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This thesis asks why social interaction unfolding in autistic adults and children is often characterised as atypical. To answer this question, I investigated two main hypotheses: the Social Motivation Theory and the Social Anxiety Hypothesis. The five studies comprised in this dissertation are based on three different paradigms: [1] social attention in 40 autistic (20 women; 20 men) and 40 neurotypical adults (matched on age, gender and IQ) in front of speaking videos of actors displaying a direct or averted gaze; [2] social attention and [3] disfluency production in the same sample during a live face-to-face cognitive task with an experimenter displaying a direct or averted gaze; [4] social attention and [5] interactional behaviours in 18 autistic children matched on gender (15 boys; 3 girls) and mental (18) or chronological (18) age to neurotypicals during a real-life recreational task with a familiar or unfamiliar adult experimenter. The investigation of these social aspects has been based on eye- tracking measures, electrodermal activity and fine-grained disfluency and interactional behaviours coding.In Study [1], I found an absence of preference for direct versus averted gaze in the autistic group, probably because of difficulties in distinguishing eye gaze direction. In Study [2], I found no difference in social attention between autistic and neurotypical adults, but an increased experienced arousal in neurotypicals whose direct gaze was not reciprocated. We could wonder whether the neurotypicals' discomfort could provoke a more insistent looking for eye contact behaviour, potentially leading to autistics' uneasiness. In Study [3], I found less listener- and more speaker-oriented disfluencies in the autistic speech, potentially contributing to neurotypicals' difficulties in understanding it. In Study [4], I found similar social attention, experienced stress and familiarity effect in autistic and neurotypical children. This suggests that real-life results could, Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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info:eu-repo/semantics/published

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Starting from a number of recent evolutions regarding language (education) policies in Belgium and its bilingual capital Brussels, we wish to address in this presentation a number of influential tendencies in the discipline and draw attention to their consequences outside academia. We will discuss the principled rejection in the field of any kind of (value-based) linguistic category as an expression of power/domination and the related claim that all language use has equal value, to suggest they may themselves depend on taken for granted principles and categories which merit further consideration. We will show that this normative stance coexists, paradoxically, with the increasingly relativist epistemological view according to which objective knowledge about language in society must now be considered an at best naïve, and, at worst, disingenuous idea. We will inquire if a concern with structural inequality benefits from powerful knowledge claims and from reflection on the different ways sociolinguists may usefully and legitimately engage with linguistic norms and hierarchies.

La thèse proposée a été menée suivant deux angles d’analyse qui se répondent et entretiennent un rapport d’interdépendance. D’une part, il a été question de s’intéresser aux réseaux qui ont diffusé la problématique de la dissidence tchécoslovaque et lui ont donné visibilité en France et en Belgique ;de l’autre, l’intérêt a été porté sur la réception et l’interprétation de ce phénomène en ces mêmes pays. Se nourrissant de l’examen systématique des discours et stratégies narratives mis en place par les différents protagonistes qui en ont porté et propagé le paradigme, évaluant la dissidence tchécoslovaque au travers des charges interprétatives dont les opinions publiques française et belge la lestèrent, le travail de thèse s’est appliqué à rendre compte d’une problématique dont les formulations aussi bien que les sens furent construits selon certains desseins et suivant divers mobiles. Cette entreprise de déconstruction, de diversification et de particularisation constitue la ligne directrice de la recherche qui a pour objet d’autopsier les constructions narratives qui ont contribué à mythologiser la dissidence tchécoslovaque. Le travail de thèse se base sur un corpus qui embrasse différents types de productions écrites – de la presse spécialisée à la presse généraliste, de déclarations et comptes rendus aux correspondances, d’essais politico-éthiques à des ouvrages littéraires, de textes philosophiques à des manifestes – et s’inscrit conséquemment dans la volonté de mettre en dialogue une collection de sources reflétant la diversité des canaux par le truchement desquels la dissidence tchécoslovaque fut transplantée en France et en Belgique. De par la mise en interaction des discours tchèque, français et belge à propos de la dissidence au travers de plusieurs genres textuels, c’est à l’analyse des chapes narratives qui la recouvrent, aux enjeux qu’elles défendent et aux stratégies narratives dont elles s’alimentent que le travail de recherche a été consacré. Ces struc, Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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This dissertation investigates language policy in a Dutch-medium secondary school in Brussels. The school in question endeavours to implement a language policy in which languages other than Dutch are formally included, which is in stark contrast to their peers, who often implement a strict, Dutch-only policy in order to respond to the increasing linguistic diversity and “Frenchification” in Brussels Dutch-medium education. This thesis addresses the question of how the teachers negotiated such a pro-multilingual language policy in this setting. The research is designed as a (socio)linguistic ethnographic case study based on a conceptualisation of language policy as (1) operating on different levels; (2) consisting of three components; and inseparable from the social world in which it is effectuated. The study combines ethnographic field work and participant observation with interview data, linguistic analyses of interactional data, document analysis and analyses of elements of the linguistic landscape to gain insights into the nature and extent of the school’s unique pro-multilingual project. Although the school profiles itself as an institution which aims to prepare its pupils for future educational and professional success by increasing their language skills, the school’s policy declarations harbour an ambivalent stance vis à vis multilingualism. In terms of individual teachers’ perceptions and practices, then, we demonstrate that they, too, voiced contradictory sentiments and displayed behaviour in the classroom which was at once welcoming of pupils’ use of linguistic resources other than monolingual Dutch, and restrictive of it., Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

‘Nederlanders and buitenlanders: A sociolinguistic ethnographic study of ethnic categorization among secondary school pupils’ is a study based on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork among pupils of the vocational track of a secondary school in Venlo, the Netherlands. Many of these pupils had a migration background, and though they were born in the Netherlands, they often referred to themselves as buitenlander (‘foreigner’), Marokkaan (‘Moroccan’), or Turk (‘Turk’), and referred to others without migration backgrounds as Nederlanders (‘Dutch people’).In this dissertation, van de Weerd combines ethnographic descriptions of the local context with ethnomethodological analyses of interactions to analyze such self- and other-categorizations. Although the use of categories such as Nederlander and buitenlander are commonly interpreted as straightforward indications of (dis) identification with a country or ethnic identity, it is argued that their meanings are constructed and negotiated in local interactions and are therefore much more complex. The pupils in this study, for instance, regularly discussed categories in association with certain clothing styles, language, or behavior, or jokingly teased each other by speaking negatively about these categories. The dissertation furthermore analyzes the relation between categorization practices and the use of different linguistic resources such as Dutch, Limburgish, Turkish, Arabic, and/ or Berber. ‘Nederlanders and buitenlanders’ may be of relevance to researchers interested in categorization in interaction, ethnicity, identification, the effects of diversification outside the metropolitan area, and more broadly, linguistic ethnography and sociocultural linguistics., Dans Néerlandais et étrangers, j'étudie la façon dont les élèves du secondaire à Venlo, ‘classe 3/4b,’ se sont référés aux hiérarchies sociales locales et sociétales, et comment ils ont traité ce sujet, en se catégorisant eux-mêmes et les uns les autres en termes ethniques et en utilisant différents moyens linguistiques. La question de recherche, introduite dans le Chapitre 1, est la suivante: Quelles sont les significations et les fonctions respectives des catégories ethniques et des moyens linguistiques utilisés pour les élèves et les enseignants de la classe 3/4b ?J'ai mené cette étude sur la base des données recueillies pendant neuf mois de travail ethnographique sur le terrain avec les élèves, et en analysant les interactions entre les élèves, les enseignants et moi-même, principalement avec l'analyse de la catégorisation des membres (ACM) et l'analyse de la conversation (AC).À peu près la moitié des élèves de la classe 3/4b sont d'origine étrangère et, bien qu'ils soient nés aux Pays-Bas, ils se classent régulièrement, eux- mêmes et les autres, sous les étiquettes ‘étranger’, ‘Marocain’ et ‘Turc’, et qualifient les autres (mais pas eux-mêmes) de ‘Néerlandais’. Cette catégorisation faisait partie des interactions quotidiennes, que ce soit en se taquinant, en faisant ses devoirs ou en racontant des ragots sur des connaissances. L'utilisation de divers moyens linguistiques (en plus du néerlandais standard, les élèves ont utilisé l'arabe, le berbère, le turc, et les dialectes régionaux de Venlo et Tegelen, entre autres, dans leurs interactions) s'est également avérée importante pour élaborer ces catégories et en discuter., Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie, info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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