SPATIAL REPRESENTATION BY BATSWANA LEARNERS OF FRENCH: ROUTE DIRECTIONS IN URBAN SPACE

Abstract

During the process of learning a foreign language, the learner can find him/herself confronted to new phenomena; a new culture, a new way of seeing the world, as well as a new linguistic structure. Consequently, through discourse the learner is led to construct a new referential world. Studies done by researchers such as Levinson S (1996) have shown that even in space representation, different linguistic groups do not use the same spatial frames of reference (absolute, intrinsic and relative). Setswana, like other languages such as French and English, uses all the three frames. In Tzetal, a Mayan language, the relative frame does not exist at all. This paper shows that even though Setswana language uses all the frames of spatial reference, the geographical space that Setswana-speaking learners of French are used to in Botswana and the way they manipulate space is, in most cases different from that of a native French speaker from France.