The didactics of foreign languages-cultures between methodology and didactology
Abstract
After illustrating the complexity of didactics of foreign languages-cultures by enumerating its various elements -its field, its actors, its object, its project, its central problem and its theoretical tools-, this article argues that, in order to assume this complexity, it is necessary to conceive this discipline on the basis of the three perspectives that it has given itself in the course of its historical development, to conceive of this discipline on the basis of the three perspectives that it has given itself in the course of its historical development, namely the methodological, didactic (in the restricted sense of the term, that of one of the internal perspectives) and didactological perspectives, by making them function, in research, in a recursive manner. This fundamental complexity of the discipline means that the reference tools for research cannot be theories, but models, and the article illustrates this thesis by means of three models: that of pedagogical models of the teaching-learning relationship, that of psychological models of teaching-learning, and that of the historical evolution of the conception of the didactics of culture. Original French version (1999, Septembre 2024 version) available in this website (1999a). English version online: September 2024. Also downloadable from the ResearchGate website at