« Language », « Community » and « Identity »
The concepts of « language », « community » and « identity » have long been key ideas in linguistic anthropology (and in its cognate disciplines, sociolinguistics, the sociology of language, the social psychology of language, language policy). These concepts emerged in the context of State nationalism, and remain profoundly embedded in that discursive frame. In this article, I trace the outlines of this embedded relationship, in order to then examine how academic work on language, identity and belonging took shape in debates about French in Canada, and specifically in the construction of francophone Canadian nationalism, and in its more recent post nationalist development.