Caroline Staquet

Research interests

• Critical sociolinguistics and discourse analysis
• Language learning and teaching
• School inequalities
• CLIL, immersion
• Sociology of science
• European language policies

PhD Thesis 

This thesis aims to retrace the history of scientific concepts and fields in the realm of foreign language learning and teaching. To do so, the thesis deconstructs the trajectory of CLIL (Content & Language Integraged Learning), as well of the research field on CLIL through a sociological and critical sociolinguistics perspective (Bourdieu 1984/1988; Heller 2002).

The issue of deconstructing the emergence and evolution of scientific concepts is relevant for two main reasons. Firstly, the study uncovers the mechanisms behind the constitution and structuration of subfields in applied linguistics (Heller & McElhinny 2017). Notably, the study sheds light on why political and scientific agendas ‘often overlap’ in the realm of multilingualism and language education (Duchêne 2020: 92). Next, by retracing the story of dominant ideas in a scientific field, the study uncovers how scientific consensuses and doxas are built, how these transform and are contested across time, in the light of researchers’ strategies and the context in which such ideas have been produced (Blommaert 1999).

To reach these objectives, the study first retraces the genesis of CLIL in the European institutional context. Notably, through a detailed analysis of a key institutional report on CLIL, the study uncovers how academic and political interests articulate in the realm of language policy and language education.

Next, the study retraces how CLIL has been normalized and institutionalized in a first phase in the scientific field (Blommaert 1999; Pavlenko 2018) through a hegemonic discourse exclusively praising the virtues of CLIL. To do so, the thesis notably retraces how European projects have initially allowed academics to cooperate on CLIL, and provides an analysis of two key scientific discourses characterizing this phase.

Finally, the thesis focuses on the contestation of scientific consensuses and doxas on CLIL. To do so, it analyses critical publications on CLIL and the replies of key researchers on CLIL to these.