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'No French, no more': language-based exclusion in North America's first professional accounting association, 1879-1927

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  • Crawford Spence
  • Marion Brivot

Abstract

1This paper draws on Bourdieu's sociolinguistic theory to interpret the overrepresentation of Anglophone accountants vis-a-vis Francophone comptables in the formative years of North America's first professional accounting association. In a linguistic market, where English was taken for granted as the official language of commerce, we find that the founding members of the Association of Accountants in Montreal (AAM) possessed a 'distinctive' cultural and linguistic habitus. We observe that the AAM enacted for many years a number of exclusion strategies to effectively limit its admittance of Francophone compatibles who possessed a different cultural and linguistic habitus. When the AAM eventually did explicitly embrace Francophone memberships, this was in order to counter the threat of a rival accounting designation.

Suggested Citation

  • Crawford Spence & Marion Brivot, 2011. "'No French, no more': language-based exclusion in North America's first professional accounting association, 1879-1927," Accounting History Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 163-184.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:acbsfi:v:21:y:2011:i:2:p:163-184
    DOI: 10.1080/21552851.2011.581839
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    Cited by:

    1. Clinton Free & Vaughan S. Radcliffe & Crawford Spence & Mitchell J. Stein, 2020. "Auditing and the Development of the Modern State," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 37(1), pages 485-513, March.
    2. Poullaos, Chris, 2016. "Canada vs Britain in the imperial accountancy arena, 1908–1912: Symbolic capital, symbolic violence," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 47-63.
    3. Annisette, Marcia, 2017. "Discourse of the professions: The making, normalizing and taming of Ontario's “foreign-trained accountant”," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 37-61.
    4. Céline Baud & Marion Brivot & Darlene Himick, 2021. "Accounting Ethics and the Fragmentation of Value," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 168(2), pages 373-387, January.

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