In French public universities, English LLCER courses (English Major Programs) are distinct from applied foreign language studies. Such courses seek to expose students to advanced uses of the English language, and in doing so, aim to teach socially legitimate linguistic practices. Additionally, at the end of these studies, most career choices are those of public education, so that many of these courses are designed to lead an important proportion of students to the French public teaching exams (O'Connell, A. & Chaplier, 2021). In such cases, it can be argued that these tests represent a condensed version of the interactions that take place within tense linguistic markets (Bourdieu, 2001), insofar as Standard English represents a valuable linguistic capital, and because candidates are tested on their mastery of a socially situated linguistic habitus.
However, these studies tend to focus exclusively on standard varieties of English, namely the British RP and General American standards, at the expense of other varieties. Beyond a lack of awareness of the breadth of the diversity of English, this can lead students to experience forms of linguistic insecurity, due to an incomplete knowledge of legitimate linguistic norms (Wharton & Wolstenholme, 2019). Moreover, this approach creates a hierarchical vision of language, leading to the tacit assumption that non-standard varieties (from a social, geographical or racial perspective) are fundamentally flawed. Additionally, as university represents a legitimizing institution for these courses, students of English may be incited to perpetuate a hierarchical view of the different varieties of English (Forlot, 2014; Vanegas Rojas et al., 2016).
Through sociolinguistic tools and theoretical contributions – in particular corpus linguistics, the study of linguistic variation, the observation of socio-phonetic phenomena, or the analysis of the social conditions of the production of discourse – we hope not only to provide analytical tools that are transferable to other subjects, but also to respond to the aforementioned problems. The critical contributions of sociolinguistics should be used in order to dispel linguistic misconceptions, namely that standard languages are intrinsically refined and complex (Lippi-Green, 1997), or that speakers of non-standard varieties have simplistic and erroneous linguistic patterns (Blanchet et al., 2014). This is particularly important as LLCER courses lead, for students who eventually pass the national teaching exams, to the production – or reproduction – of teachers, who will pass on certain misconceptions regarding English, as well as their L1.
Bourdieu, P. (2001). Langage et pouvoir symbolique. Edition du seuil.
Forlot, G. (2014). De l'anglais dominant dans l'éducation: contributions sociolinguistiques. Tréma, (42), 6-19.
Lippi-Green, R. (1997). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. Routlege.
O'Connell, A. & Chaplier, C. (2021). Les langues de spécialité dans l'enseignement supérieur en France. Éducation & didactique, 15, 85-102.
Vanegas Rojas et al. (2016). Linguistic discrimination in an English language teaching program: voices of the invisible others. Íkala, Revista de Lenguaje y Cultura, 21(2), 133-151.
Wharton, S., & Wolstenholme, R. (2019). Accents et insécurité linguistique en cours d'anglais. Lidil. Revue de linguistique et de didactique des langues.
