Media

OTTAWA, March 16, 2011  —  Professor France Martineau of the Département de français has received a major $2.5 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in support of a large-scale study on francophones in North America.

The French language in North America has evolved over more than four centuries, constantly being shaped by the contact between a cultural heritage brought from France and its new home. With this in mind, Professor Martineau will study the evolution of the French language in North America, particularly within Canada, in order to better understand the tension caused by the discrepancy between language and identity boundaries, both of which are constantly changing.

“This wide-ranging study will strengthen Canada’s place in the forefront of research on French within the Francophonie worldwide,” said Allan Rock, president of the University of Ottawa. “We’re proud of our mission to serve francophone communities and our roots in French on this continent.”

This study, titled Le français à la mesure d'un continent : un patrimoine en partage, will use innovative approaches, by presenting individuals and their language as a central factor in the changes that society undergoes and by examining the relationship between the cognitive and cultural aspects of language. Relying on extensive documentation, the study will seek to better identify the concerns of present-day francophone communities, in majority, minority or multicultural settings.

The research will also help produce a major corpus of French in North America, which will include informal exchanges between individuals in the form of private correspondence or spontaneous conversation. This publicly accessible tool will be useful as a starting point to systematically compare francophone communities.

The study, which is part of the Major Collaborative Research Initiatives (MCRI) program, involves contributions from more than 54 team members from 39 institutions in Canada, the United States, France and other countries working in a variety of disciplines, including linguistics, anthropology, history, geography and computer science.

France Martineau is a professor in the Département de français and holds a University Research Chair in language and migration in French America. She is also the director of Le laboratoire Les Polyphonies du français and co-founder of the Laboratoire de français ancien.

The University of Ottawa, one of Canada’s top research-intensive universities, is dedicated to forging collaborative research on pressing global issues. We are committed to excellence and encourage an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge creation that attracts the best academic talent from across Canada and around the world.