“It’s a Mixture of Bambara and French”

Abstract

Analyzing multilingual narratives through peasants’ notebooks from mali mixing French and bambara In this article, a sociologist and a linguist confront their analyses accounting for multilingual literacy practices in a post-colonial context, where three languages with very different statuses and that have very different functions are in contact (French, the language of the former colony and current official language; Bambara, a vernacular and vehicular language whose status is that of a national language ; Arabic, the language of religion). We attempt to describe the way these languages are mixed in written material, and draw attention to the graphic devices used to pinpoint the code-switching, thus accounting for the specific qualities of written as opposed to oral code-switching, which has been the focus of previous research on the topic. Another point we wish to make is that the sociological background of the writer and the linguistic features of the text can be better understood when studied together.

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