Aboriginal Linguistic Markets
This article aims at examining how four linguistic markets (according to Bourdieu’s definition) actually operate, three of them in an Inuit context (Nunavut, Nunavik, Greenland), and a fourth one in an Amerindian environment (the Huron-Wendat). We try to understand up to what point indigenous languages should be considered as constituting a capital whose possession endows their speakers with a degree of economic and political agency potentially less efficient than that of speakers of vehicular languages, thus reinforcing hegemonies generated by colonialism. Conversely, we also examine if, beyond mere economic considerations, language does not contribute to increase the symbolic capital of its speakers, thus playing a contra-hegemonic part, even when these speakers belong to a minority. Finally however, is it possible for a minority language to survive in the absence of a supportive economic and political basis ?