Laurent Gajo

Linguistic Knowledge and Subject Knowledge: How Does Bilingualism Contribute to Subject Development?

Experiments in bilingual education in Europe increasingly appear under the abbreviation ‘CLIL’ (Content and Language Integrated Learning). The main concept in it seems to be that of integration, as yet little described in research and insufficiently made conscious and explicit in the teaching process. This paper aims at studying the modes of integration between language and content by identifying different types of knowledge at the crossroads between the linguistic paradigm and the subject paradigm. It is based on discourse and interaction analysis of classroom interaction sequences in various subjects. It proposes elements for a basic theoretical framework designed to sustain the view of CLIL as an alternative not only in second language didactics, but also in the didactics of non-linguistic subjects.

Introduction – French voices on plurilingualism and pluriculturalism: theory, significance and perspectives

Abstract While theoretical constructs and frames of reference advanced in French and English research share many points of communalities, Francophone research has contributed in original ways to issues of language learning and bilingual development in multilingual contexts. The Francophone contribution to contemporary thinking has, however, often been obscured by the fact that it has been published in French, or lost in translation when concepts are not interpreted the same way in English and French. At the intersection of educational sociolinguistics and sociodidactics (Dabène, 1994), this body of work is more narrowly defined in European Francophone research as ‘didactique du plurilinguisme et du pluriculturalisme’ (didactics of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism), a term difficult to translate adequately in English. The purpose of this special issue is to present readers with a range of papers that we believe to be significant and representative of French studies, and to provide a comprehensive examination of the historical and social construction of bi/plurilingualism and its impact on the development of theory, on language policies, and on professional practice in the field of language education. Collectively, the articles capture a variety of theoretical and methodological constructs to analyse multiple repertoires in relation to speakers’ agency in a variety of situations and social contexts.