Lucile Davier: Bilingual Practices in a Community of Francophone Journalists in Canada
Channel: Media Linguistics
Date: 02/09/2018

This presentation focuses on the strategies that reporters develop as a “community of practice” (Wenger 1998) to deal with challenges of bilingualism and translation. To discover these strategies, I carried out fieldwork in a community of journalistic practice in the National Capital Region (Ottawa-Gatineau) in Canada: the public service broadcaster (Radio-Canada) that publish multimodal content in French on various platforms (including a website and social media). I conducted semi-structured interviews, sessions of non-participant observation, and gathered documents in the field. Journalists mitigate risks by collaborations within the community of practice and the constellation of practices. In a context of subtractive bilingualism, the interviewees align with the mandate of Radio-Canada to maintain a high quality of French.