Discourse, linguistic ideologies and French teaching at the University of Moncton ; Discours, idéologies linguistiques et enseignement du français à l'Université de Moncton

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to study the discourses and the linguistic ideologies present in the teaching of French at the Université de Moncton, in New Brunswick's Acadia (Canada), a francophone minority region. Through the key concepts that are "ideologies", "discourses" and "linguistic norms", the aim is to understand what discourses and ideologies are circulating in French teaching. What discourses are legitimate, dominating? How and why do some of them become hegemonic? What stakes, interests, do the social actors reveal (professors, students, and staff)? Of what ideologies are these discourses the actualization? How and why are these ideologies invested by these actors, who benefits from them? In general, it is a matter of questioning the role of French teaching in the construction of ideologies: that is to say what ideologies teaching participates to build / spread / reproduce? Furthermore, the relation of people to language should be questioned, in regards to the changes that are indeed linguistic, but also economic, social, political.These questions have been investigated by a year-long ethnographic inquiry in the premises of the Université de Moncton. Different methods of data gathering were set up: participant observation (especially of the obligatory French courses during a whole semester), interviews with students and professors, collecting documents and internal reports (to grasp the institutional aspects). All these data form a corpus of discourses, analysed using critical discourse analysis and argumentative discourse analysis. It is, then, an interpretative approach, which is in my opinion, the best to offer an accurate view of complex sociolinguistic dynamics.These analyses reveal a willingness to teach a French called "standard", an idealized form, supposed to be stable and more or less universal, which could grant it an importance and a greater utility in public space. But at the same time, the acute awareness of identity issues behind linguistic subjects requires teachers to address the ...