Allophonie et plurilinguisme à l’école française : quand dire, c’est déjà traduire

Abstract

In this article, inspired from our researches in sociolinguistics, we suggest that translation is a permanent process which is not only linked to switching from one language to another, but is also linked to the action of speaking itself. “Allophone pupils”, foreigners in a sense that they don’t speak French, are for the teachers we interviewed a kind of limit which could to be used to question the boundaries between languages and the understanding of otherness. Thus, plurilingualism and translation would not only concern foreign people who speak different languages, but also people who think speak the same language, because their language shares the same name. This conception of strangeness and otherness which are involved in a same language and between speakers of a same language would thus help to understand “allophonie”, i.e. literally the linguistic otherness, as inherent to the speech act itself.