Changing Anglo-Quebecer Self Consciousness Summary

In the text, “Changing Anglo-Quebecer Self Consciousness,” the author, Michael Stein, questions the transformations of political consciousness among English-speaking Quebecers, since the election of the Parti Québécois government in 1976. Early on, key concepts emerge where the author defines the terms “anglophone” and “non-francophone Quebecer” which are mutually used. However, Stein makes a clear differentiation between those who are virtually English-speaking, inclusive of Anglo-Celts, Jews, Germans and other early immigrant arrivals, and those who nevertheless generally utilize their language of origin such as the more recent Italian, Greek, and Portuguese immigrants. Furthermore, the main objective of the text is to bring attention to the often disregarded yet ongoing psychological changes of

In order to answer these questions, Stein structures his text by categorizing the anglo-community profound change in political consciousness through labelling three phases: a phase of self-confident majority group consciousness; a phase of majority-minority group image dissonance and defensiveness; a phase of minority group positive self-awareness and action.

The first phase of self-confident majority group consciousness can be tracked back after the Conquest, when British officials established their economic and political power over the residents remaining in Quebec. Stein implies that the self-confident majority group consciousness of Quebec anglophones was denoted by a sense of their exceptional educational and cultural upbringings, their higher overall average incomes and their commanding positions in the economy of Quebec (Stein, 2012, p. 110). However, the second phase of majority-minority group image dissonance and defensiveness took place during the Quiet Revolution. Stein alludes that the first turning point in transforming anglophones attitudes came with the enactment of Bill 22, which made French the only