Senegal claimed political independence from France in 1960, and Leopold Sedhar Senghor became Senegal's first president. Even though Senegal was no longer a French colony, Senghor was determined to maintain the dominance of French culture and language in his country. However, pressure to give national languages more power and space, which had already started during French occupation, continued intensely after independence. Senghor's political adversaries as well as teacher and student unions, workers, and various activist groups roundly criticized Senghor's government for the language and education programs he chose for the Senegalese people. The issue of national languages thus became a major political issue in Senegal with a far-reaching and longstanding impact. This book is a comprehensive study on the current language policies and practices in Senegal. It illuminates the tension that has arisen from the enduring colonial legacies and their influences in postcolonial language policies in Senegal. It also highlights the need for vigorous policy change to recognize the Senegalese languages, especially in education, and how the preservation of these languages is critical to identity and culture issues. The book shows that it is important for the Senegalese people to retain their original local languages and how French and English are not simply the only languages needed for Senegal's success in the globalized economy. In addition to a detailed history with supporting facts and figures, this study also links socioeconomic, cultural, and political events in its analysis of the unstoppable rise of Wolof, which is posing a significant threat to the already-fragile local linguistic ecology. This book will be of interest to scholars in applied and social linguistics, African studies, and policy studies.

Many introductions to comics scholarship books begin with an anecdote recounting the author’s childhood experiences reading comics, thereby testifying to the power of comics to engage and impact youth, but comics and power are intertwined in a numbers of ways that go beyond concern for children’s reading habits. Comics and Power presents very different methods of studying the complex and diverse relationship between comics and power. Divided into three sections, its 14 chapters discuss how comics interact with, reproduce, and/or challenge existing power structures – from the comics medium and its institutions to discourses about art, subjectivity, identity, and communities. The contributors and their work, as such, represent a new generation of comics research that combines the study of comics as a unique art form with a focus on the ways in which comics – like any other medium – participate in shaping the societies of which they are part.

This book deals with creolization and pidginization of language, culture and identity and makes use of interdisciplinary approaches developed in the study of the latter. Creolization and pidginization are conceptualized and investigated as specific social processes in the course of which new common languages, socio-cultural practices and identifications are developed under distinct social and political conditions and in different historical and local contexts of diversity. The contributions show that creolization and pidginization are important strategies to deal with identity and difference in a world in which diversity is closely linked with inequalities that relate to specific group memberships, colonial legacies and social norms and values.

This book is comprehensive study of the geopolitical, geolinguistic, and geostrategic challenges facing France and the French language in post-independence Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa. It shows that, in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, France’s reputation and image are significantly damaged. France has been accused of neo-colonial behaviour because of its repeated political and military interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign countries, its support of unpopular governments, and its stranglehold over the finances, economies and resources of Francophone sub-Saharan Africa. The book also highlights that the challenges faced by the French language in the region are complex because of the significant use of African languages and the growing attraction of English. Using Senegal as a case study to examine language use, attitudes, and languages education in this region, the book shows that the Senegalese people, like most Francophone sub-Saharan Africans, are strongly attached to their own languages, they are loyal to the French language, and they admire the English language. This text will be of interest to scholars in French and Francophone studies, applied linguists, African studies, and policy studies.

Winner, 2021 African Literature Association First Book Award Should a writer work in a former colonial language or in a vernacular? The language question was one of the great, intractable problems that haunted postcolonial literatures in the twentieth century, but it has since acquired a reputation as a dead end for narrow nationalism. This book returns to the language question from a fresh perspective. Instead of asking whether language matters, The Tongue-Tied Imagination explores how the language question itself came to matter. Focusing on the case of Senegal, Warner investigates the intersection of French and Wolof. Drawing on extensive archival research and an under-studied corpus of novels, poetry, and films in both languages, as well as educational projects and popular periodicals, the book traces the emergence of a politics of language from colonization through independence to the era of neoliberal development. Warner reads the francophone works of well-known authors such as Léopold Senghor, Ousmane Sembène, Mariama Bâ, and Boubacar Boris Diop alongside the more overlooked Wolof-language works with which they are in dialogue. Refusing to see the turn to vernacular languages only as a form of nativism, The Tongue-Tied Imagination argues that the language question opens up a fundamental struggle over the nature and limits of literature itself. Warner reveals how language debates tend to pull in two directions: first, they weave vernacular traditions into the normative patterns of world literature; but second, they create space to imagine how literary culture might be configured otherwise. Drawing on these insights, Warner brilliantly rethinks the terms of world literature and charts a renewed practice of literary comparison.

This text illustrates the crucial role of the mother tongue literacy in second language acquisition by presenting findings from a comparative study conducted in primary schools in Senegal. In addition, the volume provides an in-depth look at the linguistic history of Senegal before, during, and after French colonialism. The Impact of Mother Tongue Illiteracy on Second Language Acquisition discusses the socio-linguistic landscape and ethnolinguistic composition of Senegal and its effect on the second language acquisition. An in-depth analysis of children’s phonological awareness, decoding, and reading comprehension in French reveals significant disparities in the literacy skills of Wolof children who have been exposed to Arabic and Qur’anic texts prior to schooling, and those who have not. In doing so, the text explores the impacts of post-colonial language policies in Africa, highlights the pedagogical consequences of mother tongue illiteracy, and questions the use of French as the only language of instruction in Senegalese schools. This detailed research text will of great interest and use to graduate and postgraduate students, researchers, academics, professionals and policy makers in the field of Second Language Acquisition, Multicultural Education, Applied Linguistics, French language education and, Language Policy and Planning.

This book explores the discourse of traditional values and local practices within the formal educational system in Senegal, investigating how these cultural elements are present in the daily life of the community and integrated into formal schools and teaching. Studying the integration of concepts such as Jom (hard work, pride, dignity), Kersa (decency), Fule (self-respect), Mun (endurance), Teranga (hospitality), Kal (kinship), and Suture (Protection), it looks at how values are used, perceived and understood within communities, as well as their positive and negative connotations in the postcolonial context. Based on long-term participant education and utilizing a critical auto-ethnography lens, it ultimately proposes that such concepts can be used to counterbalance the Western knowledge to which schoolchildren are mostly exposed, connecting this to Bhaba’s system of the ‘Third Space”; a hybrid system to accommodate both educational systems for more relevant education. An informed study of the positive impacts of traditional cultural values on education in Senegal, it will appeal to scholars, researchers and practitioners of education in post-colonial Francophone countries with interests in culturally relevant education, African education, post-colonial education, and international education.

These volumes offer a one-stop resource for researching the lives, customs, and cultures of Africa's nations and peoples. Unparalleled in its coverage of contemporary customs in all of Africa, this multivolume set is perfect for both high school and public library shelves. The three-volume encyclopedia will provide readers with an overview of contemporary customs and life in North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa through discussions of key concepts and topics that touch everyday life among the nations' peoples. While this encyclopedia places emphasis on the customs and cultural practices of each state, history, politics, and economics are also addressed. Because entries average 14,000 to 15,000 words each, contributors are able to expound more extensively on each country than in similar encyclopedic works with shorter entries. As a result, readers will gain a more complete understanding of what life is like in Africa's 54 nations and territories, and will be better able to draw cross-cultural comparisons based on their reading.

Education in West Africa is a comprehensive critical reference guide to education in the region. Written by regional experts, the book explores the education systems of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. It critically examines the development of education provision in each country, whilst exploring both local and global contexts. Including a comparative introduction to the issues facing education in the region as a whole, this handbook is an essential reference for researchers, scholars, international agencies and policy-makers at all levels.

How do governments in Africa make decisions about language? What does language have to do with state-building, and what impact might it have on democracy? This manuscript provides a longue durée explanation for policies toward language in Africa, taking the reader through colonial, independence, and contemporary periods. It explains the growing trend toward the use of multiple languages in education as a result of new opportunities and incentives. The opportunities incorporate ideational relationships with former colonizers as well as the work of language NGOs on the ground. The incentives relate to the current requirements of democratic institutions, and the strategies leaders devise to win elections within these constraints. By contrasting the environment faced by African leaders with that faced by European state-builders, it explains the weakness of education and limited spread of standard languages on the continent. The work combines constructivist understanding about changing preferences with realist insights about the strategies leaders employ to maintain power.