Pourquoi le français? A case study on language ideologies

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate language ideologies related to the French language present in the texts of students of French as a foreign language (FFL) in six schools in the city of João Pessoa. To this end, answers to one of the questions of a questionnaire completed by 174 language school students were qualitatively analyzed, exploring the thematic content and textual elements from the perspective of text linguistics (Koch, 2000a, 2000b). The analysis was performed based on the discussions of language ideologies (Del Valle, 2007; Arnoux & Del Valle, 2010; and Del Valle & Meirinho-Guede, 2016). Results indicated that the ideas related to the French Language (FL) have several connections to social dimensions, namely aesthetic – FL as a symbol of elegance and refinement and FL as representative of a superior culture -,  epistemological – FL as the language of science -, national identity – FL as the language of France -, international identity – FL as the language of diplomacy -, and labor – FL as a language for the labor market.