Paper short abstract:

The twenty-first century has seen an advocacy for national languages in literature and education in francophone West Africa that suggests a reaffirmation of traditional practices, a changing relationship with the language and culture of the coloniser and a renegotiation of social identity.

Paper long abstract:

Increased literary production in national and regional languages and the introduction of educational linguistic policies that promote local languages and social practices have, over the last few years, suggested a further move away from the culture, institutions and systems of the coloniser towards languages and literatures that celebrate the local and, to some extent, the traditional in francophone West African countries. A contemporaneous shift from rural to urban communities has seen the testing of conventional forms of social and self description and a reconfiguration of groupings and identities that requires new means of expression and, often, a new language which, increasingly, is not French but a national or hybrid language into which French is subsumed. In the Senegalese capital, Dakar, this language is an urban Wolof, heavily influenced by French and progressively disconnected from its related ethnic group. Wolof is becoming a lingua franca in the north of Senegal, contesting French as the language of social mobility and success. It is being taught in schools, published in literary works and passed on to a new generation of migrants making their way to the capital city. This transition from French to Wolof can be seen as a reaffirmation of Senegalese identity and a rejection of the culture inherited from the coloniser, but it can also be viewed as a fresh challenge to local languages and their related cultures from a new dominant force that threatens their very survival.