The Politics of National Languages in Postcolonial Senegal By Ib ...

This book is divided into eight chapters. This chapter has presented the background to the book and has described the political and ideological context of the language situation in Senegal, marked by a severe duality between the partisans of education in European languages and the advocates of African languages. Chapter 2 starts with a profile of Senegal, focusing on the linguistic and cultural diversity of the population, and also describes the country's frail economic and educational performances. Chapter 3 discusses the French colonial power's introduction of the French language to Senegal in 1817 and the education policies it implemented to impose its language on the Senegalese people while restricting the use and growth of the local languages. Chapter 4 analyses the national languages’ position in the postindependent era and discusses the political and ideological developments that have led to major shifts towards their empowerment. It shows that the postindependent leaders have striven to uphold French as the dominant language while trying to accommodate the national languages in the bigger picture of the linguistic scene. It shows also that changes in the country's leadership have significantly favoured the national languages.

Chapter 5 discusses the foundations of a language policy framework that has been elaborated by the language policy bodies, and it describes the public language institutions that have been created to promote the national languages and to implement policies relating to them. Chapter 5 also reviews two major projects undertaken by national language bodies aimed at promoting literacy and basic education skills. In Chapter 6, language-in-education and literacy policies are addressed, with a particular focus on the languages used in both the formal and the informal education systems. It shows that French, the language of prestige, continues to dominate the formal education system, whereas the national languages are still fighting for space in the system. The national languages, less prestigious and deprived of any official function, are primarily used in the informal education sector—namely, literacy and basic education programmes.

Chapter 7 discusses the media's use of language in Senegal, which is characterised by the overarching domination of French in the print media and of Wolof in the spoken media. The other national languages