Local Settlement or Global Metropolis? Imagining Qu�bec as a Glocal City on the 400th Anniversary of its Founding

Andy Van Drom

Mobilities, 2012, vol. 7, issue 1, 53-69

Abstract: Situated within the Critical Discourse Analysis paradigm, this transdisciplinary study looks at the two official websites promoting the 400th founding anniversary of Qu�bec City in 2008, in order to uncover how the Soci�t� du 400-super-e de Qu�bec and the Canadian government represent Qu�bec's identity and how they respectively relate it to a regional and a federal entity. Focusing on the semiotic strategies that both protagonists propose in order to construct Qu�bec's identity, it is demonstrated that different conceptions of region, nation, and State - which have given rise to many a predicament throughout Canada's history - are at the heart of these diverging local and global constructions of one single city. Whilst the Soci�t� du 400-super-e attributes a crucial historical role to the city when it describes Qu�bec as 'the cradle of French civilisation in the Americas', the federal government simply salutes its status as the 'oldest of Canadian cities'. Drawing on social theories (Smith, 1991; Anderson, 2006) and sociohistoric context, the analysis which follows seeks to contribute from a linguistic point of view to the grand debate on identity that persists throughout Canada.

Date: 2012
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DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2012.631811

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