L2 Journal

How do researchers in the humanities and social sciences collaborate when each of them belongs to different linguistic, academic, and ideological spaces? This situation highlights those who dare to tread more transgressive paths than suggested by the term 'international collaboration', which is inherently prestigious scientifically. The article pays tribute to the figure of the border passer represented by Claire Kramsch.

While it is generally assumed that research must be disseminated in English, this article sheds light on the underlying theoretical assumptions behind this imperative and critically examines them within a field—didactique des langues in French or applied linguistics in English—that places linguistic plurality at the heart of its inquiry. Drawing on two academic contexts, one rooted in the European, specifically the French, tradition, and the other situated within the Anglophone academic sphere, this article seeks to unpack the processes involved when one consciously works in the “in-between” of languages, making explicit the inevitable gaps or reinterpretations which such work entails.