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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 5 October 2021 and 13 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sophiehuizinga1, Sophia.guo30. Peer reviewers: Nmuret.
Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
i don't like the sandbox
Hey everybody, in the first sentence I modified the "was" for "is", because as of my experience, it is still used (2006)... sorry, it isn't because I'm a francophone and I'm anti-anglo or whatever, it's just that I experienced it more than once.
This page is ridiculous please delete it.
I understand why the unreferenced tag and my original fact tag were removed, but the additional sources which have been added are not primary sources, and they especially do not allow any generalization about the frequency ("a common insult") with which this phrase was used. I'm willing to be edified on this. The last time I lived in Quebec was 1949, so I'm not exactly well versed on this issue. However, I do know that the frequency with which this phrase was/is used is disputed, so some scholarly reference would be useful. Actually, I'd be satisfied with some statements from users from Quebec about how often they hear or used to hear this phrase (or use or used to use it), but I'm afraid that would constitute original research by Wikipedia's rules. John FitzGerald 17:32, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
I really disagree with the changes being made here. This article is about a poem that describes prejudice against french-speaking Québecois in Canada. It is not about the vietnam war and imperialism (except indirectly).. Why use an ultra-strict interpretation of citation to erase an important element of someone's history? I will look it up in Quebec literature books at the library, please don't just make this article about nothing, put a fact tag if you want. Dan Carkner 00:29, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I appreciate your point of view, but none of these sources is objective – no data from refereed research journals, for example. They are simply the assertions of small numbers of people that it was used, with no estimates of frequency. Even if there is no doubt that it was said, the question is how widely it was used and how frequently. None of the sources answers that question. John FitzGerald 13:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
The poem is not just about injustice toward French-Canadians by English-Canadians... it's about linguistic imperialism and imperialism in general. It cites both poorer English and French Canadians as brothers in the discrimination against them. Both the King's English and proper bourgeois French were respectable languages across the world at that time and today, but the English and French dialects spoken by poor Canadians of both linguistic groups were both despised and chided as ugly and their speakers were looked down upon by the rich. This should be touched on in the article I think.
And since the average English Canadian couldn't tell an upper or lower-class French dialect from Swahili, I suspect that linguistic imperialism has less explanatory value than imperialism pure and simple. John FitzGerald 17:18, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the sentence "The expression has fallen out of use and has rarely been heard since the 1960s, although it is not unheard of" as the reference, a 1998 statement from Ontario MPP Gilles E. Morin, indicates quite the opposite: "Long gone too is the attitude of the anglophone officer who, on meeting me for the first time, told me to "speak white." Victoriagirl 00:07, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
I've rewritten the article to better reflect verifiable claims. The poem, although highly incendiary, is an important piece of work in Canadian literature. I've also removed some of unverifiable references, replaced some with good references, and asked for new ones where neccessary. I think this article is now neutral. --Soulscanner 07:21, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
This article sounds like the French-Canadians invented the expression "Speak White" to appear as victims. The only "evidence" is "anecdotal".
Her poem is not, however, directed solely or even primarily at English Canada, often citing British and American references such as Shakespeare, Keats, the Thames, the Potomac and Wall Street as its symbols of linguistic oppression.
Actually it is solely directed at English Canada. It's said "you're speaking with the accent of Milton and Byron and Shelley and Keats". Then it says "speak white like in Wall Street". But it's the English-speaking Canadians -not Wall Street- who said this to the French-Canadians (something like "you'd better be talking a language with power"). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Faef (talk • contribs) 10:41, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
Canadian journalist William Johnson has published an interesting paper The Canadian Myth of “Speak White!” – A Sociological Analysis : http://vision.williamjohnson-quebec.ca/the-canadian-myth-of-speak-white/. It can't be ref'd because it's self-published, but it does provide some interesting insights which I've used to update this article. --Cornellier (talk) 03:00, 2 March 2019 (UTC)
There is not enough reference-able material out there for this article to be about the poem or the phrase. The article has contained a ((infobox film)) since 2007 so I rewrote the lead to make the article about that and removed a lot of WP:SYNTH. If the article is about the film then per WP:COATRACK and WP:NPOV the mentions of Louis Robichaud and Robert Lepage should go. --Cornellier (talk) 11:26, 7 March 2019 (UTC)
This article contains a translation of Speak White from fr.wikipedia. |
Content in this edit is translated from the existing French Wikipedia article at fr:Exact name of French article; see its history for attribution.
--Sophia.guo30 (talk) 15:18, 13 December 2021 (UTC)