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27-28 Mar 2025 Banjul (Gambia)
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Our ways of teaching and learning evolve over time, spaces, histories, policies, territories and discourses. Disciplines are renewing their positions and areas of expertise. Language sciences and literature are not left out in this perpetual questioning. New didactic and pedagogical paradigms are emerging. What kinds of training courses are required? For what kind of audience?For what reasons? These are some of the concerns that need exploring. As a result, the following thematic areas have been selected for you to explore:
A- Terminology and the didactics and pedagogy of national languages Each language is an irreducible entity, with its own complexity. Language is a system, a specific categorization of reality. But the importance of the first language in the acquisition of a foreign language is at odds with behaviorist versus cognitivist theories. Sometimes seen as a reductive phenomenon, some thinkers stress the need to establish a partition between L1 and L2. Otherness is then negative. The use of L1 for these purposes leads to interference and the production of errors. For this first school, a clean sweep of prior L1 knowledge is required to learn a new language. For another school, the first language, L1, is a rich resource and is very important in L2. The brain can manage and accept the otherness of different systems. Many African policies are in line with this trend, encouraging the learning of mother tongues, or local languages, from a child's earliest years at school. We need to reflect on the curricula and pedagogy to be adopted for quality teaching of African languages. Should we stop at literacy alone? Beyond linguistic description, is the teaching of African languages being considered in terms of specific objectives? Are we thinking about terminology in certain fields, such as diplomacy, medicine, business, education, etc.? Which pedagogy and program should be recommended for each field? What is the basis of the African language didactics program? Is it adapted to the audience, or do we need to think about revisions to attract learners' attention? More than an analysis of language contacts (foreign vs. local), what is the usefulness of literature and the teaching of plurilingualism?
B- Multilingualism: language contacts/conflicts? Africa offers a multilingual landscape in which each language has a defined function, either de jure or de facto. On the one hand, we have the foreign languages of the colonial heritage (French, English, Portuguese, etc.), which (Louis-Jean CALVET,1981) has established as the lingua franca. These are used for official and international communications, schooling, administration, and work (formal sector). On the other hand, we have local vernacular languages, (Robert CHAUDENSON,1981) often referred to as national, which occupy the terrain of intra-community, inter-community exchanges and functional literacy, (Muhamed MAGASSY, 2017). Yet this stratification is far from being effective. Social dynamics, universal schooling and galloping, often uncontrolled, urbanisation have finally broken down the barriers between linguistic communities. We are witnessing the hegemony of certain local languages, which are transgressing the space allotted to other vernacular languages and to French. Ndiassé THIAM (1994); PapeAlioune NDAO (1990); Caroline JUILLARD (2005); KhadimouRassoul THIAM (2016); Ndiémé SOW (2016) all support the view, youth language: an urban language. In other words, in these elaborations, the mixed code is seen more as a young, urban variant, hence the concept of urban language.
C- Linguistic nationalism, identity construction and discourse analysis Around which languages is national identity constructed? JUTEAU Danielle (1999); HELLER Monica and LABRIE Normand (2003); GARABATO Carmen Alén (2005); PILOTE Annie (2007); BOYER Henri, 2008) have made significant contributions to this debate. Their presentations, influenced by certain circumstances (economic and demographic expansion of the community concerned, discrediting of the center, open intercommunity conflict), can come to constitute an ideological whole whose aim is then to establish and claim the national nature of the community and at the same time a national political power, not necessarily independent but at least benefiting from a greater or lesser degree of political autonomy. This new trend is a challenge that shows how history, politics and literature influence our opinion of prescribed or proscribed languages. But even more than that, it shows that representations are not stable but dynamic and play a part in the construction of national identity.
D- Spatial planning, language policy and language planning Intervening in the form (oral and/or written), or status, of a language, by withdrawing it or imposing it in everyday use, stems from two principles: language policy and language planning, (CALVET Louis-Jean, 1996). Language policy is the determination of major choices concerning the relationship between languages and societies. Its implementation is called language planning, (CALVET Louis-Jean, 1996). Language policy will be defined in several schools: American, Spanish, German, Canadian... respectively by (Fishman,1970; Ninyoles,1975, Glück, 1981; Laporte,1994). What emerges from all the authors' approaches is the key idea of an interdependent relationship between language policy and language planning. What do language and education policies in West Africa reveal? Store signs, street toponymy, road signs, advertisement posters, TV broadcasts are privileged places of intervention for language promotion, (MUSANJI Nglasso-Mwatha, 2012; CHACHOU Ibtissem, 2016). How do current Constitutions organize the use of languages in their territory, and for what purposes and actions? We note that some African countries retain foreign languages, while others (e.g. BURKINA FASO) are leading a strong involvement of local languages in state management, (Mbacké DIAGNE, 2017).
E- Representations, stereotypes and linguistic attitudes What speakers say and think about the languages they speak (...) and those spoken by others (CALVET Jean-Louis, 1999:145-146) will be our main concern in this section. What are the values and attitudes accorded to languages? Do West African speakers feel linguistically secure or insecure? In relation to which languages? Which linguistic norms do speakers refer to when using languages: endogenous or exogenous norms? The center or the periphery? (FRANCARD Michel,1993)
F- Languages for development and regional integration How do languages affect regional integration and south/south partnership? (Louis SANGARE (1998); MAZUNYA Maurice (2011); Emmanuel NIKUZE (2013) Indeed, cross-border language can play many roles: refuge, cohesion, traffic, opposition. Precisely which languages take on this posture? What are their considerations in economic partnership? (ACALAN, 2009)
G- The contribution of sociolinguistics to the didactics of foreign language In language, we find culture, hence the term language-culture (Malika KEBBAS; ATTIKA Yasmine Kara; DAFF Moussa, 2015; BOYER Henri, 2001). Starting from this premise, all speakers evaluate the languages with which they come into contact. In so doing, we have a perception of languages, whatever the nature of the act: meliorative (recognition, valorization, prestige) or pejorative (depreciation, stigmatization, boycott). The latter has an impact on epilinguistic discourse, (Cécile CANUT, 1995). Henceforth, what the learner says, thinks and does about the language learned is significant for the didactician in order to grasp learning motivations, linguistic preferences, subjective needs (expectations, wishes, motivations of learners = task of the sociolinguist) vs. objective needs (content taught, context of its use in real life, type of use, adequate descriptions of its uses = task of linguists), (Jana Boivin OCKOVA, 2007:268-270; RICHTERICH,1985).
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