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What does Canada want? : reactions to the Allaire Report in and out of Quebec as expressed in the written press

University of British Columbia

The theoretical framework of this thesis bases itself essentially upon the respective works of Arendt Lijphart and Karl Deutsch, who have studied how societal cleavages and social communication interact with each other. The present thesis's main focus is the Quebec/English Canadian duality. It uses quantitative analysis to study and compare pan-Canadian reactions to the Allaire Report that was issued by the Quebec Liberal Party in early 1991. The purpose is to try and find out whether the Allaire Report and the proposals it contains have had a divisive effect on Canadian society, and if so, to what extent. The data consists of all issues of the following newspapers over a period of time of exactly one month, from the 22nd of January and the 22nd of February, 1991 : the Calgary Herald, the Chronicle Herald, the Globe and Mail, Le Devoir, the Montreal Gazette, the Vancouver Sun and the Winnipeg Free Press. The analysis bases itself upon (1) the space that each newspaper devotes to the issue (2) the tone and content of the headlines and (3) the frequencies of appearance of certain selected words. Quantitative analysis shows that the gap between Quebec and English Canada is becoming wider. Quebec clearly overestimates English Canada's fragile degree of homogeneity, while English Canada, by increasingly identifying itself to the so-called "rest of Canada", paradoxically acts as if Quebec were the glue that holds the whole country together.

Thesis/Dissertation

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2008-12-16

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/2948

Political Science

University of British Columbia

UBCV

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