Subtractive Bilingualism: The Case of FrancoAmericans in Maine's St John Valley

Landry, Rodrigue;Allard, Réal

Presentation of research on "ethnolinguistic vitality" among French-English bilingual students in the schools of Maine's St. John River Valley. Data supporting the trend there toward "subtractive bilingualism," where the use of one language is preferred at the expense of another. From the author: "The study, carried out in two school districts of the St John Valley in the state of Maine in the Unites States, compares three subgroups of francophones and anglophones on measures of the strength of their network of linguistic contacts in French and English, their communicative and cognitive-academic linguistic proficiency in these languages, their vitality beliefs concerning the francophone and anglophone communities, the strength of their ethnolinguistic identities and their degree of use of French and English in various social domains. The results, which are interpreted within the framework of a macroscopic model of the determinants of additive and subtractive bilingualism, are very conclusive in showing that bilingualism for these Franco-American students is strongly subtractive."

1992

en

Journal Article

6286264;43413712

1992; St. John River Valley, Maine

6

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

0143-4632

13