General Concept for the Teaching of the Languages, and Sociolinguistic Reality in Schools: Analyses of a Strained Connection

Abstract

With the General Concept for the Teaching of Languages in Switzerland, the hope to move from traditional linguistic politics to a beginning of an acknowledgement of multilingualism as a society and school perspective had emerged. Without any follow up. This article tries to understand why today’s sociolinguistic analysis of society and school reality cannot bend the politics which constitute a real obstacle to the setting up of new didactic approaches such as Education and Opening onto Languages in the school curriculum.