DEMOLINGUISTIC TRENDS IN CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

The first impulse of most readers would be to avoid a book with the rather formidable word "demolinguistics,, in the title. On the other hand, a book about the effects of trends in fertility, mortality, migration, and language learning on the language composition of a country might not seem so awesome a topic. They are, in fact, the same; demolinguistics is little more than the study of how demographic trends affect the language composition of a population. One signifi cant addition is that demolinguistics requires attention to "linguistic mobility," which is the move ment of people between language groups. One of the joys of demography is the preciseness of its key variables: a birth, death or migra tion is rarely ambiguous, although the latter is complicated by return migration. Language usage, however, is not as clear cut. One is forced to assume that people have a "usual language" or a "home language" or a "mother tongue" or some other such category of language usage. Ob viously such classifications make sharp divisions where many degrees and dimensions of usage exist. The classifications, nevertheless, are necessary to do statistical analyses; and such analyses, in turn, have utility, as exemplified by The Demolinguistic Situation in Canada. Lachapell and Henripin stay within the boundaries of their book's title, confining their discus sion almost entirely to the past, present, and future demolinguistics of Canada. Readers in the United States may, and should, take interest in the subject because Canada is a neighboring country, but most will read the book primarily seeking insights to the demolinguistic situation in the United States. Initially one notes such striking differences between the two countries that parallels seem unlikely. French is a minority language in Canada; however, it has remained, with remarkable stability, the home language of over twenty-five percent of the population since 1851; it is spoken by eighty percent of the people in Quebec Province; since Canada's emergence as a nation, it has been one of two official government languages; and legislation and important social institutions strongly favoring French speakers exist in Quebec Province. In the history of the United States, no minority language has been as robust and as favored as French has been in Canada. Could such a situation develop in the United States in the future? Would such a development be desirable? Pondering these questions, one is soon neck deep in demolinguistics, as well as philosophy, political science, sociology, economics, and human geography. Lachapelle and Henripin provide good guidelines for considering the demolinguistic trends in the United States, although this is not an objective of their study. Consequently, their study of Canada is of more than passing interest as both an analysis of Canada and a foil for thinking about the United States.