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Turning the Tide in Acadian Nova Scotia: How Heritage Tourism is Changing Language Practices and Representations of Language

Abstract Drawn from ethnographic data collected in a small coastal village on Cape Breton Island, where tourism-related industries are emerging in response to the deep sea fishing crisis that hit the area in the early 1980s, this analysis focusses on the effects of tourism on linguistic practices and representations. It is argued that these effects are not without consequence on the way French-speakers in the region (re)construct their identity. Increased contact with outsiders leads to two seemingly contradictory tendencies: differentiation and standardization. These two strategies exert a marked influence on the social structure of the Acadian community. In this particular case, speakers must constantly negotiate an equilibrium between the desire to assert their specificity through discriminating traits that showcase their linguistic as well as cultural differences, on the one hand, and their need to communicate with a broader audience, on the other, the latter entailing a certain degree of linguistic standardization. This analysis focusses on how these speakers manage to perform this balancing act between differentiation and standardization.