"Our wish was to create a real dynamic in our teaching and offer coherence to our students by all working around the same theme. Our team was also inspired by initiatives at the Faculty of Law, which has been practicing Fil Rouge for several years," explains Laurence Mettewie, head of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures. "Already last year, without it having been explicitly thought of, several of our department's activities revolved around questions of reconstruction, transmission or even resilience." This observation prompted the team to formalize this approach by choosing a common theme.

Thus, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures has chosen to extend this reflection by looking at how individuals evolve, grow and pass on, with an intergenerational dimension that is particularly close to the team's heart.

Common readings, cinéclub, didactic trips, introductory research topics... there are several educational activities that will illustrate this common thread throughout the year.

The Germa Cinéclub will offer six films, in English, Dutch and German. To inaugurate this cycle, the team has chosen a film that illustrates the theme of lifelines: " Honig im Kopf" by Til Schweiger. This humorous and moving film tells the story of a grandfather suffering from Alzheimer's disease and his granddaughter who will do anything to "save" him, and thus takes a sympathetic look at themes such as dementia, family and memory.

In Dutch, research work in linguistics will focus on the question of linguistic transmission. Students will thus explore how languages are transmitted, are present at different stages of life or how they shed light on intergenerational links, for example through the use of WhatsApp.

The traditional study trip to the Netherlands will also be part of this theme. This year, we're heading for Rotterdam and Fenix, its new museum dedicated to art and migration, where one of the exhibitions recounts stories of mobility, anchorage and passage towards lives they hope will be better. This is an opportunity for students to confront notions of memory, displacement and cultural heritage at the very heart of a museum itinerary conceived as a succession of life lines.

Other activities will enrich the program: student projects specially designed to explore life trajectories, analyses of literary works guided by the theme and meetings with authors from Northern Ireland and Flanders: Wendy Erskine, and Lara Taveirne as well as her French translator Guillaume Deneufbourg.

First appearing in 1976, the concept of a meme was used by biologist Richard Dawkins to refer to an idea or habit that spreads from one person to another. With the rise of digital technology, the term has taken on a new meaning, now referring to images shared and repurposed online, often accompanied by text, which comment on current events, express an emotion, or describe a situation in a few words. But for Lieven Vandelanotte, professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, memes represent a new type of language. "Memes are not just illustrations. They combine text and image in a way that transforms how meaning is constructed," he explains.

A specialist in discourse and English linguistics, Lieven Vandelanotte has been studying reported speech and multimodality for several years, i.e., productions that combine several modes of expression, such as images and text. 

Thanks to his Francqui Research Professorship, obtained in 2023, he has been able to devote more time to this topic. "This position gives me the opportunity to further my research on multimodality and to finalize this book, a project I have been working on for a long time."

The goal of his work? To show that in memes, images play a linguistic role in their own right. "They can replace a word, complete a sentence, or express a point of view. They are a true grammatical component."

Among the memes he analyzes, Lieven Vandelanotte cites the famous Distracted Boyfriend: a man looks away from his girlfriend to admire another woman.
"This meme illustrates the idea of making a choice, changing preferences, turning away from one option to another. A similar idea is expressed by the meme called "Exit 12." An example that combines the two shows that users are well aware that these images are not really used to describe a scenario between lovers or a situation on the highway, but they perceive that different forms, with different images, can have more or less the same meaning."

Another example is the Good Girl Gina meme, where a smiling young woman is associated with phrases describing "positive" behavior. In the Gets mad at you / Tells you why version, the humor is based on the contrast with a sexist stereotype: the protagonist gets angry, but, contrary to the stereotype, she explains why. "In this case, the image acts as the subject of the sentence. It doesn't illustrate the text, it's an integral part of it and plays a full role in constructing meaning," emphasizes Lieven Vandelanotte.

He also mentions the category of when-memes, where a sentence beginning with When... ends with an image. For example: "When you're at a party full of people you don't know so you stay with your friend the whole time ," accompanied by a photo of a small koala clinging to a leg. "Here, the image completes the sentence. It does not directly illustrate the situation, but provides the conclusion, like a separate syntactic segment."

In recent years, Lieven Vandelanotte has participated in numerous conferences to present the results of his research on memes, but none were as original as the recent "Railway Aesthetics" conference. This conference took place on moving trains. Traveling from Vienna to Bucharest, then from Bucharest to Istanbul, the participants lived together in the train cars for the entire duration of the conference. Together with Justin Bai from the University of Colorado, he gave a presentation on the use of trains in internet memes and social media discourse, as in the attached example (a "when-meme" featuring the late chef Anthony Bourdain looking very cool, ironically reflecting the attitude of someone who manages not to be mocked by a French waiter). 

The British Library, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, The Tower Bridge : si vous envisagez de faire du tourisme à Londres, ces lieux feront certainement partie de votre liste de « must-see ». Sachez que désormais vous pourrez aussi les découvrir en écoutant les étudiants de Bloc 2 et 3 du Département de Langues et littératures germaniques. 

Dans le cadre de leur formation, ces étudiantes et étudiants ont la possibilité de participer à un voyage pédagogique de quelques jours dans une ville étrangère pour exercer leurs compétences linguistiques et renforcer leur connaissance de la culture étrangère. Destination choisie cette année ? London !  

Dès le premier quadrimestre, les étudiants ont été encadrés par l’équipe pédagogique du Département de langues et littératures germaniques pour développer ce projet de création d’audioguide. « L’idée de base était de leur demander de créer de petits exposés en anglais sur quelques sites emblématiques de Londres », explique Dirk Delabastita, Professeur de littérature anglaise. « Mais il nous a semblé plus efficace d’enregistrerces exposés sous forme audio, vu la difficulté de se faire entendre par un groupe entier dans la rue », ajoute le Professeur Lieven Vandelanotte, directeur du Département de langues et littératures germaniques .  

Une liste de 23 sites londoniens fut alors dressée, et les sujets répartis entre les étudiants. Encadrés par Noémie Nélis et Louise Dumont, assistantes au Département de langues et littératures germaniques, ces derniers ont été invités dans un premiertemps à mettre par écrit leur propositiond’exposés. « Il fallait s’assurer que le contenu était correct tant sur le fond que sur la forme », explique Noémie Nélis. « Ensuite, un premier enregistrement sonore via smartphone a été réalisé pour permettre de corriger la prononciation », poursuit elle. Quelques semaines plus tard, c’est dans le studio du service audio-visuel de l’UNamurque les apprentis guides touristiques ont pu passer derrière le micro pour enregistrerleurs podcasts. « Nous avons pu bénéficier des conseils et d’un encadrement très professionnel du service audio-visuel », se réjouit Noémie Nélis.  

Résultat final ? 23 podcasts d’une durée de 3 minutes environ, pour connaitre l’histoire, le rôle ou encore le fonctionnement des grands lieux de Londres ! Le tout agrémenté d’une touche d’humour et de quelques anecdotes ! Ils sont accessibles à tous, gratuitement:

« Ces podcasts ont été testés lors de notre voyage fin mars à Londres avec l’ensemble du groupe. Et les retours tant des étudiants que del’équipe pédagogique étaient très satisfaisants. Les étudiants ont aimé l’expérience malgré la charge de travail que cela leur a demandé. Et sur le plan pédagogique, le bilan est aussi positif puisque cela permet de développer différentes compétences comme la maitrise de l’anglais, dans le registre particulier que demande le podcast, et la connaissance de la culture anglaise », se réjouit Lieven Vandelanotte.  

Et il est d’ores et déjà décidé que l’expérience sera reconduite lors de voyages pédagogiques futurs.