السياسات اللغوية في السنغال بعد الاستقلال – قراءة في الواقع الفكراني والسياسي في السنغال

Abstract

The study seeks to shed light on the issues of linguistic policies following the independence of Senegal from the French occupation. It also seeks to establish a historical framework for the French colonial legacies represented in the implementation of westernization plans through certain mechanisms, the most prominent of which was language. France used the outputs of a planned linguistic policy it employed previously on Senegalese peasants to impose the French language. This language was the focus of conflict in Senegal during the French occupation, and it did not stop with its independence in 1960, but continued with President Leopold Sedar Senghor, who waged linguistic wars with the elite opposing French imperialist ideas against national local languages. We adopted the theory of planning and linguistic policies and applied procedural mechanisms from the field of socio-linguistics.

We based our research on official blogs from the Senegalese government and political opponents, and we followed the planning and language policy theory and applied sociolinguistic approaches. The theory was also integrated with historical, descriptive and critical approaches. The results proved that linguistic planning in Senegal is based on those linguistic wars stemming from repression and violence, and on the exercise of coarse force methods, when the French ruler Faidherbe used coercion and the use of power, which left negative effects on the lives of the Senegalese at the level of administration, economy and culture, which extended for five decades after independence without any change, and still brings negative effects in the Senegalese linguistic reality.