Abstract: The aim of this introduction is to define the main concepts used throughout the chapters of the book, notably those of colonial, decolonial, and postcolonial linguistics. It also measures the scope of the disciplinary field of missionary linguistics. It compares the various modes of grammatization of the world's languages that have been implemented since the fifteenth century, emphasizing the forms and conditions of their teaching or learning in missionary and colonial contexts.

Résumé : Dans cette introduction, on s’efforce de définir les principales notions mobilisées dans les différents chapitres de l’ouvrage, notamment celles de linguistique coloniale, décoloniale et postcoloniale. On mesure aussi la portée du champ disciplinaire de la linguistique missionnaire ; on compare les divers modes de grammatisation des langues du monde mises en oeuvre depuis le quinzième siècle, en mettant l’accent sur les formes et les conditions de leur enseignement ou de leur apprentissage en contexte missionnaire et colonial.

Keywords: Colonial linguistics. Missionary linguistics. Language teaching in colonial context. Grammatization of the worlds’ languages in colonial context.

Mots-clés: Linguistique coloniale. Linguistique missionnaire. Enseignement des langues en contexte colonial. Grammatisation des langues en contexte colonial.

The scope of this book is both broad and limited. It is broad because it gathers research dedicated to the linguistic aspects of missionary, colonial, and even neo- or decolonial enterprises, considering all continents and applying an extended diachronic perspective. And it is also limited: we have asked the authors to focus on educational policies, language teaching and learning, and the didactics used—subjects that, in their time period and context, were either drawn into the heart of missionary and colonial blueprints or remained on the margins.

The terminus a quo indicated in the call for papers for the volume, the end of the Roman Empire, was quite (probably too) ambitious. As Fernand Braudel notes, “beyond the borders [of the Rhine and the Danube], European civilization reverberated late after the fall of the Roman Empire. […] The medieval West colonized, in the finest sense of the term, the world near to it, installing its churches and its missionaries.”