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Current sociolinguistic patterns in Dakar, Senegal, suggest that the French language shares its position as legitimate language, in the sense suggested by Bourdieu, with a mixed Wolof/French code that enjoys no official recognition. This contradiction is explored through the examination of a historic public speech delivered by Senegal's president in 1988 and the linguistic ideologies that the various reactions to this speech represent. It will be seen that the growing use of "Urban Wolof" during the last decade in the informal economic sector, the mass media, and advertising both reflects and reinforces the emergence of a new ideology that attributes an "alternative legitimacy" to this linguistic hybrid.

Scholars have recently begun to describe a speech form emerging in post-colonial cities which reflects the creative melding or ‘creolisation’ of elements from indigenous and former colonial cultures. These ‘urban varieties’ are not, strictly speaking, Creoles but rather indigenous languages whose structures and lexicons have been adapted to the complexities of urban life. A primary characteristic of such varieties is their ‘devernacularisation’. No longer tied to the cultural values represented by the languages in their more traditional forms, they reflect instead the new values and way of life found in the urban centres where they are spoken. This article, based on fieldwork conducted in Senegal between 1986 and 1989, describes the formation and role of one such urban linguistic variety, Urban Wolof. In particular, it focuses on Dakarois’ conflicting tendencies to accept Urban Wolof in Dakar as the most pragmatic form of urban communication while rejecting it as evidence of an undesirable creolisation between indigenous and French culture.

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