Youth, Language, and Identity


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Overview Info Table Of Contents
By Diane Gérin-Lajoie

Description:

This book is a path-breaking examination of identity construction among minority-language youth. Based on a three-year study at two English-language high schools in the Montreal area, it builds on Diane Gérin-Lajoie's previous work on Francophone minority identity in Ontario and extends her analysis to Canada's other official language minority: Anglophones living in Quebec.

The book begins with an overview of the social and educational reality of Quebec's Anglophone minority, and then presents the findings on students' language practices. The central chapters sketch identity portraits of the study's participants, and the later chapters pursue analyses of the themes raised by the study. The result is an original contribution to the understanding of language and identity that will be of interest to school administrators and teachers working in minority-language communities in Canada, and to scholars working on issues of minorities in the social sciences.

Reviews and Comments

"The youths' portraits are uniformly structured, yet very different one fron the other. One really gets to the heart of the different life conditions and experiences of the youth, their differing representations of language and linguistic communities, and their different ensuing identity positioning."
- Normand Labrie, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

"This is a comprehensive, well written and well researched study. Working within a critical postmodern perspective, the author demonstrates the limitations of classic sociological theories, and carefully identifies the problems associated with essentialist notions of individual identity. The study is particularly interesting because it demonstrates in the students' own words that one's identity is not fixed in its development; instead, identity is fluid, situational, and highly influenced by specific contexts of interactions. A lovely breakthrough in thinking."
- Cecille DePass, University of Calgary

Diane Gérin-Lajoie

Diane Gérin-Lajoie

Diane Gérin-Lajoie is Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto and she is cross-appointed tot the Centre for Franco-Ontarian Studies. She teaches graduate courses in the areas of minority education and qualitative research.

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Canadian Scholars’ Press gratefully acknowledges financial support for our publishing activities from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Media Development Corporation and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.