The Role of Wolof in Multilingual Conversations in the Casamance

Fluidity of linguistic repertoires

Author: Miriam Maria Weidl. Series edited by: Klaus Beyer, Henning Schreiber.

Series: LCA Language Contact in Africa Volume 7

The present monograph constitutes a sociolinguistic study of small-scale multilingualism in rural Casamance (Senegal). This region is characterised by extensive societal and individual multilingualism, due in large part to the maintenance of many small local languages. However, also prominent in speakers’ repertoires is Wolof, the de facto national language of Senegal, which is the focus of this study.

Wolof belongs to the Atlantic group of the Niger-Congo language family and is spoken by about 5.2 million people in Senegal. While there is a considerable body of research on Wolof in urban centres of the country, no attention has been paid to rural Casamance, where research has generally focused on languages with local status. This is despite the fact that the use of Wolof has been on the rise in this region for more than a century and is connected to many elements of social life.

The central aim of this study is to investigate what role Wolof plays in the linguistic repertoires, practices and lives of multilingual individuals belonging to one household in the village of Djibonker. Research attention has been devoted to an understanding of the social environments in the village, and to the individuals’ metalinguistic and metapragmatic awareness. The study adopts an ethnographic approach combining participant observations, semi-structured interviews, informal discussions and participatory videography data in order to explore the role of Wolof. Furthermore, it triangulates the data in analysis to consider the researchers’, observers’ and speakers’ points of view.

The study reveals that Wolof is prominent in repertoires and discourse, but its role is fluid and may differ according to the experiences and identities of the participants as well as the relationship between them. Furthermore, findings illustrate that Wolof has a greater presence than estimated and reported by the speakers. Wolofisation however, which is often seen as a threat to smaller languages and language ecologies in Senegal, can be precluded; Wolof does not occupy another language’s place but is rather added to the multilingual repertoires of speakers.

Following the links below, you will find further publications on descriptions of and contributions to paper collections concerning Atlantic languages, sociolinguistics and speaker behaviour:

Accompanying material:

• African Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural Studies (ISBN 978-3-89645-721-9)
• Codeswitching in Gambia (ISBN 978-3-927620-24-7)
• L’expression du temps en wolof (ISBN 978-3-89645-557-4)
• La qualification dans les langues africaines / Qualification in African Languages (ISBN 978-3-89645-253-5)
• Language Contact in Guinea (ISBN 978-3-89645-906-0)
• Topics in West African Discourse-Pragmatics (ISBN 978-3-89645-856-8)
• Vies quotidiennes à Dakar (Sénégal) / Everyday Life in Dakar (Senegal) / Nettaliy dundin ci Ndakaaru, bis bu nekk (ISBN 978-3-89645-285-6)

Cross-reference:

• APAL Annual Publication in African Linguistics (ISBN 978-3-89645-502-4)
• Interrogative and Syntactic Inquiries (ISBN 978-3-89645-723-3)
• Les classes nominales dans les langues atlantiques (ISBN 978-3-89645-565-9)
• Linguistic Landshapes (ISBN 978-3-89645-085-2)
• Morphosyntaxe du jóola banjal (ISBN 978-3-89645-548-2)
• The Amazigh Language at Home and at School (ISBN 978-3-89645-921-3)

© 2024 by Rüdiger Köppe Verlag – www.koeppe.de

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