Janus or the Twin Emergence Hypothesis for L2 Learning at Toulouse FabLANG, France

Françoise Raby, France, ID LLCE2016-253;     Today’s mainstream research in second language learning finds its place in the more general paradigm of language development in complex dynamic systems characterized as self-organized and emergent (VAN GEERT, P. & VERSPOOR, M. (2015). The groundbreaking advance of this theory lies in the fact that it is able to encompass all facets of second language acquisition ranging from language structures, language comprehension and phonological representations to the emergence of language motivation or gestures. Yet one dimension seems to be still missing when dealing with specialists of workplace languages: the work dimension. Indeed, one of the questions still to be addressed is:  how do the constraints and properties of the language class seen as a highly dynamic system (RABY, 2009) affect language emergence? This paper aims at presenting some conceptual and pragmatic solutions to this question.

Key words: language acquisition, emergent theories, ergonomics, language motivation, Fablabs

RABY, F. (2009) La dissonance motivationnelle : l’impact d’un environnement hautement dynamique sur la motivation des enseignants de langues. LIDIL, 40, 123-138.

VAN GEERT, P. & VERSPOOR, M. (2015) Dynamic Systems and Language Development. In B. MacWhinney & W. O’graddy (eds.) The Handbook of Language Emergence. pp. 458-477.Oxford, Willey Blackwell.