New Brunswick (NB), Canada’s only officially bilingual province (English/French), features educational duality with each linguistic group learning the other official language as second language. The policy results from historical discrimination of the mostly Acadian minority Francophone population and has spurred numerous language ideological debates. These include conflicting language ideologies (Kroskrity, 2000) regarding Chiac, a contact variety of Acadian French spoken in southeastern NB. Chiac is constructed as indexing linguistic assimilation yet also local cultural identity (Boudreau, 2016). Coupled with ideologies privileging ‘Standard French’ (Lodge, 1993), professional and educational policies discourage the use of Chiac. Of interest in Anglophone schools are language ideologies held by French second language (FSL) teachers, including French immersion.

We discuss data gathered through semi-structured interviews with 17 Grade 3 French immersion teachers (15 New Brunswickers) in Southeastern NB, investigating their reactions to media recordings featuring varieties of French. We ask: What sorts of language ideologies are evident in NB French immersion teachers’ discourse surrounding ‘Standard’ French and Chiac? Do their ideologies differ according to mother tongue and/or regional provenance?

Through Constructivist Ground Theory (Charmaz, 2014) methods, we found that non-local Francophone teachers disfavoured the use of Chiac in all contexts, while local Francophone teachers tended to affirm speaking it privately. Teachers identifying as Anglophone or ‘bilingual’ gave varied responses. All were adamant that only ‘Standard French’ is acceptable at school, even noting that immersion students speak ‘better French’ than local Francophone peers. Yet, immersion students’ lack of exposure to Chiac might limit their participation in local Acadian communities of practice (Roy, 2020). The standard-language-only policy in FSL may also contribute to further stigmatization of Chiac and potential reification of NB’s majority/minority social and linguistic boundaries. We advocate for socially-responsible FSL education that includes discussion of local varieties of French and engagement with local Francophone communities of practice.