From “Language of Origin” to “Modern Language”: Media discourses of Arabic instruction in France in Le Monde and Le Figaro

• In Event: Sustainable quality education: mother tongue and "official" languages

Proposal

Schools and the education system in France have long been an important sphere for fostering the illusion of the promotion of French republican values, particularly through language. In 1977, the Ministry of Education in France implemented the program Enseignment de langues et cultures d’origine (Teaching of Languages and Cultures of Origin), or ELCO. This policy was created because of a European directive and was implemented in France through bilateral agreements with countries such as Portugal, Italy, Algeria and Morocco. Through this program, “children of migrants” in France would take classes on their “languages and cultures of origin”, under the premise that these students would eventually return to those countries and the courses were developed “with a view principally to facilitating their possible reintegration into the Member State of origin” (Simonet, 1977). Since its implementation in 1977, ELCO has often been criticized. French-Algerian sociologist Abdelmalak Sayad most prominently criticized the policy and provides a framework on language education and integration in the post-colonial French context. He articulates that the ELCO policy created a distance within the school between students studying a “language of origin” and those who were considered “French”. The othered status of Arabic within the ELCO policy and France’s long touted objective of promoting “integration” show the way in which the policy has perpetuated much of what Sayad (2004) discussed with respect to the tension “French” culture and “immigrant” culture. Since 1977, criticism of ELCO has taken place amidst many major controversies on integration and national identity in France. The school has been a primary site of said controversies in a way that has particularly targeted French Muslims, such as laws around laicite (secularism), women wearing the hijab, and halal meat being served in school cafeterias (Lorcerie, 2003; Scott, 2010). Despite the criticism, it wasn’t until 2016 that the Ministry of Education made the decision that the categorization of “language of origin” should be eliminated entirely and the Ministry implemented L’apprentissage des langues vivantes (Learning of Modern Languages) for the 2017-2018 school year and onward (Ministre de l’education nationale, 2016).
These changes surrounding the ELCO policy and the role of Arabic instruction more broadly in France have garnered attention in public discourse and the media. Additionally, in France, newspaper media discourses have illustrated the capacity to shed light on larger political debates, especially given the prominence of debates of integration, immigration, and national identity (Le, 2009). Given this, in this paper, I will conduct a media discourse analysis of the ways in which the transition away from the ELCO program and Arabic instruction have been represented using a collection of articles from Le Monde (n=25) and Le Figaro (n=29) between 2015 and 2018. Using a hybrid between thematic coding based on the literature and an iterative qualitative content analysis of papers, I will work to answer the following questions: RQ1: What are the differences between representations of ELCO and Arabic language courses in the media discourse in Le Monde and Le Figaro? RQ2: How are debates on ELCO and Arabic language courses more generally, situated in larger debates of integration, immigration, and national identity in France? In this analysis of representation of Arabic in Le Monde and Le Figaro, I code using the themes of (i) France and North Africa relations, (ii) ideologies, (iii) the role of the state, and (iv) teaching and pedagogy. Through this coding scheme, I find that the most prominent themes in the sample include (i) portrayals of Arabic as threatening and (ii) the role of Arabic on discourses of national identity and politics. I also discuss the differences between representations in Le Monde and Le Figaro and the larger political contexts in which this representation is situated. This analysis will force us to question the role that media discourse plays in the extent to which Arabic can be a neutral “modern language” in French schools.

Author

• Rachel Kirk, Teachers College, Columbia University