Introduction – French voices on plurilingualism and pluriculturalism: theory, significance and perspectives

Abstract

While theoretical constructs and frames of reference advanced in French and English research share many points of communalities, Francophone research has contributed in original ways to issues of language learning and bilingual development in multilingual contexts. The Francophone contribution to contemporary thinking has, however, often been obscured by the fact that it has been published in French, or lost in translation when concepts are not interpreted the same way in English and French. At the intersection of educational sociolinguistics and sociodidactics (Dabène, 1994), this body of work is more narrowly defined in European Francophone research as ‘didactique du plurilinguisme et du pluriculturalisme’ (didactics of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism), a term difficult to translate adequately in English. The purpose of this special issue is to present readers with a range of papers that we believe to be significant and representative of French studies, and to provide a comprehensive examination of the historical and social construction of bi/plurilingualism and its impact on the development of theory, on language policies, and on professional practice in the field of language education. Collectively, the articles capture a variety of theoretical and methodological constructs to analyse multiple repertoires in relation to speakers’ agency in a variety of situations and social contexts.

Keywords:

• plurilingualism
• plurilingual and pluricultural competence
• plurilingual education
• social representations
• multicompetence
• plurilingual asset
• language awareness

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Daniel Coste (ENS-LSH, France) and Steve Marshall (SFU, Canada) for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article, and to the editors of the journal, Jasone Cenoz and Ulrike Jessner, who gave us the opportunity to publish this special issue.

Notes

1. Although this Special Issue principally introduces French and Swiss scholars’ contributions, Francophone research should be understood to designate scholarship that has been primarily expressed in French, rather than English or any other language.

2. French and other languages like German, have different words for referring to an individual's ability to use several languages (plurilinguisme/Mehrsprachigkeit) and to the multilingual nature of a given society (multilinguisme/Vielsprachigkeit). In English the same word, multilingualism, has been used to describe both phenomena. While Francophone literature tends nowadays to use the term plurilingualism as a hyperonym to designate language contact in the individual as well as at the societal level, scholarly work in English tends to show more variation in the synonymic use of the two terms, with the neologism plurilingualism usually applied in relation to the work of the Council of Europe and in reference to its political dimensions. See also Candelier (2008).

3. Anglo-American influence, alongside French and Swiss sociology and (socio)linguistics, permeates the perusal of the bibliography attached to this first reference study, which brands the concept of a plurilingual competence. Among major scholars cited, we note H. Baetens Beardsmore, J. Billiez, P. Bourdieu (three references), B. Charlot, E. Bautier & J. Rochex, J. Cummins, L. Dabène (three times), C. Deprez, V. Edwards, F. Grosjean (three times), J. Hamers & M. Blanc, E. Hawkins, R. Hewitt, C. Kramsch (twice), G. Lüdi, M. Martin-Jones (twice), F. Ouellet (twice), C. Perregaux, L. Porcher, B. Py, S. Romaine, T. Skutnabb-Kangas (twice), C. Taylor, H. Widdowson.

4. While Bourdieu recognises actors to have the capacity to develop strategies, notably when they need to tackle unexpected and novel situations (Bourdieu, 1972), he considers them to be framed by habitus, that he defines as: ‘un principe générateur et organisateur de pratiques et de représentations qui peuvent être objectivement adaptées à leur but sans supposer la visée consciente des fins et la maîtrise expresse des opérations nécessaires pour les atteindre’ (‘a generative and organising principle of practices and representations, which can be objectively adapted to their (actors’) goal without a presupposition of conscious aim or of express mastery of the operations needed to ensure their attainment’, Bourdieu, 1980, p. 88, our translation).

5. Touraine (2000, p. 900) describes the ‘actor’ as ‘as an autonomous being, as an agent of transformation of his environment and of his own situation, as a creator of imaginary worlds, as capable of referring to absolute values or of being involved in love relations’.

6. A view that Pennycook (2001, p. 134) attributes to postmodernism ‘as a shifting, critical way of thinking’.

7. For a further discussion on differences and communalities in French and English work on social representations, see also Dagenais and Jacquet (2008).