Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T10:44:25.440Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the origins of urban Wolof: Evidence from Louis Descemet's 1864 phrase book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2008

FIONA MC LAUGHLIN
FIONA MC LAUGHLIN
Affiliation:
Department of African & Asian Languages & Literatures, & Program in Linguistics, University of Florida, 301 Pugh Hall, PO Box 115565, Gainesville, FL 32611-5565, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Based on evidence from a French-Wolof phrase book published in Senegal in 1864, this article makes the case that urban Wolof, a variety of the language characterized by significant lexical borrowing from French, is a much older variety than scholars have generally claimed. Historical evidence suggests that urban Wolof emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries in the coastal island city of Saint-Louis du Sénégal, France's earliest African settlement and future capital of the colonial entity that would be known as French West Africa. The intimate nature of early contact between African and European populations and the later role played by the métis or mixed-race population of the island as linguistic brokers contributed to a unique, urban variety of Wolof that has important links to today's variety of urban Wolof spoken in Dakar and other cities throughout the country.

Keywords

historical sociolinguisticsurban languagelexical borrowinglinguistic brokersWolofFrenchSaint-Louis du Sénégal
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 37 , Issue 5 , November 2008 , pp. 713 - 735
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abdulaziz, M. H., & Osinde, K. (1997). Sheng and Engsh: Development of mixed codes among the urban youth in Kenya. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 125:43–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auer, Peter (1999). From code-switching via language mixing to fused lects: Toward a dynamic typology of bilingual speech. International Journal of Bilingualism 3:309–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boilat, David (1853). Esquisses sénégalaises. Paris: P. Bertrand. Reprinted 1984, Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Cissé, Mamadou (2005). Les politiques linguistiques au Sénégal: Entre attentisme et interventionnisme. Kotoba to Shakai [Language and Society], special issue on post-empire and multilingual societies in Asia and Africa:266–313.Google Scholar
Coquéry-Vidrovitch, Catherine (1993). La ville coloniale: “Lieu de colonisation” et métissage culturel. Afrique Contemporaine 168:11–22.Google Scholar
Cruise O'Brien, Donal B. (2003). The shadow-politics of wolofisation: Shuffling along to nationhood? In his Symbolic confrontations: Muslims imagining the state in Africa. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Descemet, Louis (1864). Recueil d'environ 1,200 phrases françaises usuelles avec leur traduction en regard en ouolof de Saint-Louis. Saint-Louis, Senegal: Imprimerie Nationale.Google Scholar
Diouf, Mamadou (1998). The French colonial policy of assimilation and the civility of the originaires of the Four Communes (Senegal): A 19th century globalization project. Development and Change 29:671–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dreyfus, Martine, & Juillard, Caroline (2004). Le plurilinguisme au Sénégal: Langues et identités en devenir. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Durand, Jean-Baptiste Léonard (1802). Voyage au Sénégal. Paris: Henri Agasse.Google Scholar
Faidherbe, Louis (1864). Vocabulaire d'environ 1.500 mots français avec leurs correspondants en Ouolof de Saint-Louis, en Poular (Toucouleur) du Fouta, en Soninké (Sarakhollé) de Bakel. Saint-Louis du Sénégal: Imprimerie du Gouvernement.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith T. (1978). Wolof noun classification: The social setting of divergent change. Language in Society 7:37–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Hilary (2003). Citizens and subjects: Métis society, identity and the struggle over colonial politics in Saint Louis, Senegal, 1870–1920. Dissertation, Michigan State University.Google Scholar
Kiessling, Roland, & Mous, Maarten (2004). Urban youth languages in Africa. Anthropological Linguistics 46:303–41.Google Scholar
Labov, William (1994). Principles of linguistic change. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lodge, R. Anthony (2004). A sociolinguistic history of Parisian French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, Gregory (2005). Locating colonial histories: Between France and West Africa. American Historical Review 110:409–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mc Laughlin, Fiona (1997). Noun classification in Wolof: When affixes are not renewed. Studies in African Linguistics 26:1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mc Laughlin, Fiona (2001). Dakar Wolof and the configuration of an urban identity. Journal of African Cultural Studies 14:153–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mc Laughlin, Fiona (2004). Is there an adjective class in Wolof? In Dixon, R. M. W. & Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. (eds.), Adjective classes: A cross-linguistic typology, 242–62. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mc Laughlin, Fiona (2008). Language and national identity in Senegal: The emergence of a national lingua franca. In Simpson, Andrew (ed.), Language and national identity in Africa, 79–97. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meechan, Marjory, & Poplack, Shana (1995). Orphan categories in bilingual discourse: Adjectivization strategies in Wolof-French and Fongbe-French. Language Variation and Change 7:169–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milroy, James (1992). Linguistic variation and change. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (1996). The founder principle in creole genesis. Diachronica 13:83–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2001). The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2002). Colonisation, globalisation, and the future of languages in the twenty-first century. International Journal on Multicultural Societies 4:162–93.Google Scholar
Myers-Scotton, Carol (1993). Duelling languages: Grammatical structure in codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ngom, Fallou (2006). Lexical borrowings as sociolinguistic variables in Saint-Louis, Senegal. Munich: LINCOM Europa.Google Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise (1991). Arts of the contact zone. Profession (MLA) 91:33–40.Google Scholar
Richardson, Irvine (1961). Some observations on the status of Town Bemba in Northern Rhodesia. African Language Studies 2:25–36.Google Scholar
Robinson, David (2000). Paths of accommodation: Muslim societies and French colonial authorities in Senegal and Mauritania, 1880–1920. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, & Oxford: James Currey.Google Scholar
Saugnier, M. (1792). Relations de plusieurs voyages à la Côte d'Afrique. Paris: J.P. Roux.Google Scholar
Searing, James (2005). Signares and sailors in Senegal's Atlantic port cities: Saint-Louis and Gorée, 1750–1850. Paper presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association. Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Sinou, Alain (1993). Comptoirs et villes coloniales du Sénégal: Saint-Louis, Gorée, Dakar. Paris: Karthala–ORSTOM.Google Scholar
Spitulnik, Debra A. (1999). The language of the city: Town Bemba as urban hybridity. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8(2):30–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swigart, Leigh (1992a). Two codes or one? The insiders' view and the description of codeswitching in Dakar. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 13:83–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swigart, Leigh (1992b). Practice and perception: Language use and attitudes in Dakar. Dissertation, University of Washington.Google Scholar
Swigart, Leigh (1994). Cultural creolisation and language use in post-colonial Africa: The case of Senegal. Africa 64:175–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar