Multilingualism in Rural Senegal
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Samantha Goodchild
About this book
This volume explores the practices and perceptions of multilingualism in a rural setting in Senegal. Through an ethnographic-based study of a village in the Casamance, this book illuminates the links between language and spatiality by examining life trajectories, repertoires and language use. The methodological and theoretical findings from a West African rural setting have much to contribute to our overall understanding of multilingualism.
Author / Editor information
Rural settings have much to challenge, and contribute, to the study of multilingualism, hitherto largely based on urban and northern settings. This monograph is based on a documentation of linguistic practices and perceptions in a village in the Casamance, Senegal, West Africa. Through the study of linguistic biographies, repertoires and language use, this volume incorporates a variety of perspectives into detailed and nuanced analyses of linguistic practices and examines the cultural-ideological links between language and spatiality. It explores different understandings of mono- and multilingualism, using a scalar-chronotopic approach. The village of Essyl is associated with monolingualism and at the same time a default multilingual repertoire, explained as a "way of speaking" or an inclusive (linguistic) practice. The volume contributes both theoretically and methodologically to the study of multilingualism and engages directly with topical debates around language naming and translanguaging. The book will be of interest to postgraduate students and established researchers in the fields of sociolinguistics and anthropological linguistics, in particular to those working in highly multilingual rural settings.
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