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The hostility directed at official bilingualism by English speaking Canadians was exceeded by the hostility directed toward it by French unilingualists and neo-nationalists within Québec. While Trudeau had hoped to reorient the gaze of Québec Francophones to Ottawa, neo-nationalists ensured that it remained fixed squarely on provincial politics by offering a made-in-Québec approach to language that was rooted firmly in the

symbolic terrain of Québec nationhood. Neo-nationalists stressed the relationship between Québec nation and the French language; the end goal of the neo-nationalist project was to anchor Québécois national identity in the predominance of the French language. As discussed earlier, the emphasis on French speaks to a “civic” ideal of nationalism, rooted in the primacy and commonality of citizenship. And indeed, this has been and remains the central thrust of the neo-nationalist project.21 Yet, there existed a paradox in the movement for French unilingualism in the 1960s and 70s: while on one hand advancing a supra-ethnic form of citizenship centred on language, many of Québec unilingualism‟s foundational texts simultaneously presupposed an organic, essentialist

relationship between language and national identity, a characteristic more indicative of “ethnic” nationalisms and identities.

Before expanding on this claim, it is first necessary to explain the linguistic relativity thesis, associated mostly with the ethnolinguist Benjamin Whorf. Briefly stated, Whorf argued that language is a psychological structure that functions not just as the vehicle for thought, but more importantly as its motor. Language dictated the way humans comprehended the world and cognitively organized reality. Whorf in effect argued for the primordiality of language: language begets culture, not the other way around. According to Whorf:

Every language is a vast pattern system, different from others, in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates, but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationships and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his

consciousness.22

Linguists such as Michael Silverstein have pointed out that Whorf‟s hypothesis was tailor-made for nationalist exploitation, and indeed, it had more than a passing resemblance to the worldview of eighteenth and nineteenth century romantic nationalists such as Johann Gottfried von Herder.23 Applying Whorf‟s analysis to Québec‟s language conundrum yields an obvious, if simple, conclusion: accepting Whorfianism is to

conclude that French Canadians can express themselves as French Canadians only by speaking French. Despite neo-nationalism‟s emphasis on civic nationalism, the indelible imprint of Wharfianism is detectable in many of the ideology‟s foundational texts. Take the writings of André D‟Allemagne, one of the founders of the left wing separatist party Rassemblement pour l’indépendence national (RIN), the first Québécois political party to adopt unilingualism as a policy, and among the pivotal figures in the theoretical

exploration of French unilingualism. As Karim Larose, who effectuated the most impressive intellectual history of Québec unilingualism to date, argued, “au moment crucial de l‟élaboration théorique de l‟unilinguisme, D‟Allemagne est celui qui consacre avec le plus de constance à la mise en lumière des enjeux et les dangers liés au

bilinguisme, qu‟il soit individuel ou collectif.”24 D‟Allemagne‟s case for unilingualism and against bilingualism was built on an explicitly Whorfian understanding of language; D‟Allemagne, who completed a Master‟s degree at the Université de Montréal in

linguistics, frequently cited Whorf in his writings.25 D‟Allemagne argued that language is essentially and organically linked to culture and that language is a way of thinking that shapes an individual‟s thoughts. Language therefore created culture rather than acting merely as a vehicle for it: man, D‟Allemagne argued, was a slave to his language, not the other way around. Man could speak only in his own language, the assumption being that every person naturally could possess only one language.

Consistent with the developing neo-nationalist orthodoxy, D‟Allemagne identified French as the paramount constituent of Québécois culture. Identifying the French

language as the basis for any nation building project going forward, D‟Allemagne‟s flirtations with Whorfianism suggest an understanding of language rooted at least in part in organic understandings of the nation: his acceptance of Whorfianism entailed, in effect, an assumption that people could not express themselves as Québécois without speaking French. This strain of linguistic essentialism was clearly identifiable in

subsequent neo-nationalist writings. For example, René Lévesque wrote that “at the core of [the Québécois personality] is the fact that we speak French. Everything else depends on this one essential element and follows from it or leads us infallibly back to it.”26

Lesage, in a speech given upon the inauguration of the provincial Ministry of Cultural Affairs, made a similar argument:

Of all the languages currently spoken in the world, the French language is the one that fits us best because of our own characteristics and our own mentality. We could no longer be French Canadian if we spoke another language because then we would adopt means of expression produced in a foreign culture.27

This assumption about the organic link between language and culture also permeated government policy and language legislation. Bill 63, the first attempt at provincial language legislation in Québec, claimed that “language is more than just a mode of expression: it is an instrument that models thought, that gives culture its distinct character.”28

The Parti Québécois government‟s 1978 policy paper on cultural

development, vividly representing the tension between essentialist and non-essentialist notions of language, similarly argued:

Even if English, Italian, and Greek can and should be freely spoken in Québec, everyone should at least be able to communicate by means of one common language. But the logical consequences must be accepted. A language is not simply a syntax or a string of words. It is an expression of the more meaningful aspects of community life.29

Once accepted, understandings of the relationship between the French language and Québécois culture inevitably gave rise to intense concerns about threats to the language, and also helps to explain why provincial unilingualism exerted a greater ideological pull within Québec than federal bilingualism in the 1960s and 70s: the ability to communicate with the federal government in Alberta mattered little for those who understood the future vitality of the French language within their own province to be in question. In fact, many neo-nationalists understood bilingualism itself as posing the gravest threat to the French language. Though bilingualism had long been a fact of life for many French Canadian families, some theorists deemed integral bilingualism not just

undesirable, but impossible. In fact, in an argument that inverted histrionic claims made by English Canadian anti-bilingualists, many nationalists, especially radicals, argued that bilingualism was in fact a Trojan horse for English unilingualism. D‟Allemagne, for example, theorized that linguistic accommodation or coexistence was impossible in a normal society, as one language would always seek to dominate the other.30 Bilingualism was theorized as one of the most effective tools of colonialism, an insidious institution that concealed the unilateral domination of the colonizer‟s language while crushing indigenous languages and humiliating the population that spoke them. This notion of “linguistic colonialism,” as D‟Allemagne termed it, was prominent in neo-nationalist language discourse. To give but one example, the public intellectual Hubert Aquin argued that bilingualism could only be a byproduct of war, conquest, or colonialism; pan- Canadian bilingualism, therefore, was a myth, political sleight-of-hand designed to secure the English speaking colonizer‟s main objective, the assimilation of Canadian French speakers into the Anglophone polity.31 Bilingualism could only be, in the words of historian Michel Brunet, an “assimiliationist bilingualism;”32

D‟Allemagne, in his influential book Le colonialisme au Québec, described it graphically as “a bilingualism that kills.”33

To illustrate this, many nationalists pointed to the cultural degradation they claimed had been caused by bilingualism. The joual debate, which preoccupied Québec literary circles in the 1970s, is a fascinating example. Joual, briefly, is a dialect or patois of French that originated in the east end of Montréal and was characterized, among other things, by its frequent use of English words.34 It was popularized by literary figures such as playwright Michel Tremblay, who championed joual as a distinct Québécois voice and

as a language of resistance.35 But many in Québec also understood joual as an example of the cultural and linguistic degradation wrought by bilingualism. Consider the take of linguist André Sénécal:

The menace is most evident in the language of the lower strata of urban Québec whose bilingual patois is known as joual... the vernacular of the province is not only saturated with recognizable anglicisms... it is also corrupted by countless hidden borrowings... they are more injurious because they gain currency under the cloak of a French appearance. The inroads of English are most harmful when they affect the morphosyntactic system of French, a process that can critically undermine the speaker‟s identification with a dominant language and his ability to conceptualize and fully express reality.36

The use of words such as menace, saturate, corrupted, injurious, and harmful is entirely consistent with this particular strain of neo-nationalist discourse on bilingualism. In the same vein, Jacques Godbout, discussing joual, compared the use of English to a case of syphilis caught from bilingualism: “nos mots français, ces mots dégradés, pourris par le bilingualisme, tuent longtempts toute pensée originale dans ce pays.”37 These arguments were adapted and employed also by those who defended the use of joual. Poet Gérald Godin, criticizing those who saw joual as a threat to the French language, argued that there was little point mourning the death of a sick, rotting, decomposing culture.38 Godin instead championed using joual as a device of “language terrorism” – a political use of language designed to expose the linguistic and cultural colonialism from which it emerged.39

This examination of joual is meant to illustrate the framework through which one particularly influential group of neo-nationalists understood the French and English languages, and to point to the very real cultural fears associated with bilingualism. If, as anthropologist Richard Handler pointed out, neo-nationalism was characterized by a tension between the desire for cultural affirmation and a fear of cultural annihilation, then

this particular language discourse was concerned primarily with the latter.40 It starkly presented language as a binary where bilingualism was impossible. There could only be French unilingualism or English unilingualism; in the words of Québécois socialist Raoul Roy, “we can have French unilingualism imposed by the [provincial] government or we can have English unilingualism imposed by the occupying forces.”41 Choosing

bilingualism over French unilingualism was, in the view of those who reproduced this discourse, tantamount to linguistic and cultural suicide, compliance with colonialism, and a negation of the nation itself. Bilingualism, therefore, could not be the normal situation for a nation, like Québec, that desired to control its own destiny; the use of English had, to a certain extent, to be curtailed in order to provide space for the affirmation of French. The push for unilingualism was therefore, by this logic, as much about the elimination of English from certain public spheres as it was about the affirmation of French: many unilingualists identified the limiting of English as an important prerequisite in the

survival of the French language and affirmation of the Québec nation. My analysis of the French language media‟s coverage of the Nordiques‟ decision to move from bilingualism to unilingualism reveals the prominence of this nationalist discourse in the sports pages of Québec‟s French language newspaper.