Jak uporządkować terminologiczny chaos w glottodydaktyce i po co?

Abstract

How to put order into the terminological chaos in language pedagogy and what should one want to do this for?

The terminology used in language pedagogy does not constitute a coherent system because it is not based on definitions of terms but rather on descriptions of prototypes and illustrating them with examples. As a result, different terms overlap. This is disadvantageous for discourse in language pedagogy, because it enforces terms to be redefined anew in every statement. The current article proposes a way to order and systematize terminology referring to, on the one hand, languages as viewed from the perspective of language pedagogy, and on the other, to the phenomenon of bi- and multilingualism. Based on five systematically employed criteria, a discrete set of terms has been obtained which reflect the language pedagogical (i.e. prepared from the point of view of language pedagogy) classification of languages. The first criterion allows also a bi- or multilingual person to be unambiguously distinguished from a polyglot. The first term describes someone who has acquired two or more native languages, while the second a person who has learned several or many foreign languages. The criteria of competence or of circumstances of use, which have so far been in common use, do not allow for such a clear distinction.