Céline/Celine: Languages of Québécité and Americanité

This paper links Dion’s multilingual auto-performances in various media (e.g., song, music video, autobiography, interviews) to current Québécois discourses of “américanité”. Céline Dion holds a peculiar position in contemporary Québécois national discourses.  Because the bulk of her artistic and commercial output now happens in English, Celine has often characterized as a sell-out to Anglophone, US interests.  On the other hand, Céline’s auto-performances staged for public consumption – in English and French – insist on her identity as “la petite fille de Charlemagne”.  At once a corporate icon whose song stylings cover the spectrum of contemporary popular music genres (from Back Street Boys’ upbeat harmonics to Meatloaf’s Broadway-rock theatrics to Madonna’s techno-pop) and a small town girl who values traditional gender roles, Celine/Céline is a VH-1 “diva” with a pronounced québécois accent.  Through an analysis of Dion’s various performances of self – in song, in concert performance, Oprah appearances, print interviews, and her autobiography – I will argue that though these positions appear antithetical, they are increasingly reconciled in contemporary Québécois discourses of “américanité”.  “Américanité” is a conscious sense of continental attachment and identification.  Referencing shared historical and cultural formations of North and South American (non-indigenous) peoples, derived from their transplantation to the New World, “américanité” contributes to the particular articulations of Québécois identity in the contemporary context of continental (and potentially hemispheric) economic integration.