1. Mother tongue and foreign languages

It is generally held that for every individual, one language and one alone, known as the mother tongue, has a crucial place which is impossible to match in any other language.  Calling it the 'mother' tongue derives from sexist ideology, according to which mothers were primarily in charge of educating their children. Within this word there is also a completely false biological connotation, implying that the language was received with the genes, and in the mother's womb. And so immediately, all other languages are set at a distance, in a foreign place, emphasised by their naming as 'foreign' languages.  This last term also has nationalist connotations, associating 'foreign language' with 'foreign country' (since the languages are never the same as the states). In fact, human beings have one, and often simultaneously several, first languages : first in terms of time, first in terms of communications, and first in terms of identical constructions.   But these three factors seldom coincide, since most humans are multi-lingual throughout their lives.  In this way, we may have better capacities in one or more languages other than the first we acquired, and/or may sense our main identity in a language which we barely understand and do not speak. This is often the case of emigrants, or those who have undergone a linguistic colonisation. As a result, our relationship with our languages is already there, and the other languages to be learned may seem less difficult.

2. 'Mastering the language' and multilingual skills

We often speak in French of 'mastering' a language, an odd expression which does not translate well into certain other languages. It's as if speaking a language was a difficult exercise, requiring a struggle against weaknesses and bad habits: practising a perfect language with excellence, in accordance with a mythical purity. We reduce the language to a series of standardised forms. and reject other forms - local, popular, hybrid, from other languages (for example through accents) - from the 'good' language. Yet learning and understanding language, or even speaking it, is a spontaneous human skill, carried out with the greatest of ease by young children, especially those growing up with several languages in a home where this instinctive capacity is not stifled. The notion of multilingual skills, which is at the heart of CECRL, indicates the capacity of interaction through manipulation of the necessary linguistic forms, without fearing the influence which the language already 'installed' in the verbal directory might have on any of the new languages we add. As a result, each can speak in his own way, disregarding any purism, from the time it operates on a communicative and relational plan by demanding the comprehensive linguistic hospitality of its co-conversationalists.

3. Educational methods and glottophobia

Speaking and writing one's language, and in one's own way, is an inalienable right protected by all the international texts, as well as those of several countries, relating to human rights issues and the fight against discrimination.  Treating people differently because of linguistic prejudice is discrimination, which is reprehensible for both ethical and, very often, legal reasons. We should not discriminate between languages but between the people who use them. This is why I use the term glottophobia in the same sense as xenophobia.  Consequently, to add a linguistic condition to access to education, especially if it is disproportionate, is discrimination. Forbidding people to use their languages, wherever this may be, including in learning situations - and when learning other languages - is discrimination. Moreover, it is an obstacle to their learning, including learning another language: all the studies show that we learn a new language better by leaning explicitly on the one that we already use. It's the same for those whom we criticise for using a family language to learn a similar language: for example rejecting Andalusian Spanish or Tuscan Italian, which a student may have learned at home, in a Spanish or Italian course because it is not 'correct' Spanish, or 'correct' Italian (cf. recent testimonies). To prevent a student from pronouncing the language in question in his own way, coloured by his other languages, is to deny his specific multilingual identity; it often shames or humbles the person, who then does not dare to speak any more: and this is totally counter-productive in educational terms. It is beyond question that an education in language, using languages, must develop a linguistic humanism which goes far beyond linguistic and educational questions. Linguistic diversity invites us to develop a general ethic of diversity.

More information in : Blanchet, Ph., 2016, Discriminations : combattre la glottophobie, Paris, Textuel, 192 p.