La polémique autour de bonjour/hi sur le web : vers la déconstruction du discours d’autorité

Abstract

In November 2019, Simon Jolin-Barrette, Quebec minister responsible for the French language, revisited a controversy that had taken place two years earlier concerning the bilingual greeting bonjour/hi used in Montreal businesses, considered by some to reflect the decline of the French language in Quebec. The minister stated that he intended to ban the greeting in favor of the French ritual bonjour. In a conflicted sociolinguistic context such as Quebec’s, such assertions cannot go unnoticed. The announcement of Jolin-Barrette resounded in the media, where it provoked strong reactions to such an extent that a new polemic broke out. The aim of this article is to show how the reactions provoked, especially online, contributed to the deconstruction of the minister’s discourse and to its inability to impose itself as a discourse of authority. Our analysis focusses on the (techno)discursive modalities through which Jolin-Barrette’s authority is diminished or denied.

Keywords

• authority
• discursive formula
• media
• polemic
• Quebec