Babylonia Journal of Language Education

Refusing to Stay Silent

Amelia Lambelet — 2026-04-13

In our post-social turn vision, the teaching of a foreign language can no longer be reduced to memorizing and translating vocabulary lists and completing structural exercises. In all the Swiss Universities of Teacher Education - and most likely in many similar institutions around the world - emphasis is placed on the performative aspects of the speech act: to speak is to interpret and act in and with the world; to learn a foreign language is to build and use a repertoire of language which allows us to construct reality across varied contexts and with multiple interlocutors.

In a world where a leader can claim "victory" over another nation at the very outset of a conflict, it is essential be explicit: language is not a neutral tool. It is laden with intentions, norms, and choices - sometimes difficult to see or invisible, but never inconsequential.

Within this framework, we wish to draw our readers' attention to a rather unsettling textbook excerpt. In a unit devoted to racial issues, two poems are placed side by side: on one side, we see a rich text full of imagery by Christina Rossetti, emblematic of a canonical literary tradition. On the other side, we see a text presented as "written by an African child," with deliberately simplified syntax, built on simplistic repetitions and a colour-based opposition supposedly denouncing racism. Yet this second text is, in reality, an impoverished adaptation of a poem by Léopold Sédar Senghor, from which all stylistic, political, and poetic complexity has been erased.

The problem is not merely textual - it is profoundly pragmatic. What effect does this juxtaposition produce? What imaginaries does it build in the readers’ minds? We have on one hand, a language associated with sophistication and literary legitimacy and on the other hand, a voice that is attributed, anonymised, simplified — and, above all, a population implicitly rendered childlike.

If teaching is also a way of acting upon the world, then editing a journal such as Babylonia is, at times, an act of taking a stand. In this case, ours is clear: to refuse these dangerous implicit biases.

It is with this conviction - and the pleasure of thinking together - that we wish a pleasant and thought-provoking reading of this issue.

Permette signorina?

Francesco Screti — 2026-03-25

In questo contributo discutiamo l’opportunità di usare o meno il termine signorina come appellativo o allocutivo. Attraverso una doppia argomentazione, si discutono i pro e i contro di tale termine. Se da una parte è noto il valore maschilista e patriarcale del termine signorina, d’altra parte, altre questioni vengono a sovrapporsi che invece consiglierebbero di conservarlo. Lungi dal voler mettere un punto finale alla questione, questa discussione vuole essere un’opportunità di riflessione per i parlanti, gli studenti e soprattutto gli insegnanti di lingua italiana. L’uso di questo termine infatti tocca almeno tre punti di una lezione d’italiano: 1) la lingua usata in classe, p.es. l’appellazione degli studenti (“signorina Smith” o “signora Smith”); 2) la lingua insegnata in classe, quindi la funzione pragmatica dell’appellativo ed allocutivo come oggetto della lezione d’italiano; 3) aspetti di comunicazione interculturale e questioni socioculturali e politiche inerenti alla società e visibili attraverso lo sviluppo delle questioni linguistiche.

Il giorno in cui smettemmo di capirci

Giuliana Santoro — 2026-03-25

Un messaggio d’auguri sbagliato catapulta Paolo, al suo 35° compleanno, in una realtà straniante: la pragmatica linguistica è scomparsa. Le conversazioni non funzionano più: i significati non coincidono, le intenzioni si perdono, gli atti linguistici vanno in tilt. Finché Paolo, sconvolto da un mondo in cui non si riesce più a comunicare, si sveglia - era tutto un sogno.

O forse no.

Linguistic biographies in motion

Cecilia Bartoli — 2026-04-06

Linguistic Biographies in Motion

Pragmatic Aspects of Narration in a Multilingual and Multicultural Classroom

By Cecilia Bartoli, University of Palermo, PhD Student in Migration, Differences, and Social Justice

APS Asinitas - cecilia.bartoli.cecilia@gmail.com

Maria Rossi, Teacher - APS Asinitas - sofisaterland@gmail.com

Alessandra Smerilli, Teacher - APS Asinitas - smerillialessandra@gmail.com

Keywords: pragmatic aspects of narration; plurilingualism; multimodality; interaction;

Integrating pragmatic skills into teaching is essential to prepare students to navigate complex communicative situations that require flexible linguistic skills and cultural sensitivity (Sánchez-Hernández and Barón 2022), particularly in migrant contexts, where one often encounters multilingual and multicultural groups, heterogeneous in terms of age, education, and cultural and social background. Taguchi (2019) highlights how exposure to authentic communicative situations—situations in which language is used for concrete, social, and cultural purposes, and not just for isolated or abstract linguistic exercises—fosters a deeper understanding of pragmatic dynamics. In this paper, we will seek to highlight how narration and self-narration, through active participation, can offer a rich and meaningful context that allows learners to engage in complex conversational tasks, in which the various levels of linguistic and communicative interaction are active and interconnected, and in which pragmatic strategies are explored in a natural and engaging way. Using as an example a practice organized and conducted by the authors in an Italian class for women with a migrant background, aimed at exploring their linguistic-communicative-semiotic repertoires and metalinguistic reflection, organized using interactive, multimodal, plurilingual, and narrative methods, we will seek to highlight how the students, by negotiating their own experiences or points of view, engaging with emotions, cultural values, conversational strategies, and relational dynamics, are encouraged to develop key pragmatic skills, such as the appropriate use of speech acts, turn-taking, and the ability to adapt their communicative register to different situations.

Les expressions idiomatiques entre les langues comme approche de la compétence pragmatique et de la diversité linguistique en cours de FLE à l’université au Tessin

Typhaine Manzato — 2026-03-25

The theme of idiomatic expressions in foreign language teaching represents a relevant means of conducting work on pragmatic competence in the classroom, as it sheds light on the internal logics of a language in its social use. In the study presented in this article, carried out within the Università della Svizerra italiana, the teaching-learning of idiomatic expressions was also accompanied by an intercultural and plurilingual approach, in connection with the students' first languages and as part of a reflection on Swiss plurilingualism. Thanks in part to a collection of classroom data during the activities, we will discuss the interest of a contrastive approach to teaching idiomatic expressions.

Des obstacles et des astuces de communication pour favoriser le développement de l’oral pragmatique des adolescents en anglais langue seconde

Christian Dumais — 2026-03-13

Cet article souhaite apporter un nouvel éclairage sur la façon d’aborder la pragmatique, plus précisément l’oral pragmatique, en classe d’anglais langue seconde auprès des adolescents. Pour cela, une façon de développer la compétence à communiquer oralement des élèves qui met au premier plan la pragmatique et des objets d’enseignement habituellement peu travaillés en classe sont présentés. Des ressources coconstruites avec des enseignantes d’anglais langue seconde sont aussi exposées ainsi que les retombées chez les élèves et le personnel enseignant d’un travail spécifique sur l’oral pragmatique.

Pragmatic Competence in Action

Luzia Sauer — 2026-03-17

This article explores primary school learners’ pragmatic productions during an English ‘Spot the Difference’ task. Drawing on CEFR Companion Volume descriptors, the study analyses peer interactions among 6th-grade students in German-speaking Switzerland, focusing on three speech acts: describing, agreeing, and disagreeing. Learners often relied on formulaic expressions to sustain interaction, with some exploring more flexible and spontaneous ways of expressing themselves. Whichever strategy they employed, they displayed considerable variation in grammatical accuracy. The article highlights the potential of interaction-rich tasks to support foreign language (L2) pragmatic competence development and offers practical implications for classroom teaching at the primary school level.

Taking humor seriously in the language classroom

Rachel Shively — 2026-03-13

Humor plays a central role in social interaction, not only as a means to have fun, but also to accomplish other social goals such as building rapport and easing tensions. While humor is thought to be universal, humor styles, topics, and cues, along with when and with whom humor is employed can vary across cultures. Further, in intercultural interactions, the background information necessary to understand and appreciate humor may not be shared by humorists and their interlocutors. For these and other reasons, humor can be challenging to successfully comprehend and produce for emerging bilingual speakers. At the same time, research on additional language (L2) humor reveals that speakers at all levels of L2 proficiency can and do creatively draw on their communicative repertoires to engage in humor in a variety of contexts such as everyday conversation, computer-mediated communication, and workplace and classroom interactions. This article will consider what challenges speakers face in engaging in L2 humor, discuss how learners develop humor skills, and suggest how teachers can productively incorporate humor into the language classroom.

Enseigner la compétence pragmatique avec les spots publicitaires Liebe Mobiliar

Luc Fivaz — 2026-01-13

Cet article montre comment la compétence pragmatique peut être développée à travers l’analyse et la production de spots publicitaires. L’exemple du spot suisse Die Eismaschine (série Liebe Mobiliar de l’entreprise d’assurance éponyme) illustre l’articulation de ressources linguistiques, interactionnelles et audiovisuelles pour comprendre et produire un message humoristique et persuasif. Après une analyse du fonctionnement discursif du spot, une tâche didactique menée dans plusieurs classes de niveau B1 invite les apprenant·es à créer leur propre spot publicitaire, en réinvestissant les codes du genre. La démarche, inscrite dans l’approche par tâches et le cadre des genres discursifs, met en évidence les bénéfices d’un enseignement explicite de la pragmatique pour relier intention communicative, choix formels et sens culturel.

Teaching pragmatics to young learners: an interview with Anders Myrset

Editorial Team of Babylonia — 2026-03-13

Anders Myrset is Associate Professor of ELT Methodology at the University of Stavanger, Norway. His research has mainly focused on children’s L2 pragmatic development. He is co-author of the book ‘Researching and Teaching Speech Acts with Young L2 Learners: Beneath the Linguistic Surface’ (2025)

Apprendre la pragmatique en langues secondes et étrangères / Pragmatische Kompetenzen im Fremd- und Zweitsprachenunterricht erwerben

Anna Ghimenton — 2026-03-13

--pas de résumé--