Linguistic variation and language teaching

Presentation

In this book, the term "less taught languages" refers to "modal languages". Sometimes called "rare languages", sometimes "lesser-used languages" and sometimes even "small languages", these languages do not fit into any of the pre-constructed categories of educational institutions. The aim of this book is therefore to problematize the ins and outs of the status they assume in educational systems, and in particular to address the question of linguistic variation in their teaching-learning. Indeed, the teaching of modern foreign languages is often built around a standard imagined and conceived as being that of the legitimate language to be taught/learned. From Asia to the Americas, via a good number of African and European countries, educational decision-makers and teachers themselves have to come to terms with this phenomenon which, over and above purely pedagogical issues, contributes to the hierarchization of language forms.

Through an examination of situations involving Amazigh, Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Czech, Ghɔmálá', Malagasy and several of France's regional languages (Alsatian, Basque, Corsican, Occitan, Picard and St. Martin's language), the epistemological entries in the contributions here fall under various disciplines of language science and/or educational science. The contributions are structured around themes such as variation and its various forms in the educational space, the history of educational language policies with regard to the corpus of languages, linguistic variation in relation to different educational systems within given national or regional spaces, the pedagogical management of variation, its identity-related ramifications, the question of the oral/written pair and registers in the didactics of lesser-taught languages, or the central problematic of norms, legitimacy and authenticity in the teaching of these languages.

Manager and Director

Gilles Forlot is professor of sociolinguistics and language didactics at Inalco. His work focuses on language practices and plurilingualism in various spaces, particularly educational ones. After conducting research on Canada's minority Francophonie, on the relationship to languages of French-speaking Belgians with an immigrant background, and on language practices and education in the Hauts-de-France region, he is now interested in the place of languages and multiculturalism in Singapore's national construction, as well as the sociolinguistic challenges of the spread of English around the world, and particularly in Asia.

Louise Ouvrard is a Maître de conférences HDR and head of the Malagasy studies section at Inalco. Her research focuses on the didactics of Malagasy as a foreign language. She has designed a Malagasy language method (2012, L'Asiathèque) and is currently developing Inalco's Malagasy distance learning program. Her many stays in Madagascar have enabled her to collect audiovisual corpora of spontaneous and ritual speech, with the dual aim of making Malagasy language and culture part of our heritage, and offering learners authentic resources.

320 pages
16 x 24 cm
Publication: 03/12/2020
ISBN: 9782858313730