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This present study aims to offer an insight into the language policies in place in Quebec, by situating them within their larger Canadian, North American, and global context. To that effect, it will, in chapter 6, be compared to two other polities in which the English language has co-existed with other languages for many years. The language policies in place in Wales have the revitalisation of the minority language Welsh as their primary objective, resulting in a situation that has, on occasions, been treated as not being unlike that of French in Quebec. The policies in place in Singapore, on the other hand, have seen much more positive action undertaken to strengthen the use of English, with a decline in linguistic diversity, and even in the vitality of the other official languages, accepted as a collateral effect of shifting towards a language seen as offering more socio-economic opportunities both locally and globally.

In describing the language political situation of Quebec, this study is structured as follows. Chapter 2 begins with the historical background needed to understand the social, demographic, ethnic, and sociolinguistic context in which language use takes place and language policies are developed. A first overview of the major language policy frameworks at the federal and provincial levels is given, with particular emphasis on the situation in Quebec. Chapter 3 gives the theoretical background against which the analysis will take place. General approaches to language policy are presented, as are theories on the global presence of English, with a focus on its use in multilingual settings. In chapter 4, the methodology used for the analysis of language use and policy in Quebec is presented. The data come from four primary sources: a questionnaire survey, a linguistic landscape documentation, ethnographic fieldwork, and psycholinguistic experiments, all of which are then analysed in chapter 5. Chapter 6 undertakes a comparative analysis of the policies operational in Quebec, Wales, and Singapore, drawing on recent theory from the sociolinguistics of globalisation in order to find commonalities, reveal differences, and offer a contribution to the field of comparative language policy in more general. The concluding chapter 7 draws together the results from the preceding chapters and attempts to reevaluate the field of language planning and policy (LPP) in the context of globalisation. It ends with a number of proposals for new ways of analysing LPP.