Official Bilingualism Policy and Bilinguals

Abstract

Lee, Seung-Ryul. 2018. Official Bilingualism Policy and Bilinguals, Asian Journal of Canadian Studies, 24-2. 73-95. Bilingualism is believed to be one of key identities of Canada. Unlike our expectation, bilingualism may not be a real face in provinces except New Brunswick where English and French are official languages. This paper attempts to look into data about bilingualism issued by Statistics Canada and reveal realities of bilinguals in terms of regions and ages. The results suggested that ratio of bilinguals has a little been increased since 2011 and has, particularly, been increased in the provinces near Quebec. The study also found that, reviewing bilingualism rate of the school-age populations, bilingual rate reached its height at the ages between 10 and 14 years old. This is consistent with the so-called critical period hypothesis in language acquisition.