Media
Mistakes or variations? Exploring spoken language at Royal Society Conference
Chronicle-Telegraph, December 10, 2014Print
URL: http://ks4000821.ip-198-245-63.net/mistakes-or-variations
Activists want world to stop using the "R" word: Campaign deems term offensive and derogatory
The Ottawa Citizen, May 26, 2011Print
Mark their words, eh?
Globe & Mail, January 29, 2005Print
The power and beauty of Franglais
The Ottawa Citizen, September 1, 2003Print
Canadian French really hasn’t changed over the past century
The Ottawa Sun, May 1, 2002Print
La langue de chez nous a perduré
Au fil des événements 35.7 (Université Laval), October 1, 2002Print
Symposium explores N.M. language patterns
The Sante Fe New Mexican, May 2, 2001Print
El inglés samanense en el vórtice del debate criollista
El Siglo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, December 16, 2001Print
Shana Poplack
El Siglo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, September 30, 2000Print
Talking that talk
The Halifax Daily News, January 30, 2000Print
A dialect all our own
The Montreal Gazette, June 3, 1999Print
Cracking the Code
The Ottawa Citizen, May 23, 1999Print
À propos du français “normal et enrichissant”
Le Droit, Hull, February 5, 1999Print
La langue, reflet de ce que nous sommes
Le Droit, Hull, January 27, 1999Print
Le “franglais” serait un enrichissement
Le Droit, Hull, January 20, 1999Print
Prix Coco à Mme Poplack et au calendrier des Communes
Le Droit, Hull, January 1, 1999Print
Speaking in tongues – three at a time
The Montreal Gazette, September 12, 1998Print
Le franglais ne menace pas la langue française, soutient une linguiste
L’Express, Toronto, June 30, 1998Print
Researchers, academics honoured by peers
The Globe & Mail, July 2, 1998Print
Four U of O academics honoured for contributions
The Ottawa Citizen, June 22, 1998Print
“Franglais” no threat to French, study says
The Ottawa Citizen, June 18, 1998Print
Franglais: Huge stack of synonyms
The Ottawa Citizen, June 18, 1998Print
Quebec hip-hops to multilingual lyrics
The Toronto Star, April 13, 1998Print
Triumphantly Trilingual
The Montreal Gazette, September 22, 1997Print
Analysis: We’ve read all President Trump’s tweets, so you don’t have to
CTVNews.ca, April 28, 2017Online
Since Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States, he has continued his prolific and bold use of Twitter that has long been his signature style. His tweets garner worldwide headlines, rock stock markets and send diplomats scrambling. CTVNews.ca asked five experts: a political strategist, a social media consultant, a developmental scientist, a media studies professor, and a linguist to weigh in on Trump’s extraordinary use of the 140-character message service during his first 100 days.
Peu de différences grammaticales entre l’Outaouais et le reste du Québec
Info07.com, March 22, 2016Online
URL: http://www.info07.com/actualites/2016/5/20/peu-de-differences-grammaticales-entre-l-4535560.html
Au-delà de ce qui est visible et contrairement à la croyance populaire, le squelette de la langue française ne connaît que très peu de variations d’un territoire à l’autre.
«Je ne pense pas que c’est l’anglais qui est responsable des malheurs» - Natalia Dankova
Info07.com, March 22, 2016Online
URL: http://www.info07.com/actualites/2016/5/20/je-ne-pense-pas-que-cest-langlais-qui-4535565.html
La présence de l’anglais à proximité ne suffit pas à l’ignorance. C’est du moins ce qu’affirme la docteure en sciences du langage et professeure à l’Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO), Natalia Dankova.
Is Multilingual Rap Eroding Canada’s French Language?
Nautilus, May 3, 2016Online
URL: http://nautil.us/blog/is-multilingual-rap-eroding-canadas-french-language
Recently a Quebec arts foundation required the Francophone rap group Dead Obies to give back an $18,000 grant they’d been awarded to record their newest album. The problem? A word count determined that the group had stirred too much English into their distinctive multilingual lyrics, falling short of the rule that 70 percent of the content be in French.
What Francophones hear when the party leaders speak French
National Post, October 3, 2015Online
URL: http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/what-francophones-hear-when-the-party-leaders-speak-french
The Moment. In this daily feature until Election Day, the National Post captures a telling moment in time from the 2015 campaign trail.
Montreal English has a true je ne sais quoi
Montreal Gazette, February 15, 2015Online
URL: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/frenglish/Montreal+English+true+sais+quoi/6941480/story.html
Entangled with the language of Molière and Mordecai, of Michel Tremblay and the McGarrigles, avec passion and verve, ours is a singular mélange of ancient French and modern geek, of contemporary Québécois and the pervasive English of globalization.
Juggling languages as a challenge for Canadian families keen on preserving heritage
The Canadian Press, October 24, 2012Online
The first few decades of Naomi Sutorius-Lavoie's life played out in a jumble of French, English and Dutch, her three languages a daily soundtrack in the Ottawa home where she grew up.
Montreal English: Borrowings, but not a dialect
Montreal Gazette, June 27, 2012Online
URL: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/frenglish/Montreal+English+Borrowings+dialect/6941447/story.html
Maybe Quebec anglos just think we’re distinct.
A funny thing happened when Shana Poplack decided to count the number of French words native English-speakers in Montreal and Quebec City used in ordinary conversations about their lives in la belle province.
Borrowing: Loanwords in the speech community and in the grammar
by Shana Poplack
Published by Oxford University Press
July 18, 2017
Studies of bilingual behavior have been proliferating for decades, yet short shrift has been given to its major manifestation, the incorporation of words from one language into the discourse of another.
This volume redresses that imbalance by going straight to the source: bilingual speakers in their social context. Building on more than three decades of original research based on vast quantities of spontaneous performance data and a highly ramified analytical apparatus, Shana Poplack characterizes the phenomenon of lexical borrowing in the speech community and in the grammar, both synchronically and diachronically.
In contrast to most other treatments, which deal with the product of borrowing (if they consider it at all), this book examines the process: how speakers go about incorporating foreign items into their bilingual discourse; how they adapt them to recipient-language grammatical structure; how these forms diffuse across speakers and communities; how long they persist in real time; and whether they change over the duration. Attacking some of the most contentious issue in language mixing research empirically, it tests hypotheses about established loanwords, nonce borrowings and code-switches on a wealth of unique datasets on typologically similar and distinct language pairs. A major focus is the detailed analysis of integration: the principal mechanism underlying the borrowing process. Though the shape the borrowed form assumes may be colored by community convention, Poplack shows that the act of transforming donor-language elements into native material is universal.
Emphasis on actual speaker behavior coupled with strong standards of proof, including data-driven reports of rates of occurrence, conditioning of variant choice and measures of statistical significance, make Borrowing an indispensable reference on language contact and bilingual behavior.
URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/borrowing-9780190256388?cc=ca&lang=en&
Categories of grammar and categories of speech: When the quest for symmetry meets inherent variability
by Shana Poplack
Published by In Shin, Naomi & Erker, Danny (eds.), First names – How theoretical primitives shape the search for linguistic structure (Papers in honor of Ricardo Otheguy). John Benjamins.
To appear
L’anglicisme chez nous : une perspective sociolinguistique.
by Shana Poplack
Published by In Actes du colloque du réseau des organismes francophones de politique et d’aménagement linguistiques (OPALE). Les anglicismes : des emprunts à intérêt variable?, Québec, octobre 2016. Publications de l’Office québécois de la langue française.
To appear
Variation and grammaticalization in Romance: A cross-linguistic study of the subjunctive.
by Poplack, Shana, Torres Cacoullos, Rena, Dion, Nathalie, Berlinck, Rosane de Andrade, Digesto, Salvatore, Lacasse, Dora & Steuck, Jonathan.
Published by In Ayres-Bennett, Wendy & Carruthers, Janice (eds.), Manuals in Linguistics: Romance Sociolinguistics. de Gruyter.
In press
Code-switching (Linguistic).
by Shana Poplack
Published by International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. 2nd edition. Elsevier Science Ltd. 918-925.
2015
Norme prescriptive, norme communautaire et variation diaphasique.
by Shana Poplack
Published by In Kragh, Kirsten & Lindschouw, Jan (eds.), Variations diasystématiques et leurs interdépendances. Série TraLiLo, Strasbourg: Société de linguistique romane. 293-319.
2015
A variationist paradigm for linguistic emergence.
by Poplack, Shana & Torres Cacoullos, Rena.
Published by In MacWhinney, Brian & O’Grady, William (eds.), The Handbook of Language Emergence. Wiley-Blackwell. 267-291.
2015
Variabilité et changement dans les grammaires en contact.
by Poplack, Shana & Levey, Stephen.
Published by In Martineau, France & Nadasdi, Terry (eds.), Le français en contact: hommages à Raymond Mougeon, collection « Les Voies du français ». Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval. 247-280.
2011
Grammaticalization and linguistic variation.
by Shana Poplack
Published by In Heine, Bernd & Narrog, Heiko (eds.), Handbook of Grammaticalization. Oxford. 209-224.
2011
African American English in Nova Scotia.
by Poplack, Shana & Tagliamonte, Sali
Published by In Gold, Elaine & McAlpine, Janice (eds.), Canadian English: A Linguistic Reader. Kingston: Strathy Language Unit, Queen’s University. 146-154.
Contact-induced grammatical change.
by Poplack, Shana & Levey, Stephen.
Published by In Auer, Peter & Schmidt, Jürgen Erich (eds.), Language and Space – An international handbook of linguistic variation: Volume 1 – Theories and methods. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 391-419.
2010
Quelle langue parlons-nous?
by Shana Poplack
Published by Les Cahiers de la Fondation Trudeau. Montréal: Fondation Trudeau: 125-147.
2009
Searching for “Standard French”: The construction and mining of the Recueil historique des grammaires du français.
by Poplack, Shana, Jarmasz, Lidia-Gabriela, Dion, Nathalie & Rosen, Nicole
Published by Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 1, 1. 13-56.
2015
Foreword to Poplack, Shana “Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español”: toward a typology of code-switching (1980).
by Shana Poplack
Published by Linguistics 51 (Special Jubilee anniversary issue). 11-14.
2013
The evolving grammar of the French subjunctive.
by Poplack, Shana, Lealess, Allison & Dion, Nathalie.
Published by Probus 25, 1 (Special 25th anniversary issue). 139-195.
2013
Myths and facts about loanword development.
by Poplack, Shana & Dion, Nathalie
Published by Language Variation and Change 24, 3. 279-315.
2012
What counts as (contact-induced) change
by Poplack, Shana, Zentz, Lauren & Dion, Nathalie.
Published by Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15, 2. 247-254.
2012
Phrase-final prepositions in Quebec French: An empirical study of contact, code-switching and resistance to convergence
by Poplack, Shana, Zentz, Lauren & Dion, Nathalie.
Published by Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15, 2. 203-225
2012
What does the Nonce Borrowing Hypothesis hypothesize?
by Shana Poplack
Published by Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15, 3. 644-648
2012
Les Récits du français québécois d’autrefois: reflet du parler vernaculaire du XIXe siècle
by Poplack, Shana & St-Amand, Anne
Published by Revue canadienne de linguistique/Canadian Journal of Linguistics 54, 3. 511-546
2009
Prescription vs praxis: The evolution of future temporal reference in French
by Poplack, Shana & Dion, Nathalie
Published by Language 85, 3. 557-587.
2009
Biography
Shana Poplack is Distinguished University Professor and Canada Research Chair in Linguistics and director of the Sociolinguistics Laboratory at the University of Ottawa. Her work applies theoretical and methodological insights gained from the study of linguistic variation and change to a variety of fields, including bilingual language mixing, language contact, and grammatical convergence, the genesis of African American Vernacular English, normative prescription and praxis, and the role of the school in impeding linguistic change.
Recognition/Reconnaissance
Member, Order of Canada | Professional
Governor General of Canada
Canada Research Chair in Linguistics (Tier 1) | Professional
Government of Canada (2015)
Canada Research Chair in Linguistics (Tier 1) | Professional
Government of Canada (2008)
Canada Research Chair in Linguistics (Tier 1) | Professional
Government of Canada (2001)
Gold Medal for Achievement in Research | Professional
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
National Achievement Award | Professional
Canadian Linguistics Association
Premier's Discovery Award | Professional
Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation
Trudeau Fellowship Award | Professional
Trudeau Foundation
Killam Prize | Professional
Canada Council for the Arts
Pierre Chauveau Medal | Professional
Royal Society of Canada
Award for Excellence in Research | Professional
University of Ottawa
Ontario Distinguished Researcher Award | Professional
Ontario Innovation Trust
Distinguished University Professor | Professional
University of Ottawa
Killam Research Fellowship | Professional
Canada Council for the Arts
Professor of the Year | Professional
Faculty of Arts, University of Ottawa
Fellow | Professional
Royal Society of Canada
Fulbright Visiting Scholar Award | Professional
Pontificia Universidade Catolica de Sao Paulo (1990)
Additional Titles and Affiliations
Member - Order of Canada (2014)
Fellow - Royal Society of Canada (1998)
Fellow - Linguistic Society of America (2009)
Distinguished University Professor - University of Ottawa (2002)
Canada Research Chair in Linguistics (2001-present)
Director, Sociolinguistics Laboratory, University of Ottawa (1982-present)
Research Grants
The evolving grammar of French in Canada: The competing roles of school, community and ideology
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
2017-2022
Canada Research Chair in Linguistics
Organization: Government of CanadaDetails:
2015-2022
Language contact and change in Canada's official languages
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
2012-2017
Gold Medal for Achievement in Research
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
2012
Canada Research Chair in Linguistics
Organization: Government of CanadaDetails:
2008-2015
Premier’s Discovery Award
Organization: Ontario Ministry of Research and InnovationDetails:
2008
Official languages research and dissemination program: Assessing the linguistic outcomes of language contact in Quebec English
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
2007-2008
Norms and variation in French: the competing roles of school, community and ideology. (with Johanne Bourdages)
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
2005-2008
An English “Like No Other”?: Language Contact and Change in Quebec
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
2002-2005
Canada Research Chair in Linguistics
Organization: Government of CanadaDetails:
2001-2008
Database Creation and Preservation for the Sociolinguistics Laboratory at the University of Ottawa
Organization: Ontario Innovation TrustDetails:
2001
Database Creation and Preservation for the Sociolinguistics Laboratory at the University of Ottawa
Organization: Canadian Foundation for InnovationDetails:
2001
Prescription and Praxis in the Evolution of French Grammar
Organization: Killam Foundation, Canada CouncilDetails:
2001-2002
Variation, Prescription and Praxis: Contact and Evolution of Grammatical Systems
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
1999-2002
From Synchrony to Diachrony in the Evolution of African American Vernacular English. (with Sali Tagliamonte)
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
1995-1998
Contextualizing Language Contact: A Cross-linguistic Study of Variation and Change
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
1993-1995
Sociolinguistic Analysis of Black English in Canada: A Historical and Comparative Study
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
1990-1993
Black English in Canada: Reconstructing Diachrony from Synchronic Evidence
Organization: Institute of Social and Economic Research, Memorial University of NewfoundlandDetails:
1990
Sociolinguistic Aspects of Language Contact in the Ottawa-Hull Region
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
1988-1991
Sociolinguistic Aspects of Language Contact in the Ottawa-Hull Region
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
1986-1988
Monolingual and Bilingual Speech Modes Among Francophones in the Ottawa-Hull Region
Organization: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of CanadaDetails:
1983-1984