Before television, English was used by the Inuit only for communication with the Qablunait. There were radio broadcasts in Inuktitut and the local papers were bilingual (most Inuit are literate in their own language using a syllabary of thirty-six basic written characters). Contacts with the Qablunait were rather limited and usually had precise objects: mainly work and trade. In this type of linguistic situation, one deals more with facts than with feelings and lexicon or grammatical structures do not need to be very elaborate or even correct as long as one has oneself understood. This particular type of elementary language is a "pigdin-language".
    Pidgins are second languages that appear when a language is politically, socially and culturally dominated and its native speakers have a very limited knowledge of the dominating language. Wolfgang Klein explains that pidgins are characterised :

a) par la façon dont ils naissent et dont ils sont utilisés: ils concourent à des objectifs de communication très déterminés et limités, ils embrassent souvent une distance sociale extrême, par exemple entre chefs coloniaux et indigènes.

b) par leur stucture: ils possèdent des traits des deux langues concernées mais aussi des caractéristiques inexistantes dans celles-ci. Les traits structurels typiques des pidgins sont entre autres un lexique assez limité, l'absence de marquage du genre, le marquage des temps, aspects et modalités par des particules adverbiales et non par la flexion verbale, la prédominance des constructions coordonnées sur les constructions subordonnées.

(Klein, 1989, p. 47)

    Television brought a number of new situations where English was used (sports, series, movies or news). These situations that did not require a direct contact with the Qablunait but could not be fully understood without a thorough knowledge of English lexicon and grammar. However, if youngsters were able to learn English at school, the small box was the only opportunity to learn English for adults. In short, Inuit were learning English from television in order to better understand English on television. In this respect, children shows such as the Canadian version of Sesame Street(7) were particularly appropriate:

We also found some testimony that monolinguals, and some whose English was very slight and diffident, definitely regarded television as a convenient private device for learning English, whether practically from scratch or for improving their understanding. Some other adults are particularly attracted to "Sesame Street" for this reason and certain of these, who have regular jobs, wished that it would come on at times that didn't conflict with their normal weekday working-schedule

(Watson, 1977, pp. 88-89)

    For those who were totally monolingual (mostly elders) and wished to learn English, television became a convenient teacher. However, the English they would acquire was the language used in shows and series, i.e. fictitious or humorous situations:

Older persons who apparently until now had been entirely monolingual showed evidence that they too were acquiring elementary English vocabulary and phrases from the box. Their use of distinctive English expressions from television made this obvious [...]. such individuals were observed to be now speaking English sporadically (with occasional TV-marked features), for limited purposes in only brief conversational exchanges but with increasing confidence.

(Watson, 1977, pp.88-89)

    Such a language can be named "Television English". It is indeed a particular pidgin because it does not reflect Inuit's everyday reality but the reality of television world, a world that many Inuit identify with the real world and vice-versa.

    It is universally acknowledged that acquiring a foreign language is more difficult for an adult (i.e. after puberty). However, this assertion is only based on empirical data and scientists do not agree on the causes of this phenomenon. The "Critical Period" theory, developed by Lenneberg, suggests that language acquisition is linked with the physiological development of the brain which loses elasticity as one grows up and thus makes it less easy for an adult to learn a new language. The "Critical Period" ends with puberty when a certain number of cerebral functions become more and more rigid. According to this theory, acquiring one's "mother tongue" and acquiring a "foreign language" are two distinct processes.
    Wolfgang Klein supports the idea that the physiological factor is but one element among others. Klein argues that children develop a social and cognitive identity parallel to their "first language". Since social identity is closely connected with one's first language, the desire not to lose one's identity can act as an inhibition mechanism and prevent the acquisition of a new language after puberty.

D'abord, les preuves biologiques sont tout sauf sûres (on les trouvera discutées dans Lamendella 1977, Ekstrand 1979, Paradis et Lebrun 1983). [...] Il se peut aussi bien que la disposition à abandonner une identité sociale acquise antérieurement soit plus faible chez l'adulte

(Klein, 1989, p. 22)

    The question that this theory raises is the following: can we still talk of "foreign language" and "mother tongue" when a child (i.e. before puberty) acquires two languages. According to Klein, the difference lies:

1) in the age of the learner

2) in the time that elapsed between the two acquisitions

He draws the following table:

Age

Acquisition de la langue A

Acquisition de la langue B

Nom

1-3 ans

o

ALM monolingue

ALM bilingue

de 3-4 ans à la puberté

 

 

ALE précoce

après la puberté

o

 

ALE Adulte


ALM: Acquisition de(s) langue(s) maternelle(s)
ALE: Acquisition de(s) langue(s) étrangère(s)

(Klein, 1989, p. 28)

    That is why we can say of Inuit children that those who come into contact with English between one and three have English as a first language. As for those who become familiar with English between four and puberty, they can be perfectly bilingual and yet their cognitive and social development is framed by their mother tongue. This assertion is confirmed by Nelson Graburn's observations in Frobisher Bay:

It is remarkable to see infants and pre-schoolers who hardly speak Inuktitut yet or who are wholly addressed in Inuktitut by their parents, picking up English, with its familiar media phrases and accents, and bandying them about as well as any teenager in Peoria [...] developing English as a first language.

(Graburn, 1982, pp. 13-14)

as well as by Linvill Watson's works in Rankin Inlet:

The pervasive presence of English on television does make a net impact on Inuit by inducing accelerated linguistic acculturation. School teachers and parents alike testify that children since TV have been learning English earlier (starting long before they enter school) and better.

(Watson, 1977, p. 89)

    As Inuit children and young adults began to rely on English for everyday conversation, life in Northern communities was altered in two different ways.
    First, it was easier for Inuit and Qablunait to understand each other, to communicate, thus creating a greater sense of community. At school, Inuit students were able to make up in English and to share common interests (e.g. hockey or... television) about which it was quite natural to speak in English. A greater access to culture (books, movies but also college and university) was also possible since they would not have to rely on Inuktitut translations any longer.
    The second effect was far less positive: for a number of Inuit youngsters, Inuktitut, their elders' language, became a second language that they could neither fully understand nor correctly use. As time went by, this alienation created a large generation gap between the youngsters and the elders who had remained monolingual to a large extent:

It is sad to see a young native person fully comprehend a conversation studded with futuristic lingo between two engineers on "Star Treck", yet unable to communicate with his granfather sitting on the couch beside him.

(Brenda Chambers, quoted in Neuheimer, 1994, p.35)

    Unlike cutures and languages, media cannot be contained within geographical borders very easily: they can serve as vehicles. In 1968, twenty-three years before CNN's spectacular coverage of the Gulf War, a Toronto University literature professor, Marshall McLuhan, noticed that the Viet-Nam War was not the first world war in terms of belligerents but the first world war in terms of viewers. McLuhan realised that Canadians, though originally not involved in the conflict, could watch television war reports on US networks and become as emotionally involved as Americans. Of course, other countries (even former belligerents such as France) were less exposed for various reasons including strong government control (e.g. La Télé du Général in France).
    This experience led McLuhan to consider the whole world as a huge community, the "Global Village". In War in the Global Village, McLuhan and Fiore suggest that television and more generally electronic media (the "Marconi Galaxy") create instantaneous links between communities and thus break physical borders by using "electronic ubiquity" contrary to the printed book ("Gutenberg Galaxy"). Accordingly, a medium originating from a dominant area such as the US or southern Canada can vehicle its language and culture and impose them on a developing region which cannot afford a media system of its own and lead to a complete homogenisation. For instance, we already know that television's arrival in Rankin Inlet gave rise to a greater sense of community between Inuit and Qablunait at the expense of Inuktitut.
    Can we conclude that the Inuit had entered the "Global Village" and more generally what we call the "Modern Society"?

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