Exploring the intersection of identity and ideology in Language Education from a French-South African perspective

Narrating Linguistic and Cultural Diversity: Critical and multidisciplinary approaches in Second and Additional Language Education

French-South African perspectives

CONTEXT

This study explores the emergence and interactions between identity and ideology in the field of Language Education from a French-South African point of view. Taking as a point of departure the cultural and linguistic diversity which characterises the field and is promoted as a finality in both teaching and learning programmes, this Partenariat Hubert Curien (PHC) Protea team addresses (emerging) ideological and identity (re)configurations at play in the context of postcolonialism and globalisation. The overarching conceptual and methodological framework used in this study is Narrative Inquiry and Critical Discourse Analysis. The question of critical diversity and identity formation is examined at all levels (teacher training, academic profiles, teaching and learning) from an educational, sociolinguistic and literary perspective.

Key words : L2/foreign language education, otherness, identity, critical diversity, narrative inquiry, discourse analysis, critical reflexivity.

TEAMS

This project was initiated thanks to funding from the PHC Protea bilateral programme between France and South Africa, run by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) and Campus France. It enabled the pooling of skills by the French and South African research partners working on cultural and linguistic diversity from the angle of Narrative Inquiry and Critical Discourse Analysis. This multidisciplinary consortium involves Paris-based French university, l’Institut National des langues et civilisations orientales INALCO (Team UMR CNRS SeDyL 8202), and a South African university, The University of Witwatersrand (Johannesburg). The team is composed of PhD students and of 4 academics and senior members (Prof Gilles Forlot, Dr. Fiona Horne, Dr. Emmanuel Ndour and Dr. Céline Peigné) collaborating on the overarching questions of language, diversity and identity. Individual research themes which speak to these topics include:

• Neurodiversity and language education;
• Teacher and student life narratives in relation to teaching/learning foreign languages;
• National narratives, language and discourse;
• Personal and collective ideologies and how these influence teaching and research corpora in the field of language and literature;
• Mapping Francophonie to emerging South African identities through cinema in teaching programmes;
• The diversification of teacher profiles and linguistic insecurity;
• Discursive constructions of national histories through History Education.

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