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2 results

  • 1 - Entering into Language and into Languages

  • from Part I - The Mother Tongue and Second Language Learning
  • Edited by Sara Greaves, Université d'Aix-Marseille, Monique De Mattia-Viviès, Université d'Aix-Marseille
  • Book:
    Language Learning and the Mother Tongue
    Published online:
    16 June 2022
    Print publication:
    30 June 2022, pp 15-38

  • Summary

    This chapter draws on the conceptual framework of attachment theory and the bodily imprint on the psyche, as elaborated by John Bowlby, among other psychoanalytical references, and on examples taken from French- or English-language writers such as Louis Wolfson. It focuses on the language learning process in early childhood and its repercussions later in life in second language learning. It is rooted in the author’s experience as professor of English at Aix-Marseille University and her lifelong interest in psychoanalysis, supplemented by a research experiment in a children’s clinic during which she attended psychiatric consultations with small children suffering from speech impediments, and their parents. In this chapter, she provides an account of the hybrid nature of the Mother tongue, analyses the social and linguistic tensions experienced by children caught between the ‘interior’ languages (the Mother tongue is already divided) of their family circle and the ‘exterior’ language spoken at school ‘beyond the bounds of the mother’. When these experiences produce trauma, their reactivation in adulthood by the attempt to speak a foreign language can prove an inhibiting force.

Language Learning and the Mother Tongue
  • Multidisciplinary Perspectives
  • Edited by Sara Greaves, Monique De Mattia-Viviès
  • Published online:
    16 June 2022
    Print publication:
    30 June 2022
  • Innovative and interdisciplinary in approach, this book explores the role of the mother tongue in second language learning. It brings together contributions from a diverse team of authors, to showcase a range of Francophone perspectives from the fields of linguistics, psychology, cross-cultural psychiatry, psychoanalysis, translation studies, literature, creative writing, the neurosciences, and more. The book introduces a major new concept: the (M)other tongue, and shows its relevance to language learning and pediatrics in a multicultural society. The first chapter explores this concept from different angles, and the subsequent chapters present a range of theoretical and practical perspectives, including counselling case studies, literary examples and creative plurilingual pedagogies, to highlight how this theory can inform practical approaches to language learning. Engaging and accessible, readers will find new ideas and methods to adopt to their own thinking and practices, whether their background is in language and linguistics, psychiatry, psychology, or neuroscience.