French title: La Communauté de Pratique: Histoire, Thé orie, Etudes Exploratoires et Recherches Contemporaines en Sociolinguistique (English title: Community of Practice: History, Theory, Exploratory Studies and Contemporaneous Researches in the Field of Sociolinguistic)

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NTEDONDJEU MICHEL Narcisse

Title

French title: La Communauté de Pratique: Histoire, Thé orie, Etudes Exploratoires et Recherches Contemporaines en Sociolinguistique (English title: Community of Practice: History, Theory, Exploratory Studies and Contemporaneous Researches in the Field of Sociolinguistic)

Author(s)

NTEDONDJEU MICHEL Narcisse | Issue Writer Certificate

Keywords

French key word: Communautéde pratique

Langage

Répertoire partagé

Engagement mutuel

Sociolinguistique (English key word:Community of practice

Language

Shared repertoire

Mutual engagement

Sociolinguistics)

Abstract

French abstract: Depuis l’ introduction de la communauté de pratique (CdP) en sociolinguistique, les travaux y affé rents montrent qu’ elle est d’ un inté rê t analytique non moins né gligeable pour ce domaine du savoir et plus encore en sociolinguistique francophone où on note un grand dé sinté rê t des chercheurs à exploiter ce cadre d’ analyse qui pourrait, et de faç on plus gé né ral, permettre de trouver des ré ponses à certaines questions qui ont fait dé bats en sociolinguistique. Je pense de ce fait à la « communauté linguistique » pour laquelle les dé bats ont tantô t dé bouché sur la communauté sociale, tantô t sur la speech community ou encore sur la communauté ethno-sociolinguistique. Les questions d’ articulation de de cet article sont les suivantes: qu’ est-ce que la CdP? quels en sont ses concepts opé ratoires et comment la sociolinguistique s’ en est servie? Enfin, qu’ est-ce que la CdP peut apporter à la sociolinguistique en gé né ral et à la sociolinguistique francophone en particulier? Cette ré flexion s’ organise autour de 3 principaux axes. D’ emblé e, la pré sentation de la CdP dans le domaine de l’ apprentissage situé et plus particuliè rement dans les sciences sociales. Par la suite, il s’ agira d’ une brè ve exploration des travaux qui, en sociolinguistique, exploitent ce construit thé orique et, enfin, des pistes de ré flexion vers lesquelles on pourrait orienter les recherches à venir sont pré senté es. English abstract: Since the introduction of Community of Practice (CofP) in sociolinguistic, the related works show that it is of no less analytical interest in sociolinguistic and even more in francophone sociolinguistics where we note a great lack of interest of researchers to be interested in this framework of analysis which could generally find answers to certain question that have been debated in sociolinguistics. For this fact, I therefore think about “ linguistic community” for which the debates have sometimes led to the social community, sometimes to speech community or event ethno-sociolinguistic community. The following questions addressed by this article are: What is the CofP? What are its operational concepts and how sociolinguistics used them? Finally, what can the CofP bring to sociolinguistic in general and francophone sociolinguistics in particular? The idea of community of practice comes from a wide theoretical movement inspired by “ Situated Learning” and initiated by Lave and Wenger (1991), Wenger 1999, Wenger, McDermott and Synder (2002). According to these researchers, learning appears as an inseparable element of social practices in which members engage in joining activities and discussions, help each other, and share various information. In this sense, a CofP is a “ Groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who depend on their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis” (Wenger, McDermott and Snyder 4). Based on this and other characteristics (like domain, community and practice), Wenger identifies three crucial dimensions of CofP: Mutual engagement, a joint negotiated enterprise and a share repertoire of negotiable resources accumulated over time. Mutual engagement is one of the characteristics of CofP in which members stow by the time, create collective resources, react, and negotiate the sense of themselves and construct apprenticeship. The other criteria defining the CofP, the joint enterprise, is the reason of the presence of the community because it involves the complex relationships of mutual responsibility that become part of the practice and understanding inside the community. Finally, the result of mutual engagement and joint enterprise is the sharing of the same repertoire. It concerns language, linguistic resources, routines, words, materials, procedures, symbols, styles, actions, gestures that have become part of the CofP or concepts created by the community during membership. The above development in relation with CofP have been made in the field of social sciences, precisely in the Anglo-Saxons science of education. The theory of CofP was introduced in sociolinguistic studies, in particular into language and gender research by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992). Following Lave and Wenger (1991), they defined a CofP as follows: “ An aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in short, practices – emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor. As a social construct, a CofP is different from the traditional community, primarily because it is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that membership engages. ” (464) This definition which suggests that the concept of CofP is dynamic, rich and complex one, emphases on language, practice and social meaning. In their research on language and gender, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet go from observation that there is no coherent theoretical framework defining relation between language and gender. For them, “ Gender is abstracted whole from other aspects of social identity, the linguistic system is abstracted from linguistic practice, language is abstracted from social action, interactions and events are abstracted from community and personal history, difference and dominance are each abstracted from wider social practice, and both linguistic and social behavior are abstracted from the communities in which they occur” . Thus, by using CofP framework and ethnographic approach to understand gender, the studies show that instead of considering gender as a set of predefined categories, and imposing it to individual by society, one has to perceive gender like a dynamic construction in relation not only with linguistic practices, but also with the other social practices. In this perspective, “ gender identity is negotiated through the individual interaction in specific findings communities [… ] scholars interested in language, gender, and sexuality, emphasizes the mutuality of the linguistic expression of gender identity and assumes that intragender differences are natural” (Ostermann, « Community » 7). In the same direction, Mallinson and Childs (2007) combine quantitative and qualitative methods to study language practices in two groups of Appalachian in United-States and arrive at the conclusion that “ language is one of several vehicles the women use to transmit symbolic messages to others and thereby construct identities for themselves and their groups, whose members adhere to different language ideologies, religious norms, notions of feminine decorum, and educational standards » (173). In the domain of language and gender, the studies are flourishing by their topics and mostly by their use of CofP. This framework has not only been used to questioning gender practices. Recently in 2020, research in Corpus Approaches to Social Media (Leuckert, S. et Leuckert, M.; Donlan) exploited it for their analyses of linguistic corpus in social media. Based on different plate-form; Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, and WhatsApp, etc., these authors innovate in the methodological point of view by using CofP. If Dolan (2000) analyses the power dynamics associated with language censorship in online CofP, Leuckert and Leuckert (2020) investigate to what extent the CofP concept can be applied to analyse user’ s self-understanding of the subedits, the words used online in reference of the community. Finally, these researchers arrived to conclude that all the criteria defining the CofP (mutual engagement, a joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire) are in interaction in the online discussion. Nevertheless, in the francophone literature, I consider that the CofP is a notion “ neglected” because only a few scholars have used it in their research. For now, the francophone sociolinguistic study which use the CofP are, according to my knowledge, those for Wilson (2020) and Ntedondjeu (2020). The first author uses CofP to examine linguistic behaviors in the domain of international tourism in Marseille. Identifying firstly some characteristics of the situation of study which can lead to identify it at “ situation de parole globalisé e” in which the participants know how to behave linguistically, Wilson conclude that we are in front of discount CofP because members haven’ t shared experience of tourism within the time. The studies of the second author use this theoretical approach to examine how linguistic diversity, manifests itself in Cameroon-based churches in the context of religious rites, but also how religious practices as well as language discourse of their performance contribute to giving significance to the rites, the languages used and eventually bring about language norms that contribute in the structuring and functioning of groups. To start, Ntedondjeu ask the question to know how the religious community can be considering as a CofP. He demonstrates that answers of this question are inside the characteristics of religious community, namely the fact that whenever, their members meet to learn about a precise domain of life, the faith in God. Furthermore, Christians weave social links during their engagement in religious rites, learn to know each other by the time and share experiences. From there, he analyses the uses of languages in the songs, in relations with the rites, the participants and general situation of communication. So by singing together in the same languages or in different languages, the members make the experience of the community by finding their voice mixed to the voice of other members. They produce, while singing together, the feeling to build a CofP. In the other hand, the discourse analysis on language use to accomplish practices in the churches shows that despite linguistic diversity, the sentiment to membership to a CofP is actual. Ntedondjeu research is a breakthrough in the operationalization of the CofP notion. She closes the gap that exists in terms of taking into account the language paradigm and particularly languages in the theorization and implementation of CofP through empirical results and reflection on linguistic and cultural diversity within religious communities.

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APA: Copy

NTEDONDJEU, MICHEL Narcisse. (2021). French title: La Communauté de Pratique: Histoire, Thé orie, Etudes Exploratoires et Recherches Contemporaines en Sociolinguistique (English title: Community of Practice: History, Theory, Exploratory Studies and Contemporaneous Researches in the Field of Sociolinguistic). RECHERCHES EN LANGUE ET LITTERATURE FRANCAISES, 15(27 ), 102-117. SID. https://sid.ir/paper/957322/en

Vancouver: Copy

NTEDONDJEU MICHEL Narcisse. French title: La Communauté de Pratique: Histoire, Thé orie, Etudes Exploratoires et Recherches Contemporaines en Sociolinguistique (English title: Community of Practice: History, Theory, Exploratory Studies and Contemporaneous Researches in the Field of Sociolinguistic). RECHERCHES EN LANGUE ET LITTERATURE FRANCAISES[Internet]. 2021;15(27 ):102-117. Available from: https://sid.ir/paper/957322/en

IEEE: Copy

MICHEL Narcisse NTEDONDJEU, “French title: La Communauté de Pratique: Histoire, Thé orie, Etudes Exploratoires et Recherches Contemporaines en Sociolinguistique (English title: Community of Practice: History, Theory, Exploratory Studies and Contemporaneous Researches in the Field of Sociolinguistic),” RECHERCHES EN LANGUE ET LITTERATURE FRANCAISES, vol. 15, no. 27 , pp. 102–117, 2021, [Online]. Available: https://sid.ir/paper/957322/en

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Scientific Information Database

ISSN: 2588-4824

Journal Paper

French title: La Communauté de Pratique: Histoire, Thé orie, Etudes Exploratoires et Recherches Contemporaines en Sociolinguistique (English title: Community of Practice: History, Theory, Exploratory Studies and Contemporaneous Researches in the Field of Sociolinguistic)