Attitudes des francophones du Nouveau-Brunswick à l'égard du Chiac

Résumé

Although New Brunswick is Canada's only officially bilingual province, French-speaking persons represent a minority and are often left apart. They are mainly concentrated in three areas: the northwest (at the border with Quebec), the northeast, called ʺAcadian Peninsulaʺ, and the southeast, in the Greater Moncton area, where the two languages cohabit more closely. This contact situation, which seems to have led the French-speaking inhabitants of Moncton to experience linguistic insecurity, also gave birth to a new variety, called ʺchiacʺ. This article focuses on the speakers' attitudes towards that variety, which seems to have been stigmatized in the past. Through a field study in which we used questionnaires, we determined that it is nowadays more accepted than it was before, partly due to the action of the local media and artists.