EC The Mother Tongue and Foreign Languages

this course examines the role of affect in the learning of a second language in relation to the mother tongue. It aims to provide tools to better understand what happens psycho-affectively during the language learning process in childhood. It raises a whole series of questions. How is the mother tongue transmitted? What is the role of the primary caregiver - statistically, the mother - and her own relationship to her mother tongue? What is the role of school, whose language sometimes differs from that of the family? How does this transmission influence the way in which the child later appropriates (or not) a foreign language in a school context? What lessons can be drawn for the teaching of a foreign language, both in secondary and higher education? What is it about learning a foreign language that leads us to question the way it is assessed? This course proposes a number of hypotheses based on the work of British psychiatrists and psychoanalysts belonging to the 'British school' (notably Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, John Bowlby and Wilfred Bion), who give a central role to the first two years of life and to the first attachment figure, most frequently the mother.

Ainsworth, Mary. Patterns of Attachment: A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation, New York & London, Routledge, 2015.

Bion, Wilfred. “The Psycho-Analytic Study of Thinking”, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, vol. 43, 1962b, 306-311.

Bowlby, John. Attachment and Loss. Volume 3: Loss. Sadness and Depression, Croydon, Pimlico, [1980] 2006.

Greaves, Sara & De Mattia-Viviès, Monique. Language Learning and the Mother Tongue. Multidisciplinary Perspective. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, [2022] 2024 (Paperback edition).

Guiora, Alexander. “The Two Faces of Language Ego”. Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen, Volume 41, Issue 1, 1991. 5-14.

Hoffman, Eva. Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1990.

Klein, Melanie. Envy and Gratitude. London, Vintage, 1997 [1957].

Kristeva, Julia. « L’amour de l’autre langue ». Sommet du livre à la bibliothèque nationale de France, 2014. https://www.kristeva.fr/la-traduction-langue-de-l-europe.html

Lecercle, Jean-Jacques & Monique De Mattia-Viviès (postface). Système et style. Paris, éditions Amsterdam, 2023.

Mirsky, Julia. “Language in migration: separation conflicts in relation to the mother tongue and the new language”, Psychotherapy 28/4, 1991. 618-24.

Winnicott, Donald. The Child, the Family and the Outside World, Perseus Publishing, [1964] 1992