A fascinating study of the French-Canadian dialect, this insightful analysis examines the intimate relationship between Quebec and its heartily defended dialect, from 19th-century Parisian French to the joual of the 1960s.

Chantal Bouchard is a linguist and a professor in the Département de langue et de littérature française at McGill University. She lives in Montreal, Quebec.

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LUISE VON FLOTOW is a translator of French and German literature. Her novel translations include La femme du stalinien, Une belle éducation,and L’hôtel aux quatre chemins by France Théoret, and she also edited the essay collection Translating Women: Different Voices and New Horizons. She is a professor at the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa.

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...the book is a very insightful read which will appeal to specialists and non-specialists alike who have sought to go beyond the 'short historical' perspective to examine how the language situation in Quebec arose, was conditioned and shaped, and subsequently evolved beyond the wildest dreams of those who participated in defining that history.

Martin Howard, University College, Cork, British Journal of Canadian Studies