Suchergebnisse

Abstract
In this article, we explore how the "ideal student" and "the ideal teacher" of a modern foreign language were depicted in 16th and 17th-century textbooks of the genre of so-called "dialogue books". More specifically we assess in which areas language expertise was expected from students and teachers and how nativeness, i.e., being a native speaker, was construed as an element of this general expertise. Our insights are based on the structure and content of the textbooks. Moreover, we analyse introductory texts, written by textbook authors or printers. The teaching material reveals a strong focus on spoken language as it consists of dialogues inspired by daily life and pronunciation guides that use a contrastive approach. Overall, our analysis suggests that the "ideal student" has to learn to speak a foreign language, thereby striving for a correct pronunciation and to communicate in a polite and pragmatically adequate way. The "ideal teacher" is a native speaker who has the authority to teach his mother tongue and to judge the teaching of others. However, the superiority of nativeness pales beside other required qualifications, i.e., learnedness, didactic skills and expertise in the language one teaches.

Abstract
The aim of this article is twofold: first, we apply the concept of "Language Making" – which is introduced in this thematic issue – to the domain of foreign language learning and teaching. More specifically, we investigate the role of teachers, as well as other social actors in the domain of foreign language education, in the making of foreign languages, i.e., their role in selecting varieties and forms that they deem appropriate to be learned. We assess how they justify their selections and which language ideologies inform their choices. A specific focus is on how these "foreign Language Makers" construe their linguistic expertise: how do they argue for the legitimacy of their "foreign Language Making"? Second, we argue that present day conceptions of the "ideal language teacher" have their roots in the past. Therefore, we include two case studies: our first case study zooms in on the Early Modern period and draws on introductions to foreign language textbooks from the 16th and 17th centuries. Our main sources are the multilingual textbooks of the Colloquia, et dictionariolum as well as the work of Gerard De Vivre, a language teacher and textbook author from Ghent who published French language textbooks for Dutch- and German-speaking learners in the second half of the 16th century. The second case study focuses on present-day teachers who teach Dutch as a foreign language at universities outside of the Dutch-speaking language area. For this analysis, we make use of data from qualitative interviews with 20 teachers, collected in 2015. We analyse, contrast and compare these cases, thereby taking into account the dynamics of socio-political and language ideological changes of the past centuries.

AbstractThis article introduces a new concept called "Language Making". The term covers all kinds of processes in which speakers or non-speakers collectively conceptualize linguistic entities. Such processes are usually perpetual, they operate based on language ideologies and attitudes, and they bring about functional and structural norms which determine the boundaries of linguistic entities such as languages, dialects or varieties. The article discusses the significance of standardization, language policy and planning, and of stakeholders and agency for processes of Language Making. Raising the question as to why a new concept is needed in the first place, the article concludes with a demarcation of Language Making from opposite processes which may be called "un-Making" of Languages.