Pour une francophonie des communautés: Multilinguisme, tradition institutionnelle et langue de l’école dans la Principauté d’Andorre

Abstract

We start from the premise that the Francophonie cannot be grasped as a uniform block, but rather as a set of communities that must be analysed empirically. Based on this observation, we propose a case study of the Francophonie in the Principality of Andorra. The Andorran case has common characteristics with other Francophone contexts, but also has many particularities. The French language lives in a multilingual ecosystem where it fulfils only formal functions. Andorra has a vernacular language – Catalan – which is also a vehicular language, but in strong competition with Castilian. Andorran society is extremely diverse, with a national group that does not make up half the population. This group co-habits with communities of nationals from countries of the same region (Spain, Portugal and France). Finally, despite the low social presence of French, it plays a predominant role as a language of instruction. The article looks at the literature on Francophonie and proposes the concepts used to characterize specifically the Andorran francophonie. Then it presents an objective characterization of the Andorran Francophonie through the study of its constitutive elements. Finally, it discusses the subjective characterization of the Andorran Francophonie.