Mutual intelligibility and new challenges for the Romance languages
Call for papers for a collective inter-university editorial project
The accelerated process of globalization (economic, social and cultural) has today, without a doubt, a decisive influence on everything that relates to the languages in general and on Romance languages, in particular. This influence can be noticed in everything that is related with their intra-family status; their respective variable dissemination, in and out of the group; the relationship which they maintain with themselves and with those of other families; their representations; their teaching… their present and their future. There are so many fields (with an unstable status) that we haven't questioned everything or taken everything for an object of study and investigation.
On the other hand, the new approaches of languages teaching and learning – inserted in a booming multilingual process development, especially those founded on the concept of mutual intelligibility in neighboring languages -- could, if the current trend is confirmed, deeply modify the initial status in this matter, while making evolve pessimistic or fixed conceptions on the Neo-Latin languages towards other languages, giving their a dynamism.
These observations are, in any event, the origin of the collective editorial project that the Direction de l'Enseignement et de la Promotion des langues of l’Union Latine and the Pôle Didactiques : supports, dispositifs, approches, politiques of the Direction du français et de la communication scientifique en français of l’AUF, institutional coordinators of the initiative, are starting now and open it to whoever (inside or outside of the field) is interested in the questions previously mentioned.
The multilingual production under consideration will have from 250 to 400 pages, with the possibility of additional documents on Internet, and should be finalized before the end of 2010 to be published in the beginning of 2011.
In the current stage of the project, it is expected that the work will include two great parts, articulated in two chapters according to the following plan (which will be or not different from the plan of the final edition):
A. PRESENT AND FUTURE OF THE ROMANCE LANGUAGES (RL)
a) State of RL and data on different RL
- Status of the languages
- Representations
- Case studies of particular cases (territorialized or not)
- Stakes of RL in the current world;
b) External/internal dynamic of RL: contacts, conflicts and partnerships in the family of RL
- RL in general
- RL between themselves
- RL in relation to other languages (various status)
- RL production and dissemination of information
- Linguistic policies
B. MULTILINGUAL APPROACHES IN THE TEACHING OF RL
a) New prospects in the teaching-training for RL
- Future of RL in the education systems
- Researches and devices for dissemination and support to RL
- multilingual language teaching of RL and ICT in education
b) mutual intelligibility in the teaching of RL
- mutual intelligibility in RL as a teaching device compared to other options
- Various methods of mutual intelligibility approaches according to the contexts and the fields (new objects, new public)
- Teacher development for mutual intelligibility
- Priority stake of curricula insertion and the construction of a convincing argument for the public authorities.
The teaching and didactic view, strictly speaking, should not be forgotten in its various components and, in particular, the intercultural one.
The promoters of the publication propose to reflect on the challenges that RL are confronted. They wish to be based on the point of view of authors of all horizons of the Romance languages and ask them a contribution to the common reflection: elements to feed a collective work, not final or “blocked” monographic texts.
The proposals for articles, of a page DIN A4 (650 words) to the maximum, will be presented in the suggested language (Romance) of their publication.
A detailed synopsis will be elaborated as soon as possible, which will include, if necessary, specific contributions required to complete the unit. However, we will preferentially ask young researchers, organizations, associations or institutions whose work we don’t know much about.
The proposals chosen will be submitted to a reading committee which will strictly take care of the congruence of the individual proposals compared to the project, to their level of “scientific” rigor, with the care of their presentation before their final inclusion in the synopsis of the work. They will have to also conform to the style sheet which will be sent to the contributors, for the text, the bibliography, the illustrations, etc
until May 15th, 2010
Selection of proposals: around June 15th, 2010.
Handing-over of proposals: before September 15th, 2010.
Corrections, page layout, etc, until January 15th, 2011.
Publication: first quarter 2011.
