Normes linguistiques et normes culturelles dans l'apprentissage du FLE : un parcours d’ouverture à la variation francophone

Contacts among different languages and cultures are made easier by more frequent migrations, by a wider mobility of learners and by the developpement of new tecnnologies. On a linguistic level, all these facts enable us to remark phenomena that are far from standard French, which follows the linguistic norm. Consequently, this paper will examine the linguistic and teaching consequences of variation, suggesting a possible path, divided into three stages, to include variation in learning French as a foreign language. First of all, it is important that learners develop an awareness of the diversification of cultural norms, beginning with the analysis of short text fragments and video documents. The second step implies the transition from cultural norms to linguistic ones: looking up in some different dictionaries will allow learners to examine the representations of cultural norms provided by lexis and present in the Francophone world. Finally, the third step is to analyse the cultural implications of lexis in longer texts, such as novels or journalistic texts. To sum up, the path followed will show that lexis, far from being a closed system, is enriched by the ethnic and socio-cultural substratum which it is part of. Consequently, lexical norms change and they are enriched by interlinguistic and intercultural relationships.