Bilingual health care in Quebec: Public policy, vitality, and acculturation issues

Abstract The first part of this chapter offers the Interactive Acculturation Model (IAM), which provides an intergroup approach to minority/majority group relations in multilingual settings. The ethnolinguistic vitality framework is the first element of the IAM as it describes the relative strength and weaknesses of linguistic communities in contact. Four language policies regulating the status of linguistic communities constitute the key second element of the IAM. Third, the acculturation orientations of minority and majority group speakers are described as they interact to yield harmonious, problematic or conflictual intergroup relations. As an application of the IAM, the second part of the chapter analyzes bilingual health care policies for official language minorities in Canada and Quebec. A detailed analysis of bilingual health care institutions serving the English-speaking communities of Quebec closes with a case study of a recent Quebec Government health care law that threatened to undermine the institutional vitality of the Anglophone minority of Quebec. Key words: Interactive Acculturation Model (IAM), English-speaking communities of Quebec, health care policies.

Chapter 14