Dakar Wolof and the configuration of an urban identity

Abstract

The turbulent period of political and social unrest at the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s in Senegal gave rise to the l movement in which the city of Dakar was recreated in the historical imagination of its youth. This essay argues that the movement coincided with the emergence of a self-conscious urban identity among the Dakar population , evidenced by a variety of artistic expression that focuses on and exalts the culture of the city. Central to the notion of an urban identity is the role of Dakar Wolof, a variety of the language that has signi cantly diverged from the more conservative dialects spoken in the rural areas, primarily by incorporatin g massive lexical borrowing from French. Dakar Wolof is portrayed in sustained written form for the rst time in two comics that appeared during this period: Boy Dakar by Ibou Fall and Aziz Bâ, and Ass et Oussou by Omar Diakité. This essay discusses the hybrid nature of Dakar Wolof and its depiction in written form in the two comics. Finally, it is argued that Dakar Wolof has had a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity in the Senegalese context and has contributed to the emergence of a de-ethnicized urban identity.

Intergenerational Communication Beliefs Across the Lifespan: Comparative Data from Ghana and South Africa

“…Nonetheless, there is much sociolinguistic and language policy work on the status of English and French in Africa (e.g., Kamwangamalu, 2002;Louw, 2004;Mazrui, 2004;Omoniyi, 2003), the rise of urban vernaculars (e.g., Childs, 1997;Githiora, 2002;McLaughin, 2001), and the decline of indigenous languages in different regions of Africa (e.g., Baldauf & Kaplan, 2004;Batibo, 2005;Muthwii, 2003) that is of the utmost communicative relevance. However, communication research per se emerging out of this continent is quite limited and is confined to the ways in which modernization impacts traditional communication, how the latter is evoked in modern contexts such as via praise poetry (e.g., Finnegan, 2002;Yankah, 1998), and how Africans mistrust new communication technologies-even the telephone and radio-through the use of derogatory language; the Akan of Ghana, for example, refer to newspapers as koowwa kratta, meaning loose-tongued (Yankah, 1995).…”

Snack Sharing and the Moral Metalanguage of Exchange: Children's Reproduction of Rank‐Based Redistribution in Senegal

“…The Wolof spoken most commonly in the capital includes substantial lexical borrowings from French. Linguists have dubbed this variety “urban Wolof,” arguing that Senegalese urbanites intertwine French and Wolof to an extent that goes beyond “code‐switching” and constitutes a code in itself (McLaughlin , ; Swigart ). Indeed, speaking either language without borrowing from the other proves difficult for many Dakarois.…”

“…Indeed, speaking either language without borrowing from the other proves difficult for many Dakarois. Urban Wolof functions as an unmarked register, whereas “pure” Wolof is associated with rural speakers from ethnically Wolof villages and French indexes formality or foreigness (Bassene and Szatrowski ; McLaughlin , ). French fluency is the mark of an urban, educated elite, for whom the language provides access to employment in Senegal's formal economic sector and facilitates migration abroad.…”

Understanding and forecasting Ethnolinguistic Vitality

“…She presents many different factors and circumstances that helped bring this to pass. Among these factors were the early military and political strength of the Wolof (Mc Laughlin 2008, 150), a Wolof-speaking influential métis society (Searing 2005), the peanut trade in the city of Dakar (Mc Laughlin 2008, 513), and the association of Wolof to a valued urban identity (Mc Laughlin 2001).…”