Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

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Beside the indigenous Wolof culture, there are many other influences which play an important
role in the city’s life : rural immigrants, the ex-colonial French power, other African citizens
and the Arab and Anglo-Saxon presence. In Yoff, multilingualism has evolved around three
poles: the official language French, the mixed code French-Wolof, also called Urban Wolof
(Swigart, 1992) and the local dialect Lebou. The Yoffois make daily choices between these
elements of their linguistic repertoire.
One series of attitudes I’ve tried to examine is precisely the one concerning language choice.
My informants revealed to be having clear ideas of which languages represented the
appropriate choice in defined conversational situations. The appropriateness of the language
choice here is intimately linked with the face-saving character of the speech act. Especially
with regard to the use of the former colonial language, both in its pure form and in its mixing
with the indigenous language, informants had some outspoken ideas about its appropriate use.
What strikes here is the distinction my informants make between the pragmatic use of French,
and the more ‘sentimental’ use of it, that is for identity marking. (For theories on sentimental
and instrumental language use, see Hofman & Cais, 1984; van Hout & Münstermann, 1988.)
The latter is identified by features such as pronunciation or the amount of French words used
in the Urban Wolof code. Whereas the pragmatic function of French is accepted as a general
fact in Senegalese society (see Versluys, forthcoming) the ‘marked’ use of French is judged
negatively and associated with charged concepts such as ‘assimilé’, ‘complexé’ and
‘intellectuel’. We see thus that the evaluation of appropriateness and of face-saving
characteristics not only depends on the language choice itself, but also on the way in which
the chosen language is spoken. Or, as one informant puts it: « Je n’ai rien contre quelqu’un
qui parle français par habitude, mais si contre quelqu’un qui parle français pour se donner un
air de toubab. » (toubab being the term to indicate a white or Western individual.)
References:
Hofman J.E. & J. Cais, “Children’s attitudes to language maintenance and shift”, in
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 50, 1984, pp.147–153
Swigart L., “Two codes or one? The insider’s view and the description of codeswitching in
Dakar” in Eastman C. (Ed.), Codeswitching, Clevedon, Multilingual Matters, 1992, pp.
83–102
Van Hout R. & H. Münstermann, “The multidimensionality of domain configurations”, in
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 74, 1988, pp. 107–124
Versluys E., “Challenging power: language attitudes and pragmatism in contemporary
Dakar”, in Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 1, forthcoming