Abstract:
Depuis l’introduction de la communauté de pratique (CdP) en sociolinguistique, les
travaux y afférents montrent qu’elle est d’un intérêt analytique non moins négligeable pour ce domaine
du savoir et plus encore en sociolinguistique francophone où on note un grand désintérêt des chercheurs
à exploiter ce cadre d’analyse qui pourrait, et de façon plus général, permettre de trouver des réponses
à certaines questions qui ont fait débats en sociolinguistique. Je pense de ce fait à la « communauté
linguistique » pour laquelle les débats ont tantôt débouché sur la communauté sociale, tantôt 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 opératoires et
comment la sociolinguistique s’en est servie ? Enfin, qu’est-ce que la CdP peut apporter à la
sociolinguistique en général et à la sociolinguistique francophone en particulier ? Cette réflexion
s’organise autour de 3 principaux axes. D’emblée, la présentation de la CdP dans le domaine de
l’apprentissage situé et plus particulièrement dans les sciences sociales. Par la suite, il s’agira d’une
brève exploration des travaux qui, en sociolinguistique, exploitent ce construit théorique et, enfin, des
pistes de réflexion vers lesquelles on pourrait orienter les recherches à venir sont présentées.
از زمان معرفی مبحث «جامعه گفتاری» ( (CdPدر زبانشناسی اجتماعی، مطالعات انجام شده در این خصوص، بیانگر علاقه غیرقابل انکار محققان به این حوزه و در عین حال، عدم تمایل زبانشناسی اجتماعی فرانکوفون به این مقوله است. در حالی که با پرداختن به این موضوع میتوان پاسخ بسیاری از سوالات و مجادلههای مطرح شده در این خصوص را یافت. سوالاتی که این مقاله درصدد پاسخ دادن به انهاست عبارتند از: ( (CdP چیست؟ مفاهیم کاربردی ان چیست و زبانشناسی اجتماعی چگونه از انها استفاده میکند؟ و در نهایت، ((CdP چه چیزی را میتواند به زبانشناسی اجتماعی بطور کلی و به زبانشناسی اجتماعی فرانکوفون بطور خاص، وارد کند؟ تحلیل ما در این خصوص بر سه محور اصلی متمرکز خواهد بود.
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 globalisee” 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.