BEYOND THE DIFFICULTY ATTRACTOR: AN INTERPRETATIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF FRENCH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE PERCEPTION IN ANGLOPHONE SCHOOLS AND THE TRIPARTITE DISRUPTIVE FRAMEWORK

Abstract : This study investigates how non-native anglophone learners of French as a Foreign Language phenomenologically construct their perception of french within two anglophone schools. Drawing on Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis and ten semi-structured interviews complemented by three discussion groups, this paper argues that the difficulty perception documented in the FFL literature is neither a stable learner trait nor an artefact of pedagogical method alone, but a dynamically stabilised, colonially sedimented attractor. Three theoretically generative propositions are advanced and integrated into the Tripartite Disruptive Framework for FFL perception in post-colonial anglophone contexts: (i) the Colonial-Affective Filter, which adds an ideological membrane above the psychological layer of affect; (ii) Phenomenological Accessibility Theory, which reframes difficulty as childhood-layered sedimentation accessible through IPA’s double hermeneutics; and (iii) Dynamic Perceptual Resonance Theory, which treats difficulty as a self-reinforcing attractor state within Complex Dynamic Systems Theory. Anchored in 2020–2026 scholarship on positive psychology, decolonial pedagogy, and dynamic SLA, TRIPARTITE DISRUPTIVE FRAMEWORK offers a testable, falsifiable model that can be replicated, refuted, or extended in subsequent FFL research across other post-colonial sites.    Keywords: French as a Foreign Language; IPA; foreign language anxiety; decolonising pedagogy; Complex Dynamic Systems Theory; anglophone Africa.