Les fonctions de l'alternance codique dans les salles d'immersion française au Québec

Sammanfattning: The present study focusses on the code-switching by teachers and students to English - the L1 of the majority of the students - in six French immersion (L2) classrooms in Quebec, Canada. It is argued that code-switching is a dynamic notion which is given its status as such in interaction: different teachers have different ideas about what constitutes an L1 element in L2 interaction. It is also the various teachers who by their own code-switching and by their choice of feedback after a student code-switch, determine whether code-switching is an acceptable or an unacceptable verbal behaviour in immersion classroom interaction. Using audio-recorded L2 interactions in six immersion classrooms taken from two educational programmes, and applying methods from the fields of conversation analysis, interactional (interpretative) analysis and pragmatic linguistics, the study examines the functions of teachers’ and students’ code-switches. This examination is made in accordance with the type of classroom activity and the type of discourse (didactic and non didactic) during which these code-switches are found and also, in accordance with what kind of teacher or student feedback it receives in these contexts. On an interactional level, the study investigates the production and the interpretation of code-switches in form and meaning focussed sequences. It is demonstrated that these types of sequences -frequent in second language classrooms - contain teacher and student code-switches that are used in both general and more individual functions. These discourse functions are linked to three main uses of code-switching in the French immersion classroom : code-switching for pedagogical/didactic purposes (teachers), for learning related purposes (students) and for communicative (pragmatic) purposes (both teachers and students). It is suggested that code-switching is used for all these three purposes in various degrees in the majority of the classrooms. It is also suggested that the teachers can make use of a code-switch in a certain function - and treat a code-switch by a student in a certain function - in very different ways, not only from one classroom to another but also within the same classroom depending on the circumstances in which the code-switching takes place.