Montreal's linguistic landscape: Instances of top-down and bottom-up language planning

In Montreal, federal bilingualism, provincial monolingualism, and municipal realities of widespread bilingualism have all left a deep impression on the linguistic landscape of the city. Legislation of the languages on public signs was enacted in 1977, with a view to unambiguously project a visage français (Levine 1989) of Montreal, a projection aimed, in no small part, to immigrants considering which language to shift toward. Initially requiring all outdoor signage to be monolingually French, the Charter of the French language now mandates French to be present and «markedly predominant» if accompanied by other languages. Top-down legislation regulating the linguistic landscape (LL) comes from both provincial and federal sources. However, bottom-up (Ben-Rafael et al 2006) policies embraced by a variety of stakeholders (com- munity groups, individual businesses, private persons) also leave visible traces in the LL, and the way languages are used in these manifestations interacts in interesting ways with the legislation. Considering language choices in the LL emanating from the «grassroots», and bearing in mind that these may have the potential to redress power inequalities (Tollefson 2013), this chapter presents examples found in Montreal’s LL that give visibility to the city’s multiple languages, thus claiming their legitimacy. The resulting LL, notwithstanding the huge diversity of languages and the important mediating role of English, remains, for the most part, «markedly predominantly» French.