Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: This paper explores the problem of the subjectivity of the voice in learning French as a foreign language. Two examples of learning to read aloud, in the mother tongue and then in a foreign language, will show that expressing oneself in a language that is not one’s own is not a question of trying to appropriate the language, but rather of letting oneself be taken by it. Self-expression is entwined with the expressions of others. Therefore, I am not appropriating a language; it is the language that takes hold of me. How can I bear the transformation of my self-expression through the words of others? It will depend on my ability to make myself intelligible in a rhythm and in a music that I have not yet mastered. This intelligibility will be fragile because it will always imply that I recognize myself and that I make myself recognized in a soundscape that is not yet familiar to me. Learning a foreign language demands an effort of me that is similar to the practice of patience: toward others first, and then toward myself. This view of subjectivity in a foreign language shows that the learning of trust in oneself is constructed symmetrically to the learning of trust in others. I learn to trust in myself as if in another.
Source: A contrario
DOI: 10.3917/aco.191.0235
Author: Michaël Cordey
Institution: University of Lausanne
Language: French
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3005854856