Familiarisation à l'analyse des discours électroniques en classe de FLE : quels concepts, quels degrés d'expertise ?

The natural affiliation of the teaching of languages and cultures to the study of language per se is nowadays universally acknowledged (Chiss, 2009). The transposition of concepts developed in the field of linguistics into the language classroom gives rise to questions concerning the nature of such concepts and their use. The starting point for the present study will be a practical introductory module on the analysis of the comments sections on online newspapers, which formed part of a course in French language and culture at the School of Modern Languages and Literature at the University of Bologne-Forlì, which will be hereafter referred to with the acronym SLTTI : Scuola di Lingue, Letterature, Traduzione e Interpretazione. This third-year module is centred on the basic components of argumentation. We will begin by defining the categories of observation to which we will make recourse in raising our students’ awareness of the mechanisms of discourse and rhetoric (Amossy, 2008 ; Maingueneau, 2005) that they might better understand the online commentaries. We subsequently went on to transfer these concepts into the blended language classroom, in accordance with the concept of didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1985). Finally, after having introduced the activities carried out during this argumentation-centred French language course, we will provide an overview of our most noteworthy findings and propose directions for further interdisciplinary applications.