L'assimilande is a French novel by Canadian writer Paul Laurendeau. It was first published by Éditions jets d'encre in 2007.
Plot summary
A small experimental prosthetic device called the glottophore has just been invented in Canada. It permits the person who wears it to learn a foreign language at an extremely high speed and with minimal immersion environment. Odile Cartier, a Toronto linguistics professor, gives Kimberley Parker, one of her PhD students, an assignment to test the glottophore on herself in order to inquire into the psychological and ethnological impact of such an invention, which could be dynamite for Canadian society, where bilingualism is a very sensitive social issue. Parker takes the dive in the direction of the language she loves the most: French. During her investigation, she begins to observe strange discursive side effects and a growing uneasiness towards the fast paced linguistic assimilation she is experiencing.
Ethnolinguistical, geographical and political perspectives
Published in France, the novel integrates elements of dialogues in Quebec joual as well as in the variety of French spoken in Pondichery, India. The story partly takes place in Tom Thomson College, Lancaster University, a fictitious college and a fictitious university in the (real) city of Toronto. The conclusion of the novel also makes reference to real life characters such as the Governor General of Canada, the Prime Minister of Canada, the Commissioner of Official Languages of Canada, the Premier of Quebec. The identity and personality traits of these characters are, however, fictionalized.
