Language Ideologies of Multilingual Young Adults Who Know French, a Minority Official Language in Ottawa

Abstract

This simultaneous mixed-methods thesis explores the language ideologies of young adult multilinguals in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, who know French and at least one other language. Its three primary goals are to explore what language ideologies exist within this population, to identify any relationships between those language ideologies and their individual characteristics and experiences, and to better understand how those language ideologies inform their investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015) into French – Ottawa’s minority official language. Individual characteristics and experiences employed as independent variables in this thesis include self-reported total number of languages and their relative strength, proficiency, exposure, schooling, attitudes and motivation, relative importance of language-related social affiliations to identity, and lexical processing. Part 1 of the study involved 111 undergraduate students completing asynchronous online questionnaires and quantitative tasks, including a language ideology survey. Of those, 20 participants also volunteered for Part 2 of the study, subsequently completing a synchronous online semi-structured interview. In-depth deductive and inductive content analysis was conducted on 8 of those interviews, chosen for their representativeness of a wide range of individual characteristics and experiences related to language and multilingualism. These multilingual young adults held a wide range of language ideologies but had a tendency to believe in languages being skilled assets that are actively learned and being important for social and material gains. Language ideology has some association with attitudes and motivation and with French proficiency, whereas no statistically significant association with other individual characteristics and experiences were found. Meaningful investment into French was observed, although the degree of investment varied along with the relative contribution of its three components: ideology, capital, and identity. This thesis showcases the suitability of Darvin and Norton’s Investment Model for exploring the complexities of the multilingual young adult’s commitment to language learning and use.