Culturally colored didactics: The sociopolitical at the heart of second/foreign language teaching in Francophone geolinguistic spaces

This article analyzes sociopolitical influences in the construction of national didactic spaces. First, it provides a general framework of analysis. Second, it argues that Francophonie (the French-speaking countries and communities of the world collectively) constitutes geopolitical spaces sharing linguistic, cultural, economic and institutional constructions but that it is culturally and linguistically varied. This sociopolitical context gives rise to particular ideologies of language and to the consequent need for second/foreign language didactics. The examples of France and Quebec are used to show how contexts influence these didactics. Third, from the locus of professional associations, the paper shows empirically how geographic didactic clusters are both culturolinguistically colored and continentally influenced. It concludes that dealing with diversity (didactic diversity or linguistic and cultural diversity) is not an easy task: Both second/foreign language didactics and the constituent communities of Francophonie are searching for ways of being together in a postmodern world.