The demographics of the French speaking world is rapidly changing, with a majority of the worlds French speakers now residing in African countries with a colonial history with France and Belgium. While the Swedish curriculum for modern languages only specifies that the education should treat areas where the language is spoken, many of the textbooks remain firmly rooted in a Franco-French perspective. Parallel to this development, the Swedish school system is increasingly diverse, while interest in studying French is declining, raising questions on the perceived personal and professional gain in studying French courses where non-Western French-speaking countries remain peripheral. This essay aims to investigate how, and to what extent, French-speaking nations and areas outside the West are represented and construed in the series of Swedish textbooks in French Escalade 1-4.The theoretical basis for this study is in critical text analysis based on a model by Hellspong & Ledin (1997), which uses the framework of systemic functional linguistics to analyse texts through the interplay between the textual, ideational and interpersonal structure with the social context and dynamics that form them, to which they also contribute. Furthermore, postcolonial theory is used to understand the historical context and discourses that have formed during and after France’s colonial empires.The study finds that the textbooks overwhelmingly centre around France and other Western French-speaking countries, while the rest of the French-speaking world remains peripheral, with Sub-Saharan Africa being particularly neglected in relation to its French-speaking population. The representation of the French-speaking world that is construed places metropolitan France at its centre, mirroring the image of the former colonial empire. Furthermore, no clear definition of which countries and areas outside the West should be considered French-speaking emerges, with various textual and semiotic representations conveying different interpretations of where French is spoken in the world. The scarce representations of French-speaking countries and areas outside the West that exist generally have a country of geographical region as their main theme, while the often point out their continued relationship with France. France’s non-European territories on the other hand, are mainly portrayed as exotic paradises, ideal for tourism. The representations of people and characters from these countries and areas construed are also heavily reliant on their connections with France. People from the Maghreb-region are often construed as French immigrants, with the incompatibility of Islam and French identity being a reoccurring theme.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-29617 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Karlsson Söderstrand, Petter |
| Publisher | Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för lärande och samhälle (LS), Malmö universitet/Lärande och samhälle |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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