TOPICS: LANGUE MATERNELLE, LANGUE ETRANGERE in Fall 2023 (LI3910B)

The percentage of young people, and of AUP students in particular, who have learned mother tongues other than the one(s) spoken in their host country is very high. What does it mean to be in-between cultures ? In-between languages? What changes in our relationship towards our mother tongue(s) once we have entered into a new language?

After encountering the language of school, or languages known as "foreign", we tend to construct our mother tongue as an original language with a greater proximity with our bodies, our primary impulses, even with Truth, itself. In this course, we will examine and critique our own constructs with the help of foreign authors writing in French (S. Beckett, N. Huston, A. Mizubayashi…). We will also examine the personal and the political and historical tensions that exist in the Francosphère (e.g. Antilles, Maghreb, Québec, Madagascar) between mother tongues and dominant colonizing languages through the works of L. S. Senghor, E. Glissant, P. Chamoiseau, M. Condé, A. Djebar, M. Lalonde.