At play in a Francophone minority school in Canada: discourses on languages

In this paper, I explore Discourses [Gee 1996. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses. 2nd Edition, 1996; 3rd Edition, 2008; 5th Edition. 2015. London: Taylor & Francis] on language, and how they influenced plurilingual students' subject positioning during classroom interactions. I analyse documents published by a school board as well as transcripts from classroom interactions from a case study research in a grade-six classroom in a Francophone minority school in British Columbia, Canada. I argue that teachers appeared to have integrated, in their interactions with students, a Discourse on languages of French monolingualism and separate bi/plurilingualism. These Discourses also influenced how students interacted with each other. Some students, however, were able to work around these Discourses in order to position themselves as plurilinguals.