Social 10-2: Chapter 6: Promotion of Culture and Language ...



Social 10-2: Chapter 6: Promotion of Culture and Language: Guided lecture

Why is Language the most important feature in shaping cultural identities?

• Language is used to express yourself and learn new ideas and describe your world.

Globalization is affecting languages and cultures around the world by making some cultures and languages more dominant. At the same time it is pushing some language towards the point of extinction.

In order to protect languages some governments create language laws and educational rights to promote languages and cultures. Do you think this helps?

Language Laws and Educational Rights in Canada

1. OFFICIAL LANGUAGES ACT: Created in 1969 as a result of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism

• Aim was to have better representation of Francophones in the Canadian government and economy.

• Three key parts of the act (a) equal use of English and French in Parliament (b) development of official language communities and (c) equality of English and French in Canadian society

• Act revised in 1988 to include more emphasis on bilingualism and official language minority communities

2. MINORITY LANGUAGE EDUCATION RIGHTS: Constitution Act of 1982, and Section 23 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms deals with minority language education rights in Canada.

• Parents can have their children educated in their first language as stated in Section 23, if the number of students allows for this.

• Alberta parents challenged Section 23 and won the right to have French first language education in 1990.

Cultural Legislation and Revitalization of Cultures and Languages

To promote languages and cultures the government can create cultural legislation. That means it makes an effort to promote Canadian cultures through broadcasting. In some cases we need to protect those cultures because the forces of homogenization and assimilation are always on the prowl.

To promote cultural legislation the government can create broadcasting companies such as …

1. THE CRTC: Canadian Radio-television and telecommunications Commission: Is an independent authority and its purpose is to regulate and promote Canadian culture on TV and radio.

• Operates according to two pieces of cultural legislation (a) The Broadcasting Act of 1991 which tries to ensure that all Canadian have access to a wide variety of Canadian programming and (b) the Telecommunications Act of 1993

• CRTC ensures linguistic and cultural diversity, Canadian talent, Aboriginal peoples and Canada’s diverse social values

|Argument in favor of CRTC |Argument Against CRTC |

|Without regulations, Canadian broadcasting would be taken over by larger |CRTC is not an effective way to promote Canadian cultures as regulations |

|media transnationals and then Canadian artists would not get the exposure |stifle artistic creativity and viewers choices of what programming they can|

|they need to succeed. |access |

2. CBC AND SRO: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and le Societe Radio-Canada: Public broadcasters that express Canadian perspective and culture.

|Supporters of Public Broadcasting |Opposition to National Public Broadcasting |

|Wanting funding to these agencies |Competition in broadcasters would better serve Canada’s culture |

|Creates a Canadian face in global media |Funding gives national public broadcasters unfair advantage |

|Portrays shared values of Canadians |Public broadcasters promote elitist cultural views and not the values of |

|Without it Canada would risk losing its identities to a mass universalizing|Canadians |

|popular culture |If Canada’s identity is to survive it should do so without government |

| |assistance |

3. ASIAN TELEVISION NETWORK: ATN promotes Asian cultures and languages in Canada. Provides programming in several South Asian languages (Bollywood North)

What other television broadcasting stations exist in Canada to portray our diversity?

- APTN and TV5

Each of these stations tries to promote Aboriginal or Francophone cultural and linguistic identities. Other nations around the world also take steps to promote and protect their cultural and linguistic identities through the use of cultural and language laws.

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