Les imaginaires de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage des langues dans trois romans de science-fiction dystopiques

Abstract

Based on a trilingual dystopian corpus (English, French, German), this article explores the imaginaries of language didactics. In the translation of the Americain novel The Languages of Pao (Vance, 1958), the novel by the French-speaking Algerian 2084 : The End of The World (Sansal, 2015) and the hitherto untranslated East German novel Das kugeltranszendentale Vorhaben (Braun and Braun, 1983), language teacher and learner characters present recurring metadidactic representations that need to be defined and categorised. A content analysis based on paradigmatic and syntagmatic elements (Dufays 2010) focuses on the lexico-pragmatic dimensions of the expression of imaginary themes relating to language teaching (what languages are learnt, how are teachers trained, to what extent is the profession institutionalised and prestigious ?) and language learning (are students teachers’ prisoners, what role does linguistic relativism play in learning and how is informal learning conceived ?). This reading leads to a proposal for modelling hierarchical metadidactic imaginaries in dystopian science fiction novels on the basis of metadidactic attitudes, teaching and learning content, actors in the didactic relationship, material conditions and the social attitude that emerges.

Keywords

• dystopia
• linguistic imaginary
• language teaching and learning
• learner-teacher relationship