Contribution sociolinguistique à la perception phonétique des sons du français par des italophones.

Nowadays the importance of international relationships has increased considerably. In order to reach a better competence in oral production, it is important to specify precisely the context in which the learner evolves. In this way, the teacher can propose the most suitable training taking into consideration the personality and the communication needs of each student. Our multidisciplinary research is dedicated to the didactical aspect of Français Langue Etrangère (French as Foreign Language) taught to adult Italian students. The purpose is to assess the influence of socio-cultural and linguistic situations on metaphonologic competences in mother tongue and on the capability of repeating phonetically French sentences. In Italy, in fact, there is still a wide variety of dialects and this environment influences the oral production. Forty-eight adults were asked to complete a written open-ended questionnaire and were subjected to two tests of oral production. Collected data was used to study how languages were perceived from linguistic and aesthetic points of view, and as a tool for social communication; oral tests evaluated the metaphonologic competence and the phonetic perception. Subjects came from the cities of Padua and Naples, where the influence of dialect is easily perceivable, and were chosen depending on their use of dialect, their attitude towards it and their experience with the French language. The three variables used to classify the subjects (a-geographical origin, b-linguistic profile, c-experience in French) led to confirmation of the following hypothesis: a – personal and social perception, as well as the individual competence, show a variation depending on the geographical origin; b – plurilingual subjects with more affection for their regional language show a worse metaphonologic competence and ability of repetition; c – the quality of French sentence repetitions relates to the individual experience in French, whereas the metaphonologic care in execution was similar among the different groups. These observations lead to interesting prospects, both for the methodology of pluridisciplinary investigation and for the awareness that in the didactic activity concerning foreign languages the learner is to be considered a “communicating being and social actor” (Charaudeau, 1983).