Géopolitique et circulation des savoirs en sociolinguistique du multilinguisme et de l’éducation au Nord et dans le Sud global

Abstract

This article looks at the geopolitics of knowledge production in sociolinguistics and at two processes identified in the English speaking literature in recent times. On the one hand, some work shows that languages other than English are rendered invisible in international journals, as if they had made only a peripheral contribution to sociolinguistics. Other works, by colleagues from the global South, call for a decolonisation of the field of multilingualism and education, in which many concepts have recently emerged in the West and become widely used. In view of this work, which is little known in the French-speaking world, the article points out the lack of debate on these issues in sociolinguistics in France. It then follows the development of one of the key concepts that has recently appeared—that of translanguaging—and shows the processes of recovery, circulation, and reappropriation of this concept, but also of invisibilisation of part of its origins as well as of other earlier similar notions. It concludes with a discussion of the interlocking mechanisms of peripheralisation currently used in research.

Keywords

• geopolitics of knowledge
• circulation of knowledge
• global South
• sociolinguistics of multilinguism
• education
• South