Let’s stop being stuck in linguistic divides

In today’s Montreal, it shouldn’t matter who is anglophone and who is francophone, Sarah Fortin writes.

Conversations about linguistic identity can sometimes feel like walking through a minefield. You never really know what words, thoughts or opinions might cause an explosion.

The Montreal we live in, even in 2018, remains one where complications and difficulties continue to separate the city’s two main linguistic groups.

The problem is, we don’t realize that the divide exists, and that we need to cross it and have these conversations.

I didn’t realize it either. I grew up in Westmount, and studied in English, from kindergarten to a first bachelor’s degree at McGill University.

I spoke English all the time, with family and friends. I read in English, listened to music in English, watched movies in English. I couldn’t really have been more steeped in anglophone culture.

The thing is: I didn’t consider myself anglophone. With francophone parents and a mostly French-speaking family, I considered myself francophone.

For 22 years of my life, this was normal. It was safe and stable because I never questioned it.

We might think that it is not necessary to question our linguistic identities; after all, it’s 2018 and anglophones and francophones are no longer fighting on the Plains of Abraham.

I thought so too. Then, I chose to do my law degree at Université de Montréal. Doing my French civil law degree in a French faculty seemed like a rational choice to make.

Despite never having studied in French before, I didn’t think I’d have problems, either socially or academically.

I was wrong. In my first year, I struggled with studying in French, but I struggled even more with adapting to the linguistic social culture. I felt both completely out of place and like I didn’t belong, when I had every right to be there.

We say that our identity belongs to no one but ourselves, and that it is up to us to choose it, but that is not at all what I lived in my first year of law school.

I was told my accent in French and lapses in cultural knowledge made me an anglophone.

I got involved in student politics. For my first campaign, my being an anglophone was a big issue — a problem, even. A year later, I don’t think it matters anymore, but I had to prove that it doesn’t, simply because no one has these conversations, leading to the perpetuation of a linguistic divide.

I realize now that these feelings of being out of place and not belonging, shared by many of my anglophone or allophone colleagues, are a direct consequence of linguistic divides.

I do believe these divides to be absolutely ridiculous, and counterproductive to what we need to be doing.

After all, in three short years, we finish law school and enter society, to soon become lawyers, notaries, public relations specialists, politicians and journalists.

We shall have the public duty to serve our society: a pluralist and multilingual society.

We cannot do that if we are stuck in linguistic divides, if we focus on linguistic identity and labels, on who is anglophone and who is francophone and who can speak what language.

Yes, linguistic ability is important. Yes, these languages and these cultures must be protected.

However, society and our future must be protected even more. In order to do this, we must sit down and talk.

We must move past linguistic identity, to focus on what’s truly important.

It’s what I did and it’s what I push in law school, and it’s something I will continue to do.

Let’s take a chance and cross the divide.

Sarah Fortin is a law student at Université de Montréal, having just finished her second year. Her fellow students have elected her president of the Association des étudiants en droit (AED) for her third and final year. She previously served as first-year academic representative and vice-president of academic affairs.