Object perspective and subject perspective in didactics of languages-cultures

Abstract

This article describes the evolution of the didactics of French as a foreign language over the last thirty years, using the "object-subject" model, inspired from philosophy. This model immediately reveals a marked and parallel evolution in didactics of languages-cultures, from a focus on the object (language, culture or constituted methodology) to a focus on the subject (in this case, the learner), an evolution probably driven by the rise of individualistic values in contemporary society. This model can only be productive for didactic theorizing, however, if the relationships between the two terms are considered in ways other than the hitherto used modes of Manichean opposition or progressive evolution, and if they simultaneously incorporate the modes of contact (the "inter-") and continuum, which enable us to think about eclecticism, as well as that of the dialogic, which enables us to think about complexity. The model thus completed is applied heuristically to the fields of methodology and training. It could serve as a basis for the treatment of the other two fundamental couples of didactics of languages-cultures (teaching-learning, language-culture), for the elaboration of a genuine disciplinary epistemology. Disponibles: version originale française 1998f, versión española 1998f-es.