Abstract

As Nathalie Freynet and Richard Clément (2018) write: “Le français est empreint de contradictions. Alors qu’il se veut standardisé, il figure aujourd’hui parmi les langues les plus diversifiées au monde” (p. 96). This contradiction is examined in this thesis, which looks at how the journalism industry can, on one hand, uphold strict linguistic standards while simultaneously incorporating journalists who do not necessarily correspond to these ideals. Accents are more than one’s “manner of pronunciation” (Giles, 1970, p. 213). They express individual and collective identities that can match or collide with the expectations of a professional-sounding anchor voice. Although sociolinguists insist that accents and language proficiency are unrelated (Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010), “accented,” non-standard speakers can face discrimination and self-stigmatization (Blanchet, 2019). Majority-group members’ perceptions and reactions to accented speech and sociolinguistic representations of the French language have been thoroughly analyzed. However, the lived experience of stigmatized speakers has not received the same attention (Freynet & Clément, 2018). In response, this thesis explores how accented journalists make sense of their “audible difference” in Canadian and Quebec francophone media. Data from twelve in-depth, semistructured interviews were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). Findings, organized across four themes, paint a contrasting picture of the journalistic field as a place of both belonging and exclusion, where accented journalists engage in ambivalent behaviour that simultaneously resists the silencing of their accents, while conforming to professional expectations.