"Allophone" : trajectoire d'une catégorie aux prises avec la notion d'expertise

Abstract

The objective of this text is to question the category "allophone", which refers since 2012, in the circulars of the Ministery of National Education in France, to the children newly arrived in France. This category reveals the tensions, continuities and breaks that exist between different discursive worlds: that of research, that of the institution (teachers' discourses and practices) and that of politics. Methodologically, this work uses an approach of discourses where the phenomena of dialogism (Bres 2005, 2017) between these different spheres are involved. However, it is extremely complex to draw (Moirand 2007) the various forms used to rework and update the category in an exhaustive manner. In the context of an organic approach (see Verdier in this volume), we will advocate the praxeological analysis of the category in order to take into account its possible configuration with regard to the different types of "organizations of the activity" of the different discursive spheres around this notion since the 1970s. This analysis will shed light on the tensions that exist between the various discourse universes and on the relation between allophony and the learner's expertise (see the text of Cummins in this volume), which are especially due to a lack of political recognition of the plurilingual category, with regard to the learner and the school context.