Legitimate Language in a Multilingual School.
Abstract This article exploits Bourdie'us notion of legitimate language (and legitimate speaker-hearers) to analyse the social origins and consequences of language practices in a French-language minority high school in Ontario (Canada). Education is a key site for the construction of legitimate language in the social and political struggle of Franco Ontarians for rights and for social mobility. An examination of two Francais classes shows that teacher-centred forms of classroom social organisation are used to construct what counts as good French (monolingual practices and standard forms) and to devalue bilingual practices and vernacular forms. The construction, and, in particular, the contestation of legitimate language in the classroom also reveal contradictions between the socioeconomic values of social mobility attached to monolingual standard French and the political values of authenticity and solidarity linked to the bilingual vernacular, as well as between educational ideologies of meritocracy and democracy and practices of streaming and differential treatment.