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Explaining Support for Language Rights: A Comment on “Political Culture and the Problem of Double Standards”*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Abstract
In a recent article in this Journal, Paul Sniderman, Joseph Fletcher, Peter Russell and Philip Tetlock characterize the patterns of support for language rights among anglophones and francophones as reflecting the practice of a “double standard,” whereby each group recognizes these rights more readily for themselves than for the other official language group. The authors conclude that two factors, strategic calculation of interests and core political values, are central to understanding support for language rights. This comment focusses on two of their key concepts, “language rights” and “strategic calculation.” It suggests that their discussion of language rights is rather narrowly limited to those recognized in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, thereby neglecting more controversial claims to language rights. Furthermore, “strategic calculation” is open to at least two mutually contradictory deductions regarding the anticipated patterns of support, both of which can be supported by their evidence. I conclude that the authors have presented an intuitively plausible hypothesis to explain support for language rights in Canada, but have not explored their key concepts in sufficient detail to sustain their case.
Résumé
Dans un article publié récemment dans cette Revue, Paul Sniderman, Joseph Fletcher, Peter Russell et Philip Tetlock notent que les anglophones et les francophones font deux poids et deux mesures lorsqu'il s'agit d'apporter leur appui aux droits linguistiques; chaque groupe étant plus disposé à reconnaître ces droits à lui-même qu'à l'autre groupe. Ils en déduisent que deux facteurs sont essentiels pour comprendre la sorte d'appui apporté à ces droits: le calcul stratégique des intérêts du groupe et les valeurs politiques fondamentales. L'étude présentée ici est centrée sur deux de leurs concepts-clés: ceux de droits linguistiques et de calcul stratégique. On y remarque que leur discussion à propos de ces droits est plutôt étroite dans la mesure où elle se limite aux droits reconnus pars la Charte canadiennes des droits et libertés, et où elle néglige aussi des revendications plus controversées. De plus, leur concept explicatif-clé—les calculs stratégiques—peut avoir au moins deux interprétations contradictoires en ce qui concerne les types d'appuis prévisibles, interprétations qui paraissent toute deux plausible au regard des donnés présentées. L'article conclut que les auteurs présentent une hypothèse plausible sur un plan intuitif pour expliquer les divers types d'appuis aux droits linguistiques au Canada mais qu'ils n'ont pas approfondi suffisamment leurs concepts-clés pour défendre leur point de vue.
- Type
- Comment/Commentaire
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 1990 , pp. 531 - 536
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1990
References
1 Sniderman, Paul M., Fletcher, Joseph F., Russell, Peter H. and Tetlock, Philip E., “Political Culture and the Problem of Double Standards: Mass and Elite Attitudes Toward Language Rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom,” this Journal 22 (1989), 259–84.Google Scholar
2 These conceptual distinctions are presented in Macmillan, C. Michael, “Language Rights, Human Rights and Bill 101,” Queen's Quarterly 90 (1983), 345–46.Google Scholar
3 See Churchill, Stacy and Smith, Anthony H., “The Time Has Come,” Language and Society 19 (1987), 4–8Google Scholar, for a discussion of a 1985 poll on language attitudes in Canada. These two language rights had the highest overall levels of support, or 74 per cent of the national sample.
4 The Swiss patterns are discussed in detail in McRae, Kenneth D., Conflict and Compromise in Multilingual Societies: Switzerland (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983)Google Scholar, chap. 2. The evidence he presents does not contain any material on language rights attitudes in Switzerland, but the behaviour patterns are so different that one would expect a very different set of attitudes as well. I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this line of criticism.
5 Sniderman et al., “Political Culture and the Problem of Double Standards,” 275–76.
6 Ibid., 277–78.
7 See, for instance, Arnopolous, Sheila McLeod and Clift, Dominique, The English Fact in Quebec (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1980)Google Scholar, chap. 3, and Clift, Dominique, Quebec Nationalism in Crisis (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1982), 114.Google Scholar I question this assertion in passing in Macmillan, C. Michael, “Henri Bourassa on the Defense of Language Rights,” Dalhousie Review 62 (1982), 413–30.Google Scholar
8 Sniderman et al., “Political Culture and the Problem of Double Standards,” 271.
9 The one item with some potential is not sufficiently developed. The authors report patterns of support for restrictions on English-language advertising in terms of party affiliation and occupational location for the elite sample, but do not present the patterns for anglophone and francophone mass and elite as they do for the other components of the study. Such findings might shed light on francophone support for anglophone minority rights. See Ibid., 280–81.