Intercultural and co-cultural approaches in French as a foreign language in the multilingual foreign language teaching context

Abstract

Language teaching offers two main modes of managing otherness in the classroom. The first, the intercultural approach, inherited from the communicative approach, focuses on the intercultural encounter. The second, the co-cultural perspective, based on the development of a common culture negotiated between representatives of different cultures, corresponds to the mode of managing in the action-oriented approach of foreign language teaching. This article questions the compatibility of these two approaches with the multilingual environment of foreign language teaching. It takes as a starting point the conception defended by Puren, who considers that there is conceptual break in the relationship to otherness between the intercultural approach and the co-cultural perspective. The article shows that the co-actional perspective is hardly compatible with the multilingual teaching context due to the absence of the real presence of otherness in class. Due to a lack of deep analysis in foreign language didactics of the treatment of culture in the multilingual teaching environment, the approach to culture remains based on simulation to prepare learner to the real encounter of otherness outside the classroom.