These Catholic Academicians helped the development of cultural relations between France and French Canada, at a period when the French government was anticlerical and not much appreciated in French Canada. These Academicians were highly regarded because their works came up to the expectations of French Canadian elites.

Comment comparer le Canada avec les États-Unis aujourd'hui ? C'est la question centrale de cet ouvrage qui met en dialogue 13 contributions écrites par des américanistes et des canadianistes, dans une perspective interdisciplinaire. Les domaines d'investigation, regroupés en trois grands pôles de réflexion - politique, espace, et migration - se situent pour la plupart à la croisée de plusieurs champs : économie, politique, droit, anthropologie, sociologie, histoire des idées, histoire de l'immigration, de l'urbanisme, et littérature. Il s'agit de cerner à nouveau, dans le contexte actuel de la mondialisation, les lignes de fond qui soustendent les intérêts parfois disparates des comparatistes qui rapprochent deux pays dont la relation est inégale.

The study of the distinctive inscription of Canada in the North American continent is enriched with a comparative analysis of different forms of conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic. The impact of American fundamentalism accounts for the religious content of Canadian conservatism which has little to do with secular European conservatism.

This study focuses on the difficulty of right-wing parties to gain support in Quebec after 1960. Two factors have been identified. The first is the effect of the electoral system on the number of parties and on their behaviour once in power : it favours a two-party system, made of “catch-all parties” that govern close to the center of the political spectrum. The striking similarities of the policies of the last two governments disappointed many right-wing voters who deserted the Liberal Party in 2007. The second is the effect of the constitutional debate. For many years, the right-leaning voters were forced to choose between the federalist Liberal Party and the sovereignist Parti Québécois. Therefore, the diminished constitutional tension also accounts for the recent surge of the Action démocratique du Québec. That party was able to tap into the pool of nationalist voters tied to the Parti Québécois since the disappearance of the Union nationale.

Égards is a new conservative journal published since 2003 in Quebec. The editors have already published 16 issues, which is more than many observers expected. The main goal of Égards as expressed in its fundamental declaration is to “untie the homicidal work of the Quiet Revolution.” After an analysis of the critique of Quebec contemporary society proposed by the editors, the “political theology” of one of the founders of the journal, well-known writer Jean Renaud, is considered in detail.

Canadians may have felt recently much less conservative than their neighbours of the South. Contrary to what has been identified in the past by some observers who compared Canada to the United States, Canada has looked more liberal than its neighbour, thanks to its evolution since the 1960’s. This may be true in part but is quite exaggerated. Americans in fact are less conservative than it has been said. Canadians have become more conservative. Life in the suburbs, and now in the exurbs, has fostered conservative attitudes in Canada as well as in the United States.

In reaction to the ideas of the French revolution, conservative thought proposed an alternative view of modernity. After the failure of the republican rebellion which took place in Lower-Canada in the years 1837-38, the French-Canadian elite came to consider principles like unity, prosperity and morality, inspired by the conservative ethos, as the core of a doctrine which dominated political life in Quebec until the Quiet Revolution began in 1960. This text tries to demonstrate that, by promoting these principles, the French-Canadian elite did not reject modernity per se, but rather chose another path to fulfill its technical and philosophical promises.

What is the nature of the political rights in Quebec ? Are they related to Liberalism or to Conservatism ? Based on the sociology of conservatism inherited from Edmund Burke and Louis de Bonald, this text tries to show how they differ from the sociological logic of liberalism. With those models, it seeks to demonstrate that the Parti libéral du Québec is closer to liberalism, while the Action démocratique du Québec shows some elements of conservatism.

The term “neoconservatism” has often been used to characterize a group of intellectuals commonly referred to as the Calgary School. The Conservative Party under Stephen Harper has also been deemed “neoconservative.” But is this really appropriate? To address this question, one must first define how “neoconservatism” both draws and differs from other types of conservatism, such as reactionary or neoliberal conservatism. Only then can one determine whether the Calgary School and Stephen Harper’s governement can be described as neoconservative. We show that both the Conservative Party and the Calgary School represent a kind of synthetic conservatism, combining different conservative tendencies, of which neoconservatism is only one among several.

The context of La Beauce, a very specific part of the province of Quebec, offers an interesting case study even if the word conservatism, strictly speaking, does not really apply. Yet the election of Maxime Bernier, a Conservative MP at the 2006 federal election, highlights values such as individual liberty, free enterprise and moral integrity. The region of La Beauce seems to provide an ideal breeding ground for conservative ideas.

The fusion of the two Canadian right-wing parties in 2003 marked a turning point in the history of Canadian conservatism, and on a wider level revealed changes in Canadian political culture. The principal change involves the weakening of the historically dominant Red Tory current in favour of a conservatism attached to the doctrines of economic liberalism. This change is illustrated using a model inspired by the work of Louis Dumont and the concept of rising individualism. The paper goes on to deal with the changes in religious influence that help to explain the transformation of Canadian conservatism.

Malgré sa brochette d’intellectuels reconnus internationalement, étrangement, le Canada s’interroge peu sur sa pensée politique. Ces dernières années, les débats sur la pensée conservatrice au Canada et au Québec ont donné lieu à un nouveau chantier de recherches auquel ce livre tente de contribuer de façon originale. Une double question a guidé sa préparation. En 2006, l’élection du Parti conservateur au Canada a été perçue comme un rapprochement avec la droite américaine tout comme la monté...