Separatist vs. souverainiste: an analysis

I've been trying to wrap my brain around the meaningfulness of separatist vs. souverainiste. My problem is that I was trying to think this through from a position of hegemony. I was assuming that my English was standard, and I was thinking in terms of "What was their reasoning in referring to the separatists as sovereigntists?"

I've been thinking and doing some research, and I've discovered the problem is that the meaning of "separatist" and "sovereigntist" in my English is skewed, and the real question to be asking is "What was their reasoning in referring to the people in question as separatists?"

Forget everything you know about Quebec for a second. In the world at large and in the English language in general, "separatist" is negative and "sovereigntist" is positive.

Separatists want to break away from something to which they belong, to destroy an existing union, The connotations are usually a bit extremist and a bit irrational (think Basque separatists, white separatists, black separatists, Tamil separatists, etc. etc.)

"Sovereignty," on the other hand, is a good thing. One's sovereignty over one's own body. Canada's sovereignty over its northern waters. Sovereigntists want to preserve their existing rights and freedoms.

They are two separate concepts. They are separate concepts in most parts of the English-speaking world, and they are separate concepts in cognate languages, including French.

(Now you can remember everything you know about Quebec again.)

However, we Anglo-Canadians are so used to hearing the word sovereignty used to describe Quebec separation (which, rightfully or wrongfully, we do perceive as a threat) that we tend to forget its positive connotations and immediately equate it with this perceived threat. It's like the words "life" and "choice" when discussing abortion. If abortion is the topic of discussion and one of those words comes up, it is not going to be taken neutrally.

So because we equate this positive word "sovereignty" with Quebec separation, we don't always distinguish between "separatist" and "sovereigntist". Certainly both words can be used very deliberately and advisedly in our English, but they can also be used mindlessly and interchangeably. Again, think about about the terms "pro-life" and "anti-abortion". Sometimes (depending on speaker, audience, situation, context) the choice of one or the other is meaningful and politicized. But sometimes it's just the word the speaker happens to land on.

Analogy: "sovereigntist" is like "potato chips". "Separatist" is like "junk food." They can be used to describe the same concept and they can both be used positively, negatively or neutrally depending on speaker/audience/situation/context, but the second one is generally more negative.

So what does this mean for Stephen Harper's speeches? I can't tell you. Why? Because I don't know how mindfully he chose the word "separatists" instead of "sovereigntists" in English. He (or his speechwriters) might have just grabbed the first word that came to mind. They might have chosen it to demonize the Bloc as much as possible. They might have chosen it because the people in question tend to refer to themselves as souverainistes and they don't want their base to view them as sympathetic. I have no way of knowing.

So how did the French end up being souverainistes? At some point someone changed it. Was this cunning and manipulative? There is, of course, room for it to have been, but it was not necessarily. It is a perfectly normal part of the French translator's job to make minor stylistic tweaks, and to be the one to realize "That line may play in Canmore, but not in Baie-Comeau" and edit it to something that will get the desired reaction from the Francophone audience. That's why you want mother-tongue translators. From a translational perspective, changing separatists to souverainistes is morally equivalent to altering a line that is a political catchphrase in the target language but politically neutral in the source language, or changing an abbreviation so it isn't a dirty word in the target language. Whenever it's in question, you always err on the side of not making people look like dickheads.

Was the PM aware of the different connotations? I have no way of knowing. I know that any sensible person does review their translated speeches before delivering them. I know that souverainiste is harder for an Anglophone to pronounce than séparatiste (sometimes this is a factor in word choices for speeches, sometimes not - I have no idea if it is for Mr. Harper). I know that Mr. Harper is coming from the same English as I am, so he may well not immediately recognize that separatist and souverainiste are in fact different concepts (I never thought about it before this speech happened).

So the take-away:

sovereigntist = potato chips
separatist = junk food

There is room for the difference in word choices to be calculating and manipulative, and there is room for it to be perfectly innocent. It all depends not on why they decided to refer to the junk food as potato chips, but on how mindful they were in choosing to call it junk food in the first place.

And regardless of any motives or lack thereof in word choice, the impact of the use of separatist and souverainiste is negligible when compared with the impact of all Mr. Harper's other comments on the Bloc's alignment with the coalition.