‘Music of language’: an intercultural perspective, or can prosody help all students to acculturate and to appropriate language of schooling?
Author(s):
Veronique Bourhis
Conference:
ECER 2010
Network:
27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching
Format:
Paper

Session Information

27 SES 05 B, Language and Media

Paper Session

Time:
2010-08-26
08:30-10:00
Room:
M.B. SALI 12, Päärakennus / Main Building
Chair:

Contribution

 

From an inclusive point of view, school has to adapt to take account the variety of pupils, and particulaly the social dimension of the linguistic deficit. This dimension results from the interaction between the child’s individual characteristics and particularly mother tongue (L1) and the requirements of the school environment (Plaisance2007). According to that view, inclusive education specially focuses on (i) the way to integrate pupils in school, (ii) the organization of spaces and the production of didactic material, (iii) the pupils’ involvment in the learning process: didactic adaptation, adaptation to the learning contents and individual projects (Garel 2006).

Yet, the study of non verbal invariance factors between the languages when spoken spontaneously at school is still unexplored.

Our assumption is based on an intercultural point of view: if some stable parameters exist between the mother language and the language used at school, they will have an important impact in the reception, comprehension and production of exogenous language (L2).

We choose to compare French and Arab[1].

 

The frame of our theoretical study is two-fold and refers to:

- « grammaire de l’intonation » (grammar of prosody) (Morel – Danon Boileau 1998) who have studied prosody through a constructivist and situated perspective: the aim of enunciation is to build a “verbal scene” (Victorri, Lacheret Dujour 2007) which is part of an intersubjective space shared by the interlocutors.

- The essential role of learning through language, with receptiveness, competence and confidence in using language, and cognitive development (Nonnon 2001, Plane 2000).

- The « cultural psychology » (J. Bruner 1996), its concepts (culture intention and meaning) and themes (constructivism, functionalism and social construction of knowledge), and the role of narrative to promote emotional and imaginative development in language.


[1] French population : 65 000 000 people

People from arabic areas  (Magreb) :  Algeria 620 000, Morocco 585 000 Tunisia 208000, Lebanon

Harkis : 400 000 - “Beurs”  (following generation of people coming from Arabic areas) : 600 000

Method

A qualitative study : comparison of two videos about telling a story at school. Unlike reading, telling stories enable the teacher to improvise aside stable elements that form the narrative. Language is spontaneous. We compare two stories told by two teachers in two different preschool classes (France and Algeria - 5/6 years old children). The first story is in French the second in Arabic. The data is videotaped, recorded and analyzed by Praat, software which produces audio information and pictures of all the parameters of prosody.

Expected Outcomes

The study of prosody suggests that the language is cued prosodically in the same way in both languages i.e. that both languages use the same type of linguistic features, specially: - Accent, which affects syllables or words and focuses on lexicon on which the teacher wants the pupils to draw attention on; - Pauses distribution and categorisation in the teacher’s speech; - Use of certain pitch contours: melody can be a vector of emotions or can indicate the attitude to have on the subject which is taught; - Expressiveness and dramatization as a key to improve understanding of the text in the narrative process. In both cases, a cross analysis of these parameters outlines the intersubjective dimension of the enunciation. During the story telling, we show that the prosodic data largely participate building the « verbal scene » by the locators, since they help: - evoking and modifying entities or events on that scene - and enriching the knowledge and the language of the pupils. Conclusion: We consider prosody as an intercultural link and a fundamental element of understanding, which permit to understand how children make meaning in classroom settings.

References

Bruner J.S.(1996). The Culture of Education, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Lacheret Dujour Anne (2003) La prosodie des circonstants en français parlé, collection de linguistique de la Société Linguistique de Paris Morel M.A., Danoin Boileau L. (1998) Grammaire de l’intonation, Bibliothèque de Faits de Langue, Paris, Ophrys Vygotski, L. (1934). trad.fr. Sève, F. (1997). Pensée et langage. La Dispute: Paris. Wertsch, J.V. (1991). Voices of the mind : a sociocultural approach in mediated action. Cambridge, MA: Harward University Press.

Author Information

Veronique Bourhis
CREAD - IUFM de Bretagne
Teacher training
SCEAUX

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