Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Foreword
- Foreword by His Excellency
- Part I: Contextualisations
- Part II: Research and Public Engagement Strategies
- 3 The exception anglo-saxonne? Diversity and Viability of French Studies in the UK
- 4 Why French Studies Matters: Disciplinary Identity and Public Understanding
- 5 Learning from France: The Public Impact of French Scholars in the UK since the Second World War
- Part III: The Place of Women and Gender in French Studies
- Part IV: The Place of Literature
- Part V: The Place of Linguistics in French Studies Today
- Part VI: Theatre, Cinema and Popular Culture
- Part VII: Area Studies, Postcolonial Studies and War and Culture Studies
- Part VIII: Adventures in Language Teaching
- Appendices. Addresses to the Future of French Studies Conference
4 - Why French Studies Matters: Disciplinary Identity and Public Understanding
from Part II: Research and Public Engagement Strategies
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Foreword
- Foreword by His Excellency
- Part I: Contextualisations
- Part II: Research and Public Engagement Strategies
- 3 The exception anglo-saxonne? Diversity and Viability of French Studies in the UK
- 4 Why French Studies Matters: Disciplinary Identity and Public Understanding
- 5 Learning from France: The Public Impact of French Scholars in the UK since the Second World War
- Part III: The Place of Women and Gender in French Studies
- Part IV: The Place of Literature
- Part V: The Place of Linguistics in French Studies Today
- Part VI: Theatre, Cinema and Popular Culture
- Part VII: Area Studies, Postcolonial Studies and War and Culture Studies
- Part VIII: Adventures in Language Teaching
- Appendices. Addresses to the Future of French Studies Conference
Summary
A neglected aspect of learning for world citizenship is foreign language instruction. All students should learn at least one foreign language well. Seeing how another group of intelligent human beings has cut up the world differently, how all translation is imperfect interpretation, gives a young person an essential lesson in cultural humility. […] Even if the language learned is that of a relatively familiar culture, the understanding of difference that a foreign language conveys is irreplaceable.
Two dominant assumptions underpinning Michael Worton's 2009 report for the Higher Education Foundation Council for England (HEFCE) on ‘Modern Foreign Languages provision in higher education in England’ are: (i) that the field is characterised by a set of persistent uncertainties regarding its present and future; and (ii) that the anxiogenic effects of this unstable context risk becoming detrimental to the sustainability of this essential area of academic activity and enquiry. Modern languages is often seen as divided between, on the one hand, the nurturing of linguistic proficiency among a broad range of students, and, on the other, the development of specialist, research-led disciplinary fields that form an important part of national and international scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Mary Louise Pratt has identified the evident problems to emerge from a continued inability to negotiate in any clear and cogent way this relationship between differing understandings of purpose:
There are many kinds and degree of language competence, and all have benefits. Knowing a language well enough to get by in the day to day is very different from knowing a language well enough to read sophisticated texts, write, develop adult relationships, exercise one's profession, move effectively in a range of contexts, and adapt quickly to new situations.
Though everyone knows these differences exist, the current public idea about language has no way of talking about them, just as it has no way of talking about the many kinds of language learning.
Michael Worton's report associates this threat of bifurcation, and of consequent uncertainty of mission, with the more widely perceived crisis in the languages community – and with what its author sees as the ‘gradual but apparently inexorable reduction in provision nationally’.
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- French Studies in and for the 21st Century , pp. 37 - 57Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2011