Local Settlement or Global Metropolis? Imagining Québec as a Glocal City on the 400th Anniversary of its Founding

Abstract

Situated within the Critical Discourse Analysis paradigm, this transdisciplinary study looks at the two official websites promoting the 400th founding anniversary of Québec City in 2008, in order to uncover how the Société du 400^e de Québec and the Canadian government represent Québec’s identity and how they respectively relate it to a regional and a federal entity. Focusing on the semiotic strategies that both protagonists propose in order to construct Québec’s identity, it is demonstrated that different conceptions of region, nation, and State – which have given rise to many a predicament throughout Canada’s history – are at the heart of these diverging local and global constructions of one single city. Whilst the Société du 400^e attributes a crucial historical role to the city when it describes Québec as ‘the cradle of French civilisation in the Americas’, the federal government simply salutes its status as the ‘oldest of Canadian cities’. Drawing on social theories (Smith, 1991; Anderson, 2006) and sociohistoric context, the analysis which follows seeks to contribute from a linguistic point of view to the grand debate on identity that persists throughout Canada.

Key Words:

• National identity
• regional identity
• urban identity
• internet discourse
• social representations
• critical discourse analysis
• ethnosymbolism
• Canada
• Québec
• the city

Notes

1. In order to clearly distinguish between the province of Québec, the city of the same name, and their respective adjectives and ethnonyms (which tend to vary between different authors) I use ‘Québec’ to refer to the province, distinguishing it from ‘Québec City’. Furthermore, I use ‘Quebecer’ as the ethnonym referring to the inhabitants of the province as opposed to the ‘inhabitants of Québec City’, and ‘Québécois’ as the adjective identifying concepts related to the province of Québec.

2. I conceive of identity as an interactive, dialectical process that necessarily implies a relationship between at least two entities in a given context (Baugnet, 1998). More concretely, this means identity is considered to be non-fixed, and constructed in varying contexts that are moderated by intervening social parameters. Inversely, identity also informs social relationships and thus becomes a salient factor in every discursive event. Finally, it is important to note that multiple identities may be negotiated in one single context, which leads to a ‘hierarchy of identities’ through a dynamic of identities management (Omonoyi & White, 2006, p. 2).

3. In her analysis of the discursive construction of Timişoara as a ‘gateway city’, Mădroane (2012) observes a similar intention to create a hybrid, glocal identity for the city based on a seemingly contradictory dynamic between a traditional, local dimension, and a new, global dimension. Whilst I focus on the strategic use of these dimensions by supra-level entities in order to construct their own (regional or national) identities, Mădroane investigates how the ‘perpetuation of tradition’ by local authorities themselves contributes to a ‘transformation of the city’ leading to a shift in political and economic power referred to as the ‘rescaling of socio-spatial entities’ (2012).

4. The importance of a city’s local identity within a larger-scale hierarchy of (regional and national) identities is also acknowledged by Paganoni (2012) who concludes that ‘thanks to digital networks and global flows […] the local level turns out to be a micro-environment with global span’.

5. The reader will find a general overview of Québécois and Canadian history in Lacoursière et al. (2001) whilst contributions by Auger (2005) and C. Bouchard (2002) focus on the history of the French language in Québec and Canada. Blais et al. (2008) focuses exclusively on the city of Québec in its rich historical panorama.

6. Both websites were available in both of Canada’s official languages – English and French – thus leading to what can be considered to be four different textual instances. Whereas initial research conducted in collaboration with J. Pelletier (Laval University) in 2008 considered the French language versions of both websites, the analyses presented in this article all concern the original English language websites. Few or no differences impacting on the article’s rationale have been noted between the different language versions.

7. Because of the considerable length of text making up both websites, it is of course impossible to reduplicate their entire contents in this article. Analysis (section 4) will focus on relevant excerpts, and readers interested in accessing the complete websites are invited to do so by consulting specialized internet indexing services such as the freely accessible Internet Archive (www.archive.org).

8. Whereas some approaches to CDA relate the notion of ‘critique’ to specific theoretical stances including those of Habermas, Horkheimer and Marx, I adhere to its more general implications such as embedding the analysed data in their social context, as well as gaining distance from the data and engaging in continuous self-critique whilst remaining socially engaged as a researcher. This social engagement is perfectly illustrated by the fact that following the communication of preliminary results of this study at the annual Association francophone pour le savoir-congres held in Québec City in 2008, two general press articles picked up on the identified discrepancies between both websites and, in turn, led to a debate on the issue in the Québécois parliament.

9. Given that this article’s main claims are empirical, rather than theoretical, in nature, it does not seek to engage in an elaborate discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of CDA. Readers are invited to refer to Blommaert (2005, chap. 2) for a concise summary, or to Fairclough (2010), Toolan (2002), Weiss and Wodak (2003) and Wodak and Meyer (2009) for a detailed overview of different approaches to CDA.

10. Following Hasan (2005), transdisciplinary research is defined as allowing the domains concerned to interpenetrate each other, whereas interdisciplinary research tends to simply string together these different viewpoints. Definition and articulation of the concepts of multi-, inter- and transdisciplinarity differs between authors (see Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Weiss & Wodak, 2003 for other interpretations).

11. My doctoral dissertation (forthcoming) will discuss the structure of this tetrahedral framework in further detail.

12. In line with this paper’s main analytical objective, I will use the notion of ‘public sphere’ in a more general sense encompassing its interactive and social-inclusive nature as core characteristics. A theoretical discussion and critique of the concept and its implications in the work of Habermas and other sociologists such as Hobsbawn and Bourdieu – beyond the scope of this contribution – can be found in Wright (2008).

13. Figures 1 and 2 are visual mappings of the analysed excerpts and the image of the city they construct. As such, they undeniably are influenced by the ways by which the researcher has established rapport with the materials.