Charles Castonguay

Charles Castonguay
Born 1940
Ottawa, Ontario
Occupation Professor of mathematics and statistics, researcher in language demographics

Charles Castonguay (born 1940) is a retired associate professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Ottawa.[1]

Contents

Biography

A native English speaker, he was sent by his parents to a French Catholic primary school. He took his first English courses in high school. Enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces to pursue university-level studies, he obtained a masters of mathematics from the University of Ottawa. During the three years of his military service, he was affected to the headquarters in Ottawa as counsellor in mathematics and taught to young officers at the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean.[1]

After his service, he began teaching mathematics and statistics at the University of Ottawa and registered at McGill University to study the philosophy of mathematics and epistemology. The subject of his doctoral thesis was "meaning" and "existence" in mathematics. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1971.[1] (The thesis was published in 1972 and 1973.)

In 1970, he participated to a meeting of the Parti Québécois in the Laurier riding. René Lévesque was the speaker of this meeting intended to inform English speakers of the party's Sovereignty-Association project. After that, he militated for this party until the election of 1976.[1]

Partly to understand himself as a francized English speaker, he took great interest in the analysis of the linguistic behaviours of populations and language policies. He became a specialist on the subject of language shifts and completed several studies on behalf of Office québécois de la langue française.[1]

On January 25, 2001, he took an active part in a symposium held by the commission of the Estates-General on the Situation and Future of the French Language in Quebec (Les enjeux démographiques et l’intégration des immigrants). Thereafter, he co-authored a book criticizing its final report.

Since 2000, he collaborates to the Dossier linguistique in the newspaper L'aut'journal. He participated to the foundation of the Institut de recherche sur le français en Amérique in 2008.

Works

In English

Thesis
Articles
Other

In French

Studies

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e Ginette Leroux. "Le mathématicien de la langue", in L'aut'journal sur le Web, Issue 208, April 2002, retrieved March 25, 2008

References