Abstract EN:

What does learning a foreign language mean? Does it also mean, among other things, learning another way of being? Starting from the view that “a language is a view on the world” and that “saying is acting and interacting,” the present thesis proposes to approach the answer through a study of time, of which the notion is at once general and culture-specific. How do the Chinese and the French cultures represent, conceptualize, and use the notion of time ? The thesis starts with a review of the notion of time in the traditions of culture and philosophy, follows this up with a comparison of expressions of time in the two languages, continues through observation and analysis of the problem of time in communication events, and concludes with an analysis of how such problems are presented and dealt with in French textbooks currently used in China. It is hoped that the discoveries made and problems revealed in such a study will help enrich the discourse on the theory of foreign language teaching and learning, which in turn will lead to new solutions and open up new prospects.