Québécois (word)

This article is about the use of the term Québécois in the English language. For the newspaper, see Le Québécois.

In Canadian English, a Québécois (IPA: /kebe'kwa/), or in the feminine Québécoise (IPA: /kebe'kwaz/), is a francophone native or resident of the province of Quebec, Canada. The term may also refer to a Quebecker who identifies with Quebec's French-speaking majority culture or someone of French-Canadian descent.

With a lower-case initial, the word québécois can refer to Quebec French, a variant of the French language spoken by over 90 percent of Quebec's population. As an adjective, it refers to Quebec's francophone culture or population.

In French, the word Québécois generally refers to a native or resident of Quebec or of Quebec City. Its English equivalent is Quebecer or Quebecker (pronounced [kwəˈbɛkɚ] or [kəˈbɛkɚ]). These terms generally refer to any resident of Quebec, including anglophone or allophone natives or residents of Quebec. In a political or cultural context, it may take on the same meaning as the English definition of the word.

The word is featured in the Parti Québécois and Bloc Québécois political party names.

Controversy

The word Québécois can be politically charged because it combines both a notion of territorial nationality (i.e. resident of Quebec) and ethnicity (i.e. French-speaking person of French-Canadian origins), and may mean different things to different speakers. The former sense is used in government publications, for example, while the second is more common in the media - especially facing separation or nationalist issues. Controversy often results over the word's definition.

For example, people of Haitian ancestry living in Montreal may be considered Québécois because they reside in Quebec, or not Québécois because their ancestry cannot be traced back to New France. As well, although Anglophone Quebecers are generally included in the French meaning of the word, they rarely if ever self-identify as Québécois in English, and are only occasionally referred to as such in English in academic or political circles.

Even in French, however, some Quebecers have historically used the word to draw a similar distinction between French speaking pur laine (lit. "100% wool"; i.e. "native, with ancestries tracing to France") Québécois and anglophone or allophone residents of the province. This interpretation of the word's meaning is rejected by the majority of francophone Quebec society (at the exception of radical circles, e.g. sympathizers of the Mouvement National de Libération du Québec or the now defunct terrorist group Front de Libération du Québec, and public figures who have used it have been quickly rebuked by other public figures and the media. This can be explained by the fact that this term is mostly used by anglophones to distinguish French-Canadians residing in Quebec (sometimes in a derogatory fashion) from residents in general (which would be Quebecers). Most francophones use a single inclusive term which describes residents of the province without distinction to origin or ethnicity.

See also

• Culture of Quebec
• Demolinguistics of Quebec
• Scots-Quebecer
• List of Irish Quebecers