Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T15:57:24.361Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The discursive pathway of two centuries of raciolinguistic stereotyping: ‘Africans as incapable of speaking French’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2017

Cécile B. Vigouroux
Cécile B. Vigouroux*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
*
Address for correspondence: Cécile B. Vigouroux Simon Fraser University, Department of French, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby British Columbia V5A1S6, Canada[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article is about the discursive pathway of grammatical structures such as y'a bon ‘there's good’, documenting how, in Hexagonal France, it has become an ‘enregistered emblem’ for indexing sub-Saharan Africans and, by extension, any African as allegedly incapable of speaking French competently. I argue that tracing pathways makes it possible to unveil the intricacy of the historicities of production, circulation, and interpretations of such racially based linguistic stereotypes. One of the central questions addressed in this article is: What are the sociohistorical conditions of the emergence and maintenance of these linguistic stereotypes? I show that these are grounded in long-standing linguistic ideologies of French as an exceptional language and of African languages and, therefore, their speakers, as primitive. I demonstrate how the rise of first age mass culture in the nineteenth century contributed to both the entextualization and the circulation of these stereotypical representations. (Stereotypes, mediatization, enregisterment, language ideology, France, Africa)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 46 , Special Issue 1: Metapragmatics of Mobility , February 2017 , pp. 5 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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.)

Footnotes

* I would like to express my gratitude to Adrienne Lo and Joseph Sung-Yul Park as well as Angela Reyes and the anonymous reviewer of Language in Society for their constructive comments that helped me strengthen my arguments. I am solely responsible for the remaining shortcomings.

References

Agha, Asif (2003). The social life of cultural value. Language & Communication 23:231–73.Google Scholar
Agha, Asif (2007). Language and social relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Anonymous (1916). Le français tel que le parlent nos tirailleurs sénégalais. Paris: Imprimerie Librairie Militaire Universelle.Google Scholar
Bancel, Nicolas; Blanchard, Pascal; Boëtsch, Gilles; Deroo, Éric; & Lemaire, Sandrine (eds.) (2002). Zoos humains. Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland (1974). Théorie du texte. In Encyclopedia Universalis. Online: http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/theorie-du-texte/; accessed September 18, 2015.Google Scholar
Bauman, Richard, & Briggs, Charles (1990). Poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19:59–88.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi K. (1983). The other question. Screen 24(6):18–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilé, Serge, & Audifac, Ignace (2012). Singe: Les dangers de la bananisation des esprits. Achères: Éditions Dagan.Google Scholar
Blanchard, Pascal, & Boncel, Nicolas (1998). De l'indigène à l'immigré. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (2005). Discourse: A critical introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan (2008). Artefactual ideologies and the textual production of African languages. Language and Communication 28:291–307.Google Scholar
Bloom, Peter J. (2008). French colonial documentary: Mythologies of humanitarianism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Boëtsch, Gilles (2003). Sciences, savants et colonies. In Blanchard, Pascal & Lemaire, Sandrine (eds.), Culture coloniale 1871–1931, 55–66. Paris: Éditions Autrement.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre (1986). The forms of capital. In Richardson, John G. (ed.), Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education, 231–58. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Braudel, Fernand (1969). Histoire et sciences sociales: La longue durée. Écrits sur l'histoire, 41–83. Paris: Flammarion.Google Scholar
Chaudenson, Robert (2001). Creolization of language and culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cohen, William (1980). The French encounter with Africans: White responses to Blacks, 1530–1880. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Costantini, Dino (2008). Mission civilisatrice. Le rôle de l'histoire coloniale dans la construction de l'identité politique française. Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Costantino, Alessandro (2011). Bande dessinée franco-belge, petit-nègre et imaginaire colonial. Publifarum 14. Online: http://publifarum.farum.it/ezine_articles.php?id=207; accessed February 8, 2015.Google Scholar
Courtine, Jean-Jacques (1981). Quelques problèmes théoriques et méthodologiques en analyse du discours. À propos du discours communiste addressé aux Chrétiens. Langages 62:9–128.Google Scholar
Couturier, Lucie (1920). Des inconnus chez moi. Paris: Éditions de la Sirène.Google Scholar
Dauzat, Albert (1954). Le génie de la langue française. Paris: Payot.Google Scholar
Delafosse, Maurice (1904). Vocabulaires comparatifs de plus de 60 langues ou dialectes parlés à la Côte d'Ivoire et dans les régions limitrophes. Paris: E. Leroux.Google Scholar
Delisle, Philippe (2008). Bande dessinée franco-belge et imaginaire colonial. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Deroo, Éric (2003). Mourir: l'appel à l'empire. In Blanchard, Pascal & Lemaire, Sandrine (eds.), Culture coloniale 1871–1931, 107–18. Paris: Éditions Autrement.Google Scholar
Errington, Joseph (2008). Linguistics in a colonial world. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving (1981). Forms of talk. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart (1997). The spectacle of the other. In Hall, Stuart (ed.), Cultural representation and signifying practice, 223–90. London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Harries, Patrick (1988). The roots of ethnicity: Discourse and the politics of language construction in South-East Africa. African Affairs 87(346):25–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hergé (1930/2006). Tintin au Congo. Tournai: Casterman.Google Scholar
Houis, Maurice (1984). Une variété idéologique: Le ‘langage tirailleur’. Afrique et Langage 21:5–17.Google Scholar
Iedema, Rick (2001). Resemiotization. Semiotica 137(1/4):23–39.Google Scholar
Iedema, Rick (2009). Multimodality, resemiotization: Extending the analysis of discourse as multi-semiotic practice. Visual Communication 2(1):29–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Irvine, Judith (1993). Mastering African languages: The politics of linguistics in nineteenth-century Senegal. Social Analysis 33:27–46.Google Scholar
Irvine, Judith, & Gal, Susan (2000). Language ideology and linguistic differentiation. In Kroskrity, Paul V. (ed.), Regimes of language: Ideologies, polities, and identities, 35–83. Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press.Google Scholar
Kalifa, Dominique (2001). La culture de masse en France. Paris: La Découverte.Google Scholar
Lowe, Kate (2005). Introduction: The black African presence in Renaissance Europe. In Earle, Tom F. & Lowe, Kate (eds.), Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, 1–16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mangin, Charles (1910). La force noire. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Manning, Paul (2010). The semiotics of brand. Annual Review of Anthropology 39:33–49.Google Scholar
Meschonnic, Henri (1997). De la langue française. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Moore, Robert (2003). From genericide to viral marketing: On ‘brand’. Language & Communication 23:331–57.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (1989). Colonial, hypermetropic, and wishful linguistics. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages 4:241–54.Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko S. (2001). The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ochs, Elinor (1979). Transcription as theory. In Ochs, Elinor & Schieffelin, Bambi (eds.), Developmental pragmatics, 43–72. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Rey, Alain; Duval, Frédérique; & Siouffi, Gilles (2007). Mille ans de langue française. Paris: Perrin.Google Scholar
Rivarol, Count of (1784/1991). De l'universalité de la langue française. Paris: Obsidiane.Google Scholar
Sadoul, Numa (2000). Tintin et moi: Entretiens avec Hergé. Paris: Casterman.Google Scholar
Said, Edward W. (1977). Orientalism. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Seillan, Jean Marie (2006). Aux sources du roman colonial (1983–1914). Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael (1996). Monoglot ‘standard’ in America: Standardization and metaphors of linguistic hegemony. In Brenneis, Donald & Macaulay, Ronald K. S. (eds.), The matrix of language: Contemporary linguistic anthropology, 284–306. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Silverstein, Michael, & Urban, Greg (1996). Entextualization, replication and power. In Silverstein, Michael & Urban, Greg (eds.), Natural histories of discourse, 21–44. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Terrio, Susan J. (2000). Crafting the culture and history of French chocolate. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Van den Avenne, Cécile (2012). Le petit manuel français–bambara à l’époque coloniale, entre description et appropriation pratique. Canadian Journal of African Studies 46(2):251–70.Google Scholar
Vigouroux, Cécile B. (2009). The making of a scription: A case study on authority and authorship. Text and Talk 29(5):615–37.Google Scholar
Vigouroux, Cécile B. (2013). Francophonie. Annual Review of Anthropology 42:379–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vigouroux, Cécile B. (2015a). How one reads whom and why. In Stroud, Christopher & Prinsloo, Martin (eds.), Language, literacy and diversity: Moving words, 92–113. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vigouroux, Cécile B. (2015b). Genre, heteroglossic performances, and new identity: Stand-up comedy in modern French society. Language in Society 44:243–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wortham, Stanton, & Reyes, Angela (2015). Discourse analysis beyond the speech event. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wortham, Stanton, & Reyes, Angela, & Rhodes, Catherine R. (2015). Narratives across speech events. In De Fina, Anna & Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (eds.), The handbook of narrative analysis, 160–77. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar