Gestions du plurilinguisme en famille ? Perspectives intergénérationnelles

Abstract

New Caledonia is mostly quoted for its exceptional linguistic diversity. Plurilingual repertoires – broadly speaking – are commonplace indeed. Nevertheless, and in spite of the on-going process of institutional recognition since the 1980s, local languages, multi/plurilingualism and “linguistically hybrid productions” are often disregarded or even rejected. Family languages and the plurilingual repertoires they enable are being overtaken by monolingualism with the “pressure from the French language”, in other words the effects of colonial politics and ideologies.This paper is based on field work conducted by two cohorts of students enrolled in a course on Sociolinguistics (2019 and 2020, University of New Caledonia). The theme in common is “Language Genealogy: plurilingualism within families”. The aim is to study how plurilingual repertoires are managed within families: the students are the investigators. By producing cross-generational sociolinguistic portraits of their families, students realized linguistic plurality is threatened. At the same time, this made them aware of the pro-active roles they can play by promoting plurilingualism and producing positive representations of their own plurilingual communities.

Keywords

• plurilinguisme
• (non) transmission
• familles
• idéologies
• Nouvelle-Calédonie