Practice in Search of a Paradigm: Language Rights, Linguistic Citizenship and Minority Language Communities in Senegal

Abstract

Appropriate models for understanding the dynamics of language use in society are essential to effective language policy and planning. Particularly in African contexts, such models must speak to the unique features of multilingual environments, and they must account for the differences in prestige and value which occur between languages in these contexts. Two paradigms of language and identity that are under discussion in Africa today are the language rights and linguistic citizenship paradigms. These two paradigms describe the social and political aspects of minority language use in very different ways. This paper examines various aspects of these two models, using data gathered on six local language communities in Senegal, West Africa. It explores the applicability of the two models to the realities of these communities and their national context, and offers observations regarding the utility of the two for framing the language development task in sub-Saharan Africa.

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