Making Proper Use of Stereotypes in the L2 French Classroom

Abstract

The stereotypes envisaged in this paper serve as a starting point for a research protocol aimed at corroborating the reality, in French languaculture, of the cultural value of stance-taking. The protocol adopted here is part of a research paradigm called applied ethnolinguistics, elaborated for use with and by foreign language students whose linguistic competence is sufficiently advanced to enable them to use their language resources to discover, through essentially (but not uniquely) linguistic means, the cultural values typically associated with the languaculture they study. Since the posited values are hypothetical, corroboration will be required. A specific protocol (the one illustrated here) has been set aside for this purpose. The cultural value of stance-taking will be presented in the form of a pedagogical script expressed in minimal French, a descriptive tool based on the French version of the natural semantic metalanguage. Precautions are taken to ensure that end-users of such scenarios are aware that they are dealing with generalisations (which are unavoidable as languacultures are never homogeneous).

Keywords: applied ethnolinguistics, cultural values, stereotypes, L2 French, stance taking