Using a Foreign Language in a Polylinguism Situation: Semiotic Systems Conflict

Abstract

This work is an attempt to analyze factors of semiotic spaces asymmetry and dissymmetry for the host and the acquired linguacultures in the current polylinguism situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A psycho- and sociolinguistic experiment, as well as the data obtained through a direct questionnaire carried out during the primary study of the mechanisms behind the linguistic barrier experienced by Congolese students from three universities (UNIKIN, UPC and Bel Campus) trying to use English, allows identifying not only the dominant use areas for the native and international languages in the DRC, yet also the respondents’ attitude to the need of knowing foreign languages. In order to create a representative sample, a survey was conducted among each group of students selected randomly, while the sample concerned only three schools (Humanities, Economics and Medicine) within the universities mentioned above. The sociolinguistic analysis conducted therein, served as the basis for detecting the key factors behind semiotic systems conflict in the parallel usage of the competing language systems pairs (local vs. English/French): 1) gender, 2) age, 3) status. The language-and-culture barrier in case of a parallel employment of the host and the invasive language can be eliminated while learning a foreign language relying on a familiar language system. This approach, though, is not accepted by the majority of the respondents (over 90% of males and about 85% of females), whereas preference was towards semiosis models of the international language system (French or English). The intersection of semiotic spaces and a free switch between the language systems serving them was to be observed in the groups aged 18-24 (about 40%) mainly at the University of Kinshasa, and only among a small number of the respondents falling within the age group of 25-35 (12%) at the two other universities. This fact points at the reliably objective factors promoting the creation of a convergent semiotic space in the capital-city university and within the region taken as a whole.