Imbrication ethnique, rapports sociaux de sexe et de classe dans les manuels de FLE

Abstract

This article assesses the discursive and visual practices as far as thesexual, ethnic and class stereotypes are concerned in the most populartextbooks used in French as a Foreign Language classes in our MiddleEastern region. After a state of the art of works on sexual and ethnicrelations in language textbooks, we focus on our own corpus to assesshow textbooks used in our region still carry the stigma of an essentialistview of the sexes, of a Franco-French (too often Parisian ‘centric’ ) viewof the French speaking world and of a certain social class, potentiallyalienating learners who could not feel part of this elitist world andreinforcing social dominance. Indeed even though publishers have madegreat progress in fighting stereotypical roles of men and women and “whit e supremacy” in textbooks as far as visuals are concerned, othermore subtle stereotypical reflexes are at work in discourse. As well thestudy shows how difficult it is to choose a multiethnic approach withoutrunning the risk to alienate learners and teachers from other regions thanFrance or Europe when this approach does not valorize as well linguisticand cultural practices of other francophone regions.