Les Chroniques de langage and the Development of Linguistic Purism in Québec

Abstract

The second half of the twentieth century has seen the emergence in Québec of a number of societies for the protection or promotion of the French language. Since the 1990s, new societies have increasingly been established online, with older ones also creating an online presence. Most of these societies publish journals which appear several times a year. An earlier study (Walsh 2013) has shown that the type of metalanguage used and the major preoccupations reflected by these societies on their websites and in their journals can be seen to reflect a moderately purist attitude (based on the theoretical framework for evaluating and measuring purism outlined by George Thomas 1991). This article presents the results of a similar investigation of a sample of chroniques de langage, columns dealing with questions of language, which appear regularly in journals and newspapers. The content and metalanguage of chroniques from two periods (1880–1889 and 1940–1949) will be compared, to determine whether the current-day purism displayed by Québécois language societies is reflected in an earlier period.