This paper traces the historical development of lexicography in Gabon. Gabon, like most African countries, is multilingual. The recent inventories of languages spoken in Gabon are those established by Jacquot (1978) and Kwenzi-Mikala (1998). According to Kwenzi-Mikala (1997), there are 62 speech forms divided into 10 language groups or language-units in Gabon. These speech forms co-exist with French, the official language. In fact, in article 2 of paragraph 8 of the revised Constitution of 1994 the following can be read: "The Gabonese Republic adopts French as the official language. Furthermore, she endeavours to protect and promote the national languages."This constitutional arrangement naturally makes French the language used in education, administration and the media.The survey of lexicography in Gabon that is presented here includes the linguistic situation in and the language policy of Gabon, the lexicographic survey itself, as well as the lexicographic needs of the different speech forms (including languages and dialects). Initially, the pioneers of Gabonese lexicography were missionaries or colonial administrators. Very little was done in this field by the Gabonese themselves. Although credit is to be given to these early works, there are a number of shortcomings regarding the linguistic as well as the metalexicographic contents of dictionaries and lexicons produced during this period. In fact, the main weak point of those studies was the lack of tones in the written transcription of oral productions and orthographic problems.Furthermore, in those contributions, the theory of lexicography is largely unknown and lexicographic works are hardly ever based on authentic data corpora of the languages being described. Keywords: SPEECH FORMS, LANGUAGE GROUP(S),

Abstract:The present article is a plea for mother tongue education dictionary projects in Gabonese lexicography. The latter has been in a fast-developing process for the past twenty years and has experienced quite an important crop of dictionary products in such a short time. However, the production of dictionaries for mother tongue education, especially for Gabonese native languages, has been totally neglected. Only a very limited number of projects, which have ever since remained at the level of studies, do exist. This article provides a conceptual plan for mother tongue education dictionary production in Gabonese native languages. It successively suggests an organisation plan and a dictionary conceptualisation plan.

This paper is a response to Mavoungou (2013a) who has pleaded for the production of a dictionary of Gabonese French as variant B of the French language.Résumé: Quel français pour la lexicographie du français gabonais? Cet article est une réponse à Mavoungou (2013a) qui plaide pour la production d'un dictionnaire du français gabonais en tant que variante B de la langue française. Il vise à comprendre le concept de « français gabonais ». Il donne un aperçu de la situation du français au sein de la diversité linguistique du Gabon comme une contribution à la perspective théorique vers la création de la lexicographie du français gabonais. Des réponses sont données aux questions suivantes: Quel français est-il décrit dans les études existantes du français gabonais? Quel français est-il et devrait-il être présenté dans la production des dictionnaires du français gabonais?