Fiona MacLean

Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Reid, Amy

Area of Concentration

French Literature

Abstract

This thesis considers how languages cross borders and how French and Spanish works from across North America include English in their texts. I analyze works by Ringuet, France Daigle, Gloria E. Anzaldúa, and Giannina Braschi, focusing on how they include English into their French (Ringuet and Daigle) and Spanish (Anzaldúa and Braschi). Written between 1938 and 2002, these texts deal with the challenges faced by non-English-speakers living on a continent (North America) with a legacy that preferences and privileges its English speaking population. In the French texts, the constant intrusion of English used both by English-speaking Canadians and Americans, is presented as a pressing threat to the identity of the Québécois and Acadien populations in Canada. In the Spanish texts, the authors choose to include English not as a marker of assimilation, but of a defiant resistance to linguistic and cultural erasure within the Chicana and Puerto Rican communities in the United States. While these four authors address varying issues, what unites them is their resistance to pressure to assimilate into an English-speaking North America.

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