La narration collective chez les Cowboys Fringants: Représentations sociales et mise en scène de soi

From the very beginning, the Cowboys Fringants, among the greatest exponents of Quebec folk-rock of the last twenty years, have composed songs that reflect their social and geographical environment. Particularly prolific in their musical production, the band appears to be very tied to its community of origin, as evidenced by the numerous topics dealt with relating to Quebec, its territories, and its language. The abundant corpus of songs composed over the years therefore allows for exploration of the contribution of the band to both social representations of the Franco-Quebec community and co-construction of the sense of belonging to the latter. After a presentation of the historical and sociolinguistic context of the sole province in Canada with a majority francophone population, followed by brief methodological notes relating to the treatment of the corpus – which includes all the albums published until 2021 – the study will focus on the places and the protagonists described by the group. The sociocultural snapshot created therein will therefore allow investigation and reflection on the collective identity thus (self) represented, to understand how this narrative allows the band to actively participate in the co-construction of the social representations of Quebecers.