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Home > Research project description

The methodology for the project was developed in 2000 (see Léglise 2013: 47–62).

In all, 28 towns and villages were visited, with a total of 80 classes in 70 schools. The sites where research was conducted are shown on the map below.

 

The first surveys were carried out in western French Guiana between 2001 and 2005, with funding from the French Ministry of Culture (DGLFLF). Next, access to schools in the department was facilitated by an ERTé (Educational Technology Research Team) supported by the IUFM of Cayenne, French Guiana, and by the CELIA research Center (now SeDyL CNRS-INALCO-IRD). Finally, in 2010–2012, Duna Troiani’s participation made it possible to add more survey sites in the coastal and eastern areas of French Guiana.

The results presented here are based on more than 2300 individual, anonymous interviews with children from 80 classes.

Some examples of questions we asked :

When you were little, before you started school, what languages did you speak ?

In which language(s) do you usually speak to your mother ? to your sisters and brothers ? to your father ? to your friends ? ... Do you see your grandparents ? What language(s) do you speak with your mum’s mum ? etc.

In what language(s) are you spoken to by your mother ? your brothers and sisters ? your friends ?

Outside school, what language(s) do you speak most often ?

During the initial interviews, it became clear to me that children of around ten years old were able to name the languages spoken in their environment and to report on their individual and family experiences. This was not the case with younger children, who often had difficulty doing this, probably because being younger they were not very comfortable either with speaking French or with this type of face-to-face question-and-answer interaction. I therefore decided to focus on children in cycle 3 of primary school, and I also occasionally conducted some interviews in junior secondary schools. After the project was presented in class, meetings were held with the children individually outside the classroom.

After I returned from the field, the interviews were encoded in Excel, which made it possible to analyse them and to produce various graphics (showing language repertoires, primary languages, most often reported languages, etc.).