Intergroup Conflict: The Discursive Battle Over Quebec Independence

An investigation of the 1995 Quebec referendum on political independence was undertaken to discover the manner in which sovereignists (proponents of Quebec independence) and federalists (proponents of a united Canada) discursively constructed both their preferred version of the conflict over Quebec independence and group identity. A discourse analysis revealed several linguistic features, such as lexical style and metaphor, that contributed to these constructions. Sovereignists, on the one hand, presented a unified position of sovereignty and portrayed the Canadian state as an imperialistic regime aggressing against Quebec and its people. Federalists, on the other hand, typically drew on negative expressions to denote independence, such as separation and breakup, and constructed sovereignists as dishonest. Results are discussed in terms of the constructive aspects of the message and the interrelatedness of the sovereignist and federalist narratives.