Les désignations de la personne bilingue: approche linguistique et discursive

How people define themselves or others as bilingual or not obviously depends on their notions and social representation of bilingualism. Language provides different possibilities in order to make such designations: the use of lexical words (like «bilingual» in English) but also periphrases or other discoursive strategies. In this paper we aime at analysing the conversations between people who enter the process of self/other designations. We want to record, in conversations, the words and/or discursive structures used by the protagonists of the interaction in order to define themselves and the others as bilingual or not (or something between both poles). The language plays an important role in the dynamic dimension of social representations (in their transmission and transformation). Therefore we chose to observe through microanalysis how the designation of being bilingual or not has been elaborated in the course of the conversation.