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Comics, a Cultural Object for Language Teaching: Corpus, Approaches, Representations

Special issue edited by Justine Favre (University of Lausanne) and Donatienne Woerly (Diltec, University Paris Sorbonne)

Argument

Although the history of the connections between comics and education dates back at least to the pedagogical practices of Rodolphe Töpffer (Groensteen 2014; Groensteen and Peeters 1994) and has continued in certain youth periodicals (Kohn 2022), these connections have long remained contentious. The criticisms voiced by “childhood professionals” (Morgan 2019, 59, we translate) clearly illustrate this, and contributed, in France, to the adoption of the July 16th, 1949 law, concerning publications intended for youth.

Thus, due to its long-standing orientation towards a predominantly child or lowbrow audience, comics “fall within a tradition of image-based didactics” (Kohn 2022, 199, we translate) from the late 19th century, but only began to gain academic legitimacy in the last quarter of the 20th century (Roux 1970; Rouvière 2019). While, at least in France, comics have now definitively entered the national education curriculum (Depaire 2019), numerous issues engage educators, including the multimodal and media aspects of comics, the deficiencies in initial and ongoing teacher training, and the pedagogical dilemmas specific to comics (Schaer 2023). Consequently, comics remain a “misidentified disciplinary object”, as Blanchard and Raux (2019, we translate) state.

What about in plurilingual educational contexts such as French as a Foreign Language (FFL) classes and, more broadly, in first, second, and foreign languages education within school or higher education settings? Extracts from comics have appeared in language textbooks since the 1980s (Giroud 2021), within a methodological context where the use of authentic documents to enhance the praxeological dimension of communication (Giroud 2021) becomes significant. Consequently, comics as didactic tools find various applications in language classes (Blanco-Cordon 2012), including the acquisition of analytical skills (both literary and multimodal), as well as communicative, metacultural, and intercultural competences (Rouvière 2019).

The introduction of these new corpora into or as didactic materials is not surprising: the didactics of languages and cultures (DLC) incorporates a diversity of cultural forms and distinguishes itself from native speaking as a subject by a lesser degree of disciplinarization, making the use of comics seem less transgressive: there are no boundaries when the framework is flexible. Comics, especially because they address the questions and issues of our contemporary plurilingual and multicultural societies (Ollivier 2011; Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael 2012), appear as a rich resource for the classroom, particularly in their anthropological dimension or through plurilingual speaker’s autobiographies (Woerly 2023). Considered in their textual dimension as a space for depicting spoken language (Pustka 2022), they can also facilitate the study of variations in French (Giaufret 2021). However, the specificities of the medium need further exploration: viewing comics only as “authentic documents” or as “linguistic samples” overlooks the complexity of the multimodal polyphony thy contain. This thematic publication focuses on the development of such challenges within the framework of examining multilingual reading and creation practices and their didactic implications.

The objective of this dossier is twofold. First, it will examine the role of comics in first, second, and foreign languages education, at all levels from primary to higher education, as a cultural object. What contributions do they make to the didactics of languages and cultures in relation to their sociological and intercultural dimensions? How do they fit into the didactics of literature in second and foreign languages, and under what conditions? Another dimension invites us to consider the materiality of the medium, specifically the didactic affordances of comics, in the sense that certain properties of comics invite specific uses in educational contexts.

From a media, literary, and linguistic perspective, this dossier will also address various issues related to the plurality of languages and cultures through the lens of comics. How do comics integrate language change (such as code-switching, translation, plurilingualism, narration, balloons), language contact, and language variations? Do they reflect plurilingual language practices or symbolize them? How do the linguistic heritage and backgrounds (plurilingual, translingual, etc.) of the authors integrate into their creation? Are comics, therefore, a privileged tool for the didactics of plurilingualism and for addressing the multicultural dimension of contemporary societies in education? From an interdisciplinary perspective, how do literary, linguistic, and comparative approaches help define and analyze comics corpora for reflecting on plurilingualism and interculturality?

These two objectives are not independent but rather interact and sometimes even confront each other: for instance, the issue of familiarizing students with spoken French through the study of comics relies both on the linguistic and literary analysis of comics corpora and on the observation of teaching practices. Similarly, the plurilingual dimension of certain works provides both a tool for reflection and a didactic corpus.

Approaches

Approach 1 : Plurilingualism and interculturality in comics

What scenographies of linguistic and cultural plurality are implemented by comics (Suchet 2014)? How do they help in understanding the issues of contemporary multilingual and multicultural societies (Ollivier 2011; Ben-Rafael and Ben-Rafael 2012)?

This section includes proposals concerning corpora of heterolingual works (Suchet 2014). Comic strips, by combining narration, drawing, and text, offer a broad range of representations of language contact, plurilingual practices, linguistic variation, and intercultural aspects. What are the specific ways in which comic strips portray plurilingualism? What narrative uses of plurilingualism do they employ? How can the representations of relationships between languages be described? What about the semiography of languages as graphical systems?

Approach 2 : Comics in language and culture didactics

What are the didactic uses of comics in first (Raux 2023), second or foreign language classes (Pustka 2022)? How do these uses respond to multimodal (Hamez 2022), plurilingual and pluricultural issues in the language classroom?

As a multimodal resource, comics have a recognized potential for language didactics and the development of multimodal literacy (Lebrun, Lacelle, and Boutin 2012, Schaer 2023). What is its contribution to the development of language and literacy skills, and what is its potential for literary skills? These proposals for teaching/learning and teacher training may, for example, echo the practice of language biography, arise from studies of variations in French for future teachers or from reflections on the teaching and learning of spoken language, or may involve creative practices for L2 acquisition.

Approach 3 : Comics and variation, focusing on spoken French

As a graphic and textual transposition of phenomena belonging to the realm of orality, do comics offer a good medium for teaching spoken French?

Many language teachers use the dialogical nature of comics to tackle certain forms of variation in French. How can we get the most out of them, whether in terms of the choice of corpus or the classroom setting? What are the lexical, morphosyntactic, phonological or discursive elements represented in comics that language teaching would benefit from taking into account? Doesn't the figuration of spoken French come under the heading of heterolingualism as the staging of language variations within the same language (Grutman 1997)? The proposals in this section address these questions from a didactic or linguistic perspective.

Submission Guidelines

This call for papers is open to all researchers, regardless of their status or origin. We invite them to respond by submitting two documents:

1. A short bio-bibliographical note.

2. An anonymous text of a maximum of 3000 characters, including spaces. This summary should present the theoretical framework and the chosen corpus, as well as the main expected conclusions.

Submissions will be evaluated anonymously by the editorial committee of the journal. Acceptance will come with encouragement and suggestions for an article between 25,000 and 50,000 characters, including spaces.

Submissions must be sent by February 1, 2025, to the following email addresses: justine.favre@unil.ch and donatienne.woerly@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr.

Complete articles are due by May 1, 2025.

Proposals and full articles can be written in either French or English.

References

Ben-Rafael, Miriam, et Eliezer Ben-Rafael. 2012. « Plurilingualism in Francophone Comics ». In Linguistics and the Study of Comics, édité par Frank Bramlett, 142-62. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137004109_7.

Blanchard, Marianne, et Hélène Raux. 2019. « La bande dessinée, un objet didactique mal identifié ». Tréma, no 51 (mars). https://doi.org/10.4000/trema.4818.

Blanco-Cordon, Tatiana. 2012. « Éléments de réflexion pour l’exploitation du récit de bande dessinée dans la pratique de l’espagnol langue étrangère : Estraperlo y tranvía d’Alfonso López ». In Bande dessinée et enseignement des humanités, édité par Nicolas Rouvière, 349-66. UGA Éditions. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.ugaeditions.1269.

Depaire, Colombine. 2019. État des lieux : La place de la Bande dessinée dans l’enseignement. Syndicat national de l’édition.

Giaufret, Anna. 2021. Montréal dans les bulles: représentations de l’espace urbain et du français parlé montréalais dans la bande dessinée. Les Voies du français. Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval.

Giroud, Anick. 2021. « La bande dessinée dans les manuels de FLE (1919-2020) ». In Enseigner la bande dessinée comme (de la) littérature, édité par Raphaël Baroni et Gaspard Turin. Vol. 4. Transpositio.

Groensteen, Thierry. 2014. M. Töpffer invente la bande dessinée. Bruxelles: Les Impressions nouvelles.

Groensteen, Thierry, et Benoît Peeters. 1994. Töpffer, l’invention de la bande dessinée. Collection savoir Sur l’art. Paris: Hermann.

Grutman, Rainier. 1997. Des langues qui résonnent: l’hétérolinguisme au XIXe siècle québécois. Nouvelles études québécoises. Québec: Fides.

Hamez, Marie-Pascale, éd. 2022. « Littérature et multimodalité en classe de langue. Quels enjeux? Quelles pratiques? », numéro spécial, Les Langues Modernes, 4/2022.

Kohn, Jessica. 2022. Dessiner des petits mickeys: une histoire sociale de la bande dessinée en France et en Belgique, 1945-1968. Histoire contemporaine 33. Paris: Éditions de la Sorbonne.

Lebrun, Monique, Nathalie Lacelle, et Jean-François Boutin. 2012. La littératie médiatique multimodale: De nouvelles approches en lecture-écriture à l’école et hors de l’école. Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv18pgvfz.

Morgan, Harry. 2019. « De l’éradication de l’« illustré gangster » à l’analyse de bandes dessinées en classe (1929-2009) : ruptures et continuité ». In Bande dessinée et enseignement des humanités, édité par Nicolas Rouvière. Didaskein. Grenoble: Éditions Université Grenoble Alpes.

Ollivier, Gilles. 2011. « L’immigration dans la BD française ». Hommes & migrations, no 1294 (novembre), 120-23. https://doi.org/10.4000/hommesmigrations.586.

Pustka, Elissa, éd. 2022. La bande dessinée: perspectives linguistiques et didactiques. Romanistische Fremdsprachenforschung und Unterrichtsentwicklung. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto.

Raux, Hélène. 2023. La bande dessinée en classe de français. Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Paideia. Rennes.

Rouvière, Nicolas. éd. 2019. Bande dessinée et enseignement des humanités. Didaskein. Grenoble: Éditions Université Grenoble Alpes.

Roux, Antoine. 1970. La bande dessinée peut être éducative. Paris: Éditions de l’école.

Schaer, Camille. 2023. « Le rapport à la bande dessinée des enseignant·e·s de français au secondaire suisse romand : conceptions et pratiques en construction ». Lausanne : Université de Lausanne.

Suchet, Myriam. 2014. L’imaginaire hétérolingue : ce que nous apprennent les textes à la croisée des langues. Paris : Classiques Garnier.

Woerly, Donatienne. 2023. « Représentations d’un plurilinguisme conflictuel dans l’album autobiographique l’arabe du futur de Riad Sattouf ». Glottopol, no 38 (janvier). https://doi.org/10.4000/glottopol.3381.

Woerly, Donatienne. 2024. « Le continuum hétérolingue dans les bandes dessinées de la migration : de l’effet de réel à l’expérience plurilingue ». Language Education and Multilingualism – The Langscape Journal, 2024, 7, pp.14-2910.18452/30829.

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