The institute comprises four research centers: Pluri-LL, the Centre Nerval, the Observatoire des Littératures Sauvages (OLSa) and the Laboratoire de langue des signes de Belgique francophone (LSFB-Lab).

Two researchers from NaLTT have just been awarded funding from the F.R.S - FNRS following calls whose results were published in December 2024.

An estimated 72 million people worldwide use a sign language. The 150 signed languages recorded to date (The Ethnologue) are derived from the sociolinguistic dynamics of different deaf communities, their history and their interaction with society as a whole.

Like all languages, signed languages evolve and vary. Variations linked in particular to the age, region, gender, linguistic and educational profile of signers are attested in the use of most signed languages. Sign language in French-speaking Belgium (LSFB) is no exception. For example, the former boarding schools for the deaf established in Brussels and Wallonia still have regional variants. While the older generation's sign language shows traces of the restrictive context of oralist teaching and the disregard for signed languages at the time of their schooling, the younger generation's language is tinged with numerous borrowings from American Sign Language (ASL) or international signs, symbols of openness and mobility. Increasingly, LSFB signers are highlighting the linguistic divergence between age- and region-related LSFB varieties.

The Research Project (PDR) "DiVa LSFB - Linguistic distance and variation in French-speaking Belgian sign language: a mixed-methods analysis" aims to understand this phenomenon of linguistic distance and variation within today's LSFB. It aims to provide a multidimensional analysis of this complex phenomenon that is as representative as possible of the social ecosystems in which deaf people live. Can generational or regional profiles be identified from an analysis of LSFB usage? What linguistic characteristics and strategies promote or hinder intercomprehension between young signers and their elders? What ideas and beliefs do signers have about the degree and reasons for variations in LSFB, and about the elements that promote or hinder intercomprehension? And in their day-to-day practices, how do they handle interaction with younger and older signers, and with those who use regional varieties other than their own? To answer these questions, the team will use a combination of corpus data, experimental data on inter-comprehension between signers, as well as ethnolinguistic-type data.

Amandine le Maire completed her thesis at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh) as part of the Mobile Deaf project (ERC, under the direction of Prof. A. Kusters). After coordinating the LSFB-French Interuniversity Certificate in 2023-2024, Amandine joined the LSFB-Lab as part of "DiVa LSFB" and became the first deaf post-doc involved in research on LSFB, her mother tongue.

She will be working closely with Sibylle Fonzé, Bruno Sonnemans and Laurence Meurant. This project is part of a wider collaboration with Pr. Mieke Van Herreweghe (Universiteit Gent), Myriam Vermeerbergen (KULeuven) and Jeroen Darquennes (UNamur, NaLTT) on the study of linguistic change in Belgian sign languages.

This collaboration is taking shape in perfect synchronicity in the project Changing signs & signs of change: hoe variatie en taalcontact de taalverandering in Vlaamse Gebarentaal in hand werken which has just been selected as a "Senior onderzoekproject" by the FWO - Flanders' equivalent of the FNRS.

In partnership with the Faculty of Computer Science (the teams of Professors Anthony Cleve, Benoît Frénay and Bruno Dumas), it has initiated the development of digital tools in the service of bilingualism and the visibility of LSFB.

The Fonds Namur Université is the University of Namur's interface for its fundraising for patronage, donations and sponsorship. Thanks to the support of donors, the LSBF-French bilingual dictionary project was able to see the light of day.

This project takes as its starting point the fact that the acclimatization of poetry to advertising communication has helped to reinforce its urban inscription, so that today it frequently appears on the walls of our cities, often through fragmentary quotations and isolated verses. It invites us to take these writings seriously and to question the forms, uses and functions of poetic inscription in contemporary urban space.

The aim is to distinguish between authorized inscriptions (commissioned frescoes, window poetry and other installations conceived in collaboration with public authorities) and "wild" writings (spontaneous, raw, ephemeral).

On the side of authorized writings, we find notably quotations from canonical works, but also unpublished works participating in the production of legitimized authors, created to adorn public buildings - which raises a series of questions: is poetry reduced in this case to a simple decorative function? Which texts/extracts are chosen, and in which locations? What forms are favored? Are we banking on formulas that function as "inspirational" or "feel-good " maxims or proverbs, on emblematic extracts aimed at maintaining a common heritage? Should these productions be seen as the manifestation of a soothing "artist capitalism", or can they be seen as mediations that make poetry visible, serving as a first contact and an incentive to discover complex texts? How is the exhibition of the text designed materially (typography, colors, articulation with illustrations, etc.)?

On the side of wild writing, not based on commissions and not benefiting from authorization, other forms and conceptions of poetry are activated, from lyrical slogans to ironic watchwords and from puns to absurd aphorisms. These statements come under the heading of a vivid word vaguely disruptive of the everyday in that it brings salience, playfulness, incongruity, that it de-routinizes.

This is not to overplay the gap between institutional and wild poetic writings: it's striking to observe the multiplication of writings banking on an imaginary of illegality and protest while making it possible to transfer them to other, more instituted and, above all, potentially more sellable media - so that it's also the gentrification(*) of wild writings that we'll be studying in this framework.

(*)Gentrification: the process by which the population of a working-class neighborhood makes way for a more affluent social stratum.

This observatory is devoted to the way literature is also constructed outside the book, through alternative objects and channels, which sometimes nourish and energize the world of letters, but can just as easily evolve at a clear distance from it.

Numerous extra-book productions exploit the resources of literary communication: the handwritten album, the guestbook, the leaflet, the banner, the graffiti, the handmade documents cobbled together by the Surrealists and Situationists, the mimeographed newspaper, the fanzine or, of course, the screen, among many examples, are among these written media welcoming hybrid productions making room for lyricism, fiction or formal experimentation.

It is to these productions that the Observatoire des Littératures Sauvages is dedicated, whose members, from a variety of disciplines, set out to study the articulations of these literary practices to the social world.

International Francqui Chair 2024-2025 - Multilingualism and language learning. Challenges & Opportunities

This International Franqui Chair 2024-2025 is a joint initiative of VUB, Ghent University and Namur University. The Chairholder is Prof. Dr. Jean-Marc Dewaele. He will be present at UNamur for a series of lectures between February 19 and April 2, 2025. A general public conference entitled "How to raise children to become multilingual" will take place on March 11, 2025.

Every year, the F.R.S.-FNRS launches calls for funding for fundamental research. It has set up a range of tools enabling it to offer scientific and technical personnel, equipment and operating resources to researchers, who are the bearers of a project of excellence.

Au sein de l’Institut de recherche NaLTT (Namur Institute of Language, Text and Transmediality), le deuxième quadrimestre a été rythmé par quatre conférences consacrées au langage et à ses articulations avec différentes thématiques sociétales d’actualité : informatique, langue des signes, changement climatique et enfance.

Fin avril, l’Institut NaLTT accueillait Kristin Davidse (KU Leuven) et Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen (UGent), deux professeures membres de l'Académie royale flamande, Wout Van Praet (UCLouvain, ancien doctorant à l’UNamur) et Laura Degrande (UNamur) pour une conférence entre changement climatique et analyse linguistique. Un débat découpé en deux temps.

Le premier exposé, présenté par les chercheurs invités, avait pour objectif d'analyser la communication des citoyens à l'égard de l'action climatique. On distingue quatre principales positions des citoyens : les activistes, les citoyens concernés, les sceptiques et les négationnistes. Les intervenants ont analysé les propos de ces différents profils à travers des lettres à la rédaction dans des lettres à la rédaction, des commentaires sur les actualités en ligne et les médias sociaux, des réponses à des questions ouvertes dans des enquêtes, etc. Les outils analytiques utilisés comprenaient l'analyse narrative polyphonique, l'analyse du discours et l'analyse de l'évaluation.

Dans la deuxième partie, Laura Degrande s'est penchée sur les pancartes de la branche belge du mouvement Youth for Climate qui ont circulé lors des manifestations des jeunes en 2019 (période d’apogée de la mobilisation). Dans son analyse, elle présentait trois axes de ces pancartes : leurs dimensions réflexive et parfois paradoxale et leurs liens au mouvement écoféministe.

Politic tac, tic tac, le climat n’attend pas !

« En amalgamant le terme « politique » et l’onomatopée « tic tac, tic tac », qui mime le son d’une horloge, ce slogan à la fois rappelle l’imminence de la catastrophe climatique et confronte la classe politique. »

Cop ou pas cop de tenir vos engagements

« On a ici un détournement de l’expression « Cap ou pas cap » et une référence à la COP (Conference of the Parties des Nations Unies sur le changement climatique) qui confrontent les dirigeants et les met face à leur responsabilité en matière de politique environnementale. »

A diploma but no future?

« Ce slogan souligne l’absurdité de la réussite scolaire (« a diploma ») au sein d’une conjoncture environnementale qui tend vers l’absence d’avenir (« no future »). »

Mettez la planète en retenue ! Elle sèche plus que nous !

« Cette focalisation sur la question pédagogique est tournée en dérision. Le verbe « sèche », qui est une syllepse ici, articule la grève scolaire au phénomène de désertification en sous-entendant l’insignifiance de l’absentéisme scolaire par rapport aux conséquences de la crise environnementale. »

This planet needs you

« Les jeunes se posent en défenseurs de l’environnement et en porte-paroles d’une nature qui n’a pas de voix. La structure est ici un sujet à la troisième personne du singulier qui réfère à une entité inanimée relative au climat, comme si la pancarte voulait donner la parole à cette entité qu’il s’agit de protéger, que ce soit la nature, l’océan, etc. »

Composé de chercheurs en linguistique et en littérature, NaLTT (Namur Institute of Language, Text and Transmediality) constitue un espace interdisciplinaire de recherches diachroniques et synchroniques portant sur les pratiques communicatives verbales et multimodales qui se manifestent dans, sont formées et/ou régulées par la culture et la société.

NaLTT réunit des chercheurs spécialisés dans l’étude des attitudes, des contacts et des conflits linguistiques, de la traduction, de la politique et de la planification linguistiques, du discours rapporté et de l’expression du point de vue, ainsi que dans l’étude de la multimodalité. L’analyse linguistique des langues signées sur des données de corpus constitue l’une des originalités de NaLTT au sein du LSFB Lab.