Journal of African Cultural Studies Volume 14 Number 2 December 2001 pp 153-172

ISSN 1369-6815 print 1469-9346 online01020153-20 copy 2001 Journal of African Cultural StudiesDOI 1010801369681012010710 4

Dakar Wolof and the con guration ofan urban identity

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN(Department of Linguistics University of Kansas)

ABSTRACT The turbulent period of political and social unrest at the end of the1980s and beginning of the 1990s in Senegal gave rise to the lmovement in which the city of Dakar was recreated in the historical imaginationof its youth This essay argues that the movement coincided with theemergence of a self-conscious urban identity among the Dakar population evidenced by a variety of artistic expression that focuses on and exalts theculture of the city Central to the notion of an urban identity is the role of DakarWolof a variety of the language that has signi cantly diverged from the moreconservative dialects spoken in the rural areas primarily by incorporatingmassive lexical borrowing from French Dakar Wolof is portrayed in sustainedwritten form for the rst time in two comics that appeared during this periodBoy Dakar by Ibou Fall and Aziz Bacirc and Ass et Oussou by Omar Diakiteacute Thisessay discusses the hybrid nature of Dakar Wolof and its depiction in writtenform in the two comics Finally it is argued that Dakar Wolof has had aprofound effect on the notion of ethnicity in the Senegalese context and hascontributed to the emergence of a de-ethnicized urban identity

1 Introduction

In February of 1988 presidential elections in Senegal failed to produce a changeof regime from that of incumbent president Abdou Diouf to that of oppositionleader Abdoulaye Wade whose widely proclaimed campaign slogan had been

or Change1 A little more than a year later in April of 1989 during theMuslim holy month of Ramadan unprecedented ethnic violence against theMoorish population in Senegal broke out in the streets of Dakar the countryrsquoscapital escalating into an international crisis that stopped just short of war These

1 Wade ran against Diouf and again lost in the presidential elections of 1993 It was not

until the second round of presidential elections in February of 2000 that Wadedemocratically claimed a victory over Diouf Although many factors contributed tothe shift in regime much of the credit must go to the private media especially privateradio stations who provided credible reporting on all aspects of the presidentialcampaign

154 Fiona McLaughlin

two pivotal moments in the recent history of Senegal served to delineate atrajectory of increasing disenfranchisement among urban dwellers andparticularly among Dakar youth While at times nihilistic and destructive theclimate of disenchantment eventually gave rise to an aesthetic revolution of sortscarried out in the streets and on the walls of Dakar In the early nineties theyoung people of Dakar directed their energy towards cleaning up theirneighbourhoods and inscribing them walls were painted with murals of suchcultural icons as marabouts or religious leaders the Statue of Liberty anti-colonial heroes from Senegalese history and football players monuments sprangup on neighbourhood corners and streets were given names This short-lived butremarkable movement which led to a symbolic transformation of the city wasknown as a term that means lsquocleansersquo in Wolof the dominantlanguage of urban Senegal

Among the many types of artistic expression that served as an impetus for the movement were popular songs especially pre-eminent Senegalese

pop star Youssou Ndourrsquos hit (lsquocleanrsquo) which became somewhat of a themesong for the movement In addition a new genre of song celebrating the city andits people emerged around the same period typi ed by Ndourrsquos andBaaba Maalrsquos (Dakar) is about Ndourrsquos own origins in thepopulous Medina neighbourhood of Dakar and celebrates the neighbourhood andthe imprint it leaves on its inhabitants by claiming that lsquochildren of Medinarsquo( ) can be recognized by the distinctive way in which they walkBaaba Maalrsquos song is a verbal mapping of the city in which heenumerates the various popular neighbourhoods but most signi cant is that Maalsings in Wolof the urban language Maal is a Haalpulaar or speakerof Pulaar (Fula) whose band is named lsquothe Voice of the Peoplersquonamely the Haalpulaarrsquoen Up to the recording of he had declined tosing in any language but Pulaarrsquo thus the switch to Wolof was a signi cant breakwith precedent Equally important and perhaps even more closely associatedwith the movement was its visual aspect characterized by theproliferation of painting that sprung up overnight on walls throughout the citycreating an overwhelming visual effect in the public spaces of individualneighbourhoods

Senegalese historian Mamadou Diouf has called the movement anassault against the ruling class and its historicity which by rede ning publicspace has fashioned a new historical memory one which is quintessentiallyurban (1992 41) In this essay I suggest that the trajectory that led up to the

movement in Dakar and the movement itself constituted a pivotal momentin the con guration of a self-conscious urban identity While the visual andmusical aspects of were the most accessible signs of an urban cultureundergoing change a less obvious but equally radical attempt to legitimize urbanidentity and one which focused on the very essence of that identity passedrelatively unnoticed the attempt to legitimize the urban language by committingit to written form This was accomplished through the recreation of the urbanworld in the appearance of two comic books Boy Dakar by Ibou Fall and Aziz

Dakar Wolof 155

Bacirc which had a short-lived appearance of two privately published issues thatsold for 100CFA francs a copy in Dakar and Ass et Oussou by Omar Diakiteacutewhich appeared over the course of several months in 1988 and 1989 on the backpage of what was then an Islamic weekly news magazine Wal Fadjri2 The twocomics have much in common in addition to treating picaresque themes that dealwith foibles and urban social problems especially unemployment among youngmen they are also among the rst sustained attempts to produce urban Wolof inwritten form These comics serve as chronicles of acute urban social problemswith a particular focus on unemployment an all-too-important factor in thedisillusionment and attendant violence of 1989 But their contribution goes wellbeyond that of social critique The transfer of what is essentially an oral languageto written form provides us with a valuable document on the perception of thecomplexity of the urban linguistic environment In addition the actual encodingof Dakar Wolof in written form reveals much about writing conventions andliteracy in the Senegalese context The act of writing in a hybrid language whichup to that point had been circumscribed to the domain of the oral is a gesture oflegitimation ndash legitimation of an urban language an urban culture and an urbanidentity Moreover and as we shall see the manner in which Dakar Wolof isinscribed in the comics is more than a simple attempt to record an urbanlanguage it is also an act of literary and cultural creation a step that both re ectsand helps create the moment of con guration of an urban Senegalese identity

2 Urban identity

Among the hundreds of passengers who emerge each day from the various bushtaxis at Colobane station in Dakar are newly arrived immigrants from otherregions of Senegal drawn to the capital in search of work and a source of incometo contribute to the growing needs of their families left behind in smaller townsand villages As the rural exodus towards the African city grows so does the cityitself with its ever-expanding crowded suburbs like Pikine and Guediawayeteeming with young men and women in search of a chance at a better life Butdespite the allure of the city the urban environment is a dif cult one In order toget by rural immigrants have to learn how to be urban to integrate themselvesto absorb and ultimately become part of the hectic vibrancy of urban culture

Dakar like any large African city is characterized by a certain boundlessness A frenzy of commerce spills from the markets outwards onto the streetsobliterating the sidewalks and sharing space with Qurrsquoanic schools beggarsimpromptu restaurants the cardboard boxes of the homeless and the homelessthemselves Finally the markets become ambulatory watches perfume coathangers mangoes and prayer rugs circulate through the city in the hands ofitinerant merchants who thrust their goods at passers-by through bus taxi andcar rapide windows in an attempt to sell them In this sense Dakar closely

2 Wal Fadjri has evolved from being an Islamic weekly magazine into one of the most

prominent independent daily newspapers published in Senegal

156 Fiona McLaughlin

resembles Mbembersquos (1997 153) description of the Cameroonian post-colonialurban world of which he writes

In these circumstances the best way to get results is to experimentExperimentation takes various forms On the one hand to move around amidst thecrowd made up of customers passers-by and beggars one always has tomanoeuvre in and out get round or step over things and people But manoeuvringin and out getting round and stepping over are things that everyone has to doThey constitute a determining element of behaviour and urban knowledge

Urban knowledge as Mbembe terms it is the ability to improvise survive andultimately succeed in the city Such knowledge can only be acquired in apractical manner but it also invites experimentation and improvisation Thecharacters who people the pages of Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou areexperimenters and consummate deacutebrouillard s who continuously invent creativesolutions to the problems they face

In the rst frame of the rst issue of Boy Dakar we are introduced to thepicaresque hero Lazou as he is searching under the mattress in his modestmouse-infested room for the wallet that he has misplaced Youssou Ndourrsquos song

blares from a radio on the oor lsquo rsquo we are told lsquoil est deceux qui ont toujours un petit problegraveme agrave regler dans la viersquo3 (lsquoSo this LazouW

hersquos one of those people who always has a little problem to take care of in lifeFrsquo)Lazoursquos immediate petit problegraveme is of course money which translates broadlyinto survival the principal theme of the comic book Lazou sets out to nd hiswallet by going rst to a seer who tries to give him unwanted advice on his lovelife and with whom he has a ght before retrieving his 100FCFA He then goesto Marcheacute Sandaga Dakarrsquos boundless principal market where anythingreputedly can be found and where he meets Baye Galaye who is described as alsquocommerccedilant tregraves speacutecialrsquo (lsquovery special businessmanrsquo) Baye Galayersquos specialityis selling lost passports identity cards and wallets back to their owners At rstLazou is outraged that he has to pay three hundred francs to get his own nowempty wallet back and he brings a policeman to deal with Baye Galaye BayeGalaye however charms the policeman by attering him lsquoGood morningcommissionerrsquo he says and when the policeman corrects him saying that he isnot a commissioner he retorts graciously saying lsquoIrsquoll pray that you soon becomeonersquo A voluptuous young woman a in Wolof who is addressed assuch then comes by to reclaim the lost wallet that someone had brought her fromMecca Baye Galaye hands it over to her gallantly and tells her that she need notpay her beauty suf ces thereby lending credibility to his position vis-agrave-vis thepoliceman The policeman leaves without reprimanding Baye Galaye and Lazouis left to apologize and offers to pay six hundred francs to reclaim his walletBaye Galaye accepts and tells Lazou that he should learn to respect his elders or

3 Throughout this essay (and in accordance with the conventions of this journal) I use

Times italic to indicate French and to indicate Wolof incitations of written and spoken language in which the two are mixed correspondingportions of the translation are marked with subscript F and W

Dakar Wolof 157

he will never get by in life Lazou thanks him profusely and walks away sayingto himself that Baye Galaye is a real capitalist

In this rst episode of Boy Dakar Lazou has learned that he is not the onlyone seeking to survive in an urban environment The policeman who represents abureaucratic system that is fundamentally out of touch with reality is no matchfor Baye Galaye and his creative improvisations that are characteristic of systegravemeD (for deacutebrouillard lsquosavvyrsquo) as it is known in francophone Africa Baye Galayeis a master in the art of getting by which is what Lazou has to learn Theinformal system or systegraveme D is ultimately superior to the formal system asillustrated by the way in which Baye Galaye fools the policeman and thanksironically to the policemanrsquos intervention comes out on top by collecting twiceas much money as he had originally asked for By appealing to values such asrespect for onersquos elders Baye Galaye also teaches Lazou that civility must bemaintained in such interactions

Ass4 and Oussou the main characters of the second comic series are twinbrothers who have just arrived from the country In physical terms they areopposites Ass is tall and thin with a thick head of hair while Oussou his foil isshort and fat with a shaved head Their attitudes and knowledge about the cityare also diametrically opposed Oussou is a simple and honest person who doesnot like to misrepresent himself while Ass continuously experiments withsystegraveme D seizing every opportunity for possible employment and constantlygetting himself and Oussou into xes In the rst episode which appeared on 19August 1988 Ass tells Oussou lsquo Tes trucs de champ tu les laissesau village vursquo (lsquoThis is the cityW Your country ways leave them in thevillage OKFrsquo) Several episodes later Ass tells a potential employer who wantsto hire them to run a snack bar that Oussou has had two yearsrsquo experience in theprofession When Oussou protests that Ass is misrepresenting him Ass counterswith the same line lsquoJe te lrsquoai deacutejagrave dit Pour reacuteussir il faut qursquoonsache mettre tous les atouts de notre cocircteacutersquo (lsquoIrsquove already told youF this is thecityW To succeed we have to know how to play all the trumps on our sideFrsquo)

Becoming urban as Ass is trying to tell Oussou is a process oftransformation in which an old identity is temporarily (or sometimespermanently) shed and a new one more appropriate to the surroundings isassumed Oussoursquos lack of urban knowledge nostalgia for the country and failureto adapt to how things are done in Dakar are a constant source of frustration toAss who wants desperately to succeed in the city The two characters the savvyand the naiumlve are played off against each other re ecting a dichotomy betweenappropriate urban and non-urban identities This dichotomy is not unfamiliar to agreat many Senegalese who travel back and forth between rural and urban areasslipping out of one identity and into another as easily as if they were changingclothes For many such people discourse on the components of uid identityinvolves both language and ethnicity

4 The name Ass is a Wolo zed version of the title El-Hajj which is given to one who

has made the pilgrimage to Mecca It is a common given name in Senegal

158 Fiona McLaughlin

An earlier study on language and identity in Senegal (McLaughlin 1995)shows that language is a key factor in self-reported adaptation strategies ofpeople who move back and forth on a regular basis from Dakar where theywork to other parts of the country where their families live Signi cantly manypeople reported that they spoke Wolof one way at home and another way inDakar The speci c examples included using fewer French words at home andusing different noun classes in the two places favouring the default class in theurban context While many people reported speaking Wolof in a different way inthe city even more striking was the comment by a teacher from the region ofSine who claimed that his ethnicity changed when he was in the city lsquoQuand jesuis chez moi je suis Haalpulaar quand je suis agrave Dakar je suis Wolofrsquo (lsquoWhen Iam at home I am Haalpulaar when I am in Dakar I am Wolofrsquo) (McLaughlin1995 156)

While contemporary anthropology has contributed much to our understandingof the uidity of ethnic identity (see for example Amselle 1990 and Clifford1988) even where it is no longer appropriate the notion of ethnicity as aprimordial category dies hard in Africanist discourse In looking at the notion ofurban identity as re ected in the writing of urban Wolof at a particular historicalmoment what is intriguing is the apparent emergence of an as yet inchoateidentity that goes by the cover name of Wolof Wolof ethnicity and Woloflanguage In an attempt to put together the pieces of the puzzle of the relationshipbetween language and ethnicity in Senegal Swigart (1990) suggests that in theurban context people claim to be ethnically Wolof because Wolof is all theyspeak She cites a worker from the 1988 census who reported that when people inDakar responded to one of the census questions on their ethnicity they oftenhesitated cited the ethnicity or ethnicities of their parents and then added lsquoJustput Wolof thatrsquos all I speakrsquo (Swigart 1990 4) At face value this examplesuggests that ethnicity in the urban Senegalese context is in some sense de nedby language but it also raises a much larger question is ethnicity really the issuehere In an essay entitled lsquoBeyond Identityrsquo in which he probes some of theseissues within the context of what he terms lsquothe postidentitarian predicamentrsquoMiller (1998 173) writes lsquoThe easy positive means of identity de nition basedon ready-made categories such as gender race ethnicity and nation havebecome unsatisfactory but the terms of any new paradigm are not immediatelyapparentrsquo I suggest that within this context when the teacher cited above saysthat in Dakar he is Wolof rather than Haalpulaar and when Baaba Maal sings

in Wolof as opposed to Pulaar they are using the ready-made terms ofthe old paradigms of identity namely ethnicity and language but they are in facttalking about a newly con gured urban identity for which there is as yet no term

Taking these observations one step further I would suggest that claiming thatone is Wolof for lack of any other plausible ethnic identity is in fact anunconscious abandonment of ethnicity as an identifying category Wolof andespecially Wolof in the urban context is simply the unmarked or defaultethnicity when there is nothing else to fall back on in self-de nition Thecategory of ethnicity is not always satisfactory as we see in the report by the

Dakar Wolof 159

census worker but the ready-made terms of the old paradigm are still in use Inthis case individuals fall back on language as a determiner of ethnicity Sincelanguage and ethnicity in many other Senegalese contexts are still a major aspectof identity (McLaughlin 1995) the ready-made concept is maintained in urbanidentity but when there is nothing to ll it it becomes vacuous Seen in this wayBaaba Maalrsquos choice to sing in Wolof is not a switch in allegianceaway from the language of his own ethnic group and towards that of another it issimply a way to re ect the urban focus of the song Similarly the teacher who isHaalpulaar at home and Wolof in Dakar is really saying that when he is in thecapital he is as fully integrated an urbanite as anyone else

3 Urban Wolof

Of cially a francophone country and one whose rst president LeacuteopoldSenghor exhorted his people to speak French lsquocomme (des) bourgeois de Parisrsquo(lsquolike Parisian bourgeoisrsquo) and was subsequently (if not consequently) electedmember of the Acadeacutemie Franccedilaise Senegal is remarkable for how little Frenchis actually used The 1988 census gures estimate that only twenty- ve per centof the population is literate in French (Cruise OrsquoBrien 1998 37) making thecountry that hosted the 1989 international Francophonie summit a de jure ratherthan de facto francophone state The language that has lled the role of linguafranca in Senegal is Wolof Although no such of cial status has been granted itWolof is frequently referred to as the national language not only by native Wolofspeakers but by speakers of many of the other languages spoken in SenegalWolof has been gaining speakers steadily in a spread that began during thecolonial period ndash the areas of Senegal rst colonized by the French were Wolof-speaking ndash and picked up momentum with sustained migration of ruralpopulations from the countryside into the cities Moreover the social andeconomic in uence of the Mouride Su order whose origins are in the Wolofheartland has also favoured the ascent of the Wolof language (Cruise OrsquoBrien1998 1979 Swigart 2001) Figures from the 1988 Senegalese census also showthat more than eighty per cent of the Senegalese population speaks Wolof whileonly 437 per cent are ethnically Wolof Due to this language shift Senegal maymore accurately be described as a wolofphone than a francophone country

Wolo zation or the spread of Wolof as a lingua franca is essentially an urbanphenomenon and urban Wolof is a language that has arisen out of continuoussustained contact between Wolof and French5 Although I use the terms lsquoDakarWolofrsquo and lsquourban Wolofrsquo interchangeably in this essay the language is notgeographically limited to Dakar but is spoken in most Senegalese urban areasand even in Banjul the Gambian capital where English is the of cial language

5 Although they are not the focus of this study loanwords from other languages

especially English and Pulaar are also incorporated into urban Wolof The semioticsof English loanwords have undergone an interesting change in recent yearsOriginally associated with the language of delinquence they now bespeak acosmopolitanism primarily associated with the international trading networks of theMouride Su order (Degraveme 1999)

160 Fiona McLaughlin

In addition to the numerous English loans found in urban Gambian Wolof thereare also many French loans that have entered the language secondhand via urbanWolof rather than through direct contact with French Given the speci cpeculiarities of urban dialects and the pressures placed on rapidly spreadinglanguages it is not surprising that urban Wolof has undergone and is continuingto undergo rather drastic changes in many areas of its grammar leading to amarked dialectal difference between urban and non-urban varieties of the samelanguage The emerging urban language the nature of which will be elaboratedon below is a hybrid language characterized primarily but not exclusively byextensive lexical borrowing from French In considering the situation of Wolof inSenegal what emerges is a portrait of considerable complexity in which twoversions of the same language coexist Speakers may be competent in one or theother or frequently in both In this latter case speakers may be able tomanipulate a variety of styles or registers along a continuum that ranges from

ndash or lsquodeep Wolofrsquo as it is called ndash free of any French in uences tothe hybrid language that is urban Wolof depending on the context

What then is urban Wolof and how is it differentiated from other varieties ofWolof In traditional parlance the term lsquocodeswitchingrsquo is used to describesituations in which two (or more) languages are used in a given stretch ofdiscourse Gumperz (1982 59) de nes codeswitching as lsquothe juxtaposition withinthe same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two differentgrammatical systems or subsystemsrsquo Taken at face value Gumperzrsquos de nitionserves as a point of departure for the formal analysis of a hybrid language likeurban Wolof It is also useful to adopt Myers-Scottonrsquos (1993) terminology ofmatrix language and embedded language One of the two languages involved incodeswitching or code-mixing can be said to be the matrix language in that itsupplies the overall morphological and syntactic structure of the discourse whilethe embedded language supplies lexical items that can be plugged into the matrixstructure In the case of urban Wolof Wolof serves as the matrix language andFrench as the embedded language as the following examples of naturallyoccurring sentences show6 Wolof words are indicated by typewriter-style typewhile French words are in italics

(1) Structure contenu cent points structure DET and content DET one-hundred points 3S7

The structure and the content are (worth) one hundred points(2) Feu rouge

Traf c-light DET red 3SThe traf c light turned red

6 These and all other examples in this essay are naturally occurring utterances which I

recorded during periods of eldwork in Senegal between 1989 and 20007 The following abbreviations are used in the glosses D E T determiner IMP

imperfective NEG negative OBJ object 123 rstsecondthird person S singularPL plural

Dakar Wolof 161

(3) errer monde 3S PASTIMP wander in world DET justHe was just wandering around the world

(4) il-faut-que rondhook it-is-necessary-that 3S roundHooks have to be round

(5) AG- eskaA(ssembleacutee)-G(eacuteneacuterale)+2PL already INTERROGHave you already AGrsquod (had a General Assembly)

Although it is not dif cult to identify the French words in the Wolof sentencesthe adequacy of the traditional term codeswitching namely the juxtaposition oftwo different grammatical systems is thrown into question by the simple fact thatwhile the speakers who uttered the sentences in (1) (3) and (5) can speak bothFrench and Wolof those who uttered the sentences in (2) and (4) do not speakFrench an issue to which I will return below

The term lsquocode mixingrsquo has been used by some sociolinguists to designate amore local switching of codes in which a single word may contain morphemesfrom two different grammatical systems as shown in the following exampleswhere stems that come from French are frequently combined with other Wolofmorphemes in word formation

(6) Akise- accuse-1SNEG 2S-OBJ nothingI didnrsquot accuse you of anything

(7) Seer- expensive-3SNEGItrsquos not expensive

(8) baraase- 2SNEGIMPERATIVE 3SOBJ plug-in-ITERATIVEDonrsquot plug it in again

(9) grev- what 3PL-IMP strike-ITERATIVEWhat are they striking about again

(10) Arieer- behind-2SIMPERATIVEReverse

The sentences in (6) and (7) show verb stems from French accuser lsquoto accusersquoand the adjective cher lsquoexpensiversquo while the respective negative morphemes( rst person singular - and third person singular - ) are from WolofExample (8) shows the Wolof iterative suf x - attaching to a verb stemfrom French brancher lsquoto plug inrsquo in order to give the meaning lsquoplug in againrsquowhile (9) shows an iterative suf x attaching to a verb stem formed from theFrench noun gregraveve lsquostrikersquo The nal example (10) involves the suf xation ofthe Wolof imperative - to the French arriegravere lsquobehindrsquo to get the verbalcommand lsquoreversersquo

It is evident from the examples in (1-10) that French loanwords undergophonological changes that adapt their pronunciation to the sound patterns of

162 Fiona McLaughlin

Wolof The high front rounded vowel in French becomes unrounded inWolof to as in (11) and (12) the voiced labiodental fricative in Frenchbecomes the labiovelar glide in Wolof as in (13) and (14) and the fricatives

and in French become in Wolof as in (15) and (16) One lastphonological observation is that permissible consonant clusters in French arefrequently split up in Wolof especially among speakers who do not speakFrench since Wolof licenses only CV or CVC syllables Examples of theseinclude the word-initial clusters as in (17) and (18) and as in (19)

FRENCH WOLOF GLOSS(11) perdu lost(12) tu you singular(13 valise suitcase(14) voyou scoundrel(15) cher expensive(16) garage garage(17) grave serious grave(18) griot griot(19) client customer client

The examples cited above are typical of Dakar Wolof however it should benoted that there is much variation in the language much of which depends on thespeakerrsquos command of French and Wolof In some cases where the speaker is uent in French fewer adaptations to Wolof phonology will be made in othercases where the speaker has little or no knowledge of French the adaptation toWolof phonology may be complete

Urban Wolof and languages like it such as Town Bemba spoken in urbanZambia (Spitulnik 1999) are readily characterizable as hybrid languages But tocall a language a hybrid is to make a statement about its history namely that it isderived from diverse sources and as we know people do not inherit the historyof their language when they inherit the language In the case of urban Wolof thesources are Wolof and French distinct grammatical systems that are readilyidenti able and isolatable within Gumperzrsquos de nition of codeswitching But thisis if and only if one recognizes a distinction between the two grammaticalsystems So to return to the utterances in (2) and (4) as well as those in (7) and(10) all of which were uttered by speakers who do not know French the notionof codeswitching falls substantially short of describing a reality For thosespeakers there are no distinct grammatical systems juxtaposed in their utterancesndash there is only one the grammatical system of urban Wolof What substantiallycomplicates the analysis of urban Wolof is that those who speak it have diverselinguistic repertoires Some may speak urban Wolof French and lsquodeep Wolofrsquo( ) as well as other Senegalese languages others may speak a subsetof those languages and still others may speak only urban Wolof The resultingsituation is that speakers of urban Wolof vary in their ability to recognize theFrench in uences in their language Speakers who are uent in French recognizeand even joke about French loans in their Wolof on the other hand those whoknow no French are frequently oblivious to its in uences in their own speechFor example when asked if there had been many people attending a naming

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

154 Fiona McLaughlin

two pivotal moments in the recent history of Senegal served to delineate atrajectory of increasing disenfranchisement among urban dwellers andparticularly among Dakar youth While at times nihilistic and destructive theclimate of disenchantment eventually gave rise to an aesthetic revolution of sortscarried out in the streets and on the walls of Dakar In the early nineties theyoung people of Dakar directed their energy towards cleaning up theirneighbourhoods and inscribing them walls were painted with murals of suchcultural icons as marabouts or religious leaders the Statue of Liberty anti-colonial heroes from Senegalese history and football players monuments sprangup on neighbourhood corners and streets were given names This short-lived butremarkable movement which led to a symbolic transformation of the city wasknown as a term that means lsquocleansersquo in Wolof the dominantlanguage of urban Senegal

Among the many types of artistic expression that served as an impetus for the movement were popular songs especially pre-eminent Senegalese

pop star Youssou Ndourrsquos hit (lsquocleanrsquo) which became somewhat of a themesong for the movement In addition a new genre of song celebrating the city andits people emerged around the same period typi ed by Ndourrsquos andBaaba Maalrsquos (Dakar) is about Ndourrsquos own origins in thepopulous Medina neighbourhood of Dakar and celebrates the neighbourhood andthe imprint it leaves on its inhabitants by claiming that lsquochildren of Medinarsquo( ) can be recognized by the distinctive way in which they walkBaaba Maalrsquos song is a verbal mapping of the city in which heenumerates the various popular neighbourhoods but most signi cant is that Maalsings in Wolof the urban language Maal is a Haalpulaar or speakerof Pulaar (Fula) whose band is named lsquothe Voice of the Peoplersquonamely the Haalpulaarrsquoen Up to the recording of he had declined tosing in any language but Pulaarrsquo thus the switch to Wolof was a signi cant breakwith precedent Equally important and perhaps even more closely associatedwith the movement was its visual aspect characterized by theproliferation of painting that sprung up overnight on walls throughout the citycreating an overwhelming visual effect in the public spaces of individualneighbourhoods

Senegalese historian Mamadou Diouf has called the movement anassault against the ruling class and its historicity which by rede ning publicspace has fashioned a new historical memory one which is quintessentiallyurban (1992 41) In this essay I suggest that the trajectory that led up to the

movement in Dakar and the movement itself constituted a pivotal momentin the con guration of a self-conscious urban identity While the visual andmusical aspects of were the most accessible signs of an urban cultureundergoing change a less obvious but equally radical attempt to legitimize urbanidentity and one which focused on the very essence of that identity passedrelatively unnoticed the attempt to legitimize the urban language by committingit to written form This was accomplished through the recreation of the urbanworld in the appearance of two comic books Boy Dakar by Ibou Fall and Aziz

Dakar Wolof 155

Bacirc which had a short-lived appearance of two privately published issues thatsold for 100CFA francs a copy in Dakar and Ass et Oussou by Omar Diakiteacutewhich appeared over the course of several months in 1988 and 1989 on the backpage of what was then an Islamic weekly news magazine Wal Fadjri2 The twocomics have much in common in addition to treating picaresque themes that dealwith foibles and urban social problems especially unemployment among youngmen they are also among the rst sustained attempts to produce urban Wolof inwritten form These comics serve as chronicles of acute urban social problemswith a particular focus on unemployment an all-too-important factor in thedisillusionment and attendant violence of 1989 But their contribution goes wellbeyond that of social critique The transfer of what is essentially an oral languageto written form provides us with a valuable document on the perception of thecomplexity of the urban linguistic environment In addition the actual encodingof Dakar Wolof in written form reveals much about writing conventions andliteracy in the Senegalese context The act of writing in a hybrid language whichup to that point had been circumscribed to the domain of the oral is a gesture oflegitimation ndash legitimation of an urban language an urban culture and an urbanidentity Moreover and as we shall see the manner in which Dakar Wolof isinscribed in the comics is more than a simple attempt to record an urbanlanguage it is also an act of literary and cultural creation a step that both re ectsand helps create the moment of con guration of an urban Senegalese identity

2 Urban identity

Among the hundreds of passengers who emerge each day from the various bushtaxis at Colobane station in Dakar are newly arrived immigrants from otherregions of Senegal drawn to the capital in search of work and a source of incometo contribute to the growing needs of their families left behind in smaller townsand villages As the rural exodus towards the African city grows so does the cityitself with its ever-expanding crowded suburbs like Pikine and Guediawayeteeming with young men and women in search of a chance at a better life Butdespite the allure of the city the urban environment is a dif cult one In order toget by rural immigrants have to learn how to be urban to integrate themselvesto absorb and ultimately become part of the hectic vibrancy of urban culture

Dakar like any large African city is characterized by a certain boundlessness A frenzy of commerce spills from the markets outwards onto the streetsobliterating the sidewalks and sharing space with Qurrsquoanic schools beggarsimpromptu restaurants the cardboard boxes of the homeless and the homelessthemselves Finally the markets become ambulatory watches perfume coathangers mangoes and prayer rugs circulate through the city in the hands ofitinerant merchants who thrust their goods at passers-by through bus taxi andcar rapide windows in an attempt to sell them In this sense Dakar closely

2 Wal Fadjri has evolved from being an Islamic weekly magazine into one of the most

prominent independent daily newspapers published in Senegal

156 Fiona McLaughlin

resembles Mbembersquos (1997 153) description of the Cameroonian post-colonialurban world of which he writes

In these circumstances the best way to get results is to experimentExperimentation takes various forms On the one hand to move around amidst thecrowd made up of customers passers-by and beggars one always has tomanoeuvre in and out get round or step over things and people But manoeuvringin and out getting round and stepping over are things that everyone has to doThey constitute a determining element of behaviour and urban knowledge

Urban knowledge as Mbembe terms it is the ability to improvise survive andultimately succeed in the city Such knowledge can only be acquired in apractical manner but it also invites experimentation and improvisation Thecharacters who people the pages of Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou areexperimenters and consummate deacutebrouillard s who continuously invent creativesolutions to the problems they face

In the rst frame of the rst issue of Boy Dakar we are introduced to thepicaresque hero Lazou as he is searching under the mattress in his modestmouse-infested room for the wallet that he has misplaced Youssou Ndourrsquos song

blares from a radio on the oor lsquo rsquo we are told lsquoil est deceux qui ont toujours un petit problegraveme agrave regler dans la viersquo3 (lsquoSo this LazouW

hersquos one of those people who always has a little problem to take care of in lifeFrsquo)Lazoursquos immediate petit problegraveme is of course money which translates broadlyinto survival the principal theme of the comic book Lazou sets out to nd hiswallet by going rst to a seer who tries to give him unwanted advice on his lovelife and with whom he has a ght before retrieving his 100FCFA He then goesto Marcheacute Sandaga Dakarrsquos boundless principal market where anythingreputedly can be found and where he meets Baye Galaye who is described as alsquocommerccedilant tregraves speacutecialrsquo (lsquovery special businessmanrsquo) Baye Galayersquos specialityis selling lost passports identity cards and wallets back to their owners At rstLazou is outraged that he has to pay three hundred francs to get his own nowempty wallet back and he brings a policeman to deal with Baye Galaye BayeGalaye however charms the policeman by attering him lsquoGood morningcommissionerrsquo he says and when the policeman corrects him saying that he isnot a commissioner he retorts graciously saying lsquoIrsquoll pray that you soon becomeonersquo A voluptuous young woman a in Wolof who is addressed assuch then comes by to reclaim the lost wallet that someone had brought her fromMecca Baye Galaye hands it over to her gallantly and tells her that she need notpay her beauty suf ces thereby lending credibility to his position vis-agrave-vis thepoliceman The policeman leaves without reprimanding Baye Galaye and Lazouis left to apologize and offers to pay six hundred francs to reclaim his walletBaye Galaye accepts and tells Lazou that he should learn to respect his elders or

3 Throughout this essay (and in accordance with the conventions of this journal) I use

Times italic to indicate French and to indicate Wolof incitations of written and spoken language in which the two are mixed correspondingportions of the translation are marked with subscript F and W

Dakar Wolof 157

he will never get by in life Lazou thanks him profusely and walks away sayingto himself that Baye Galaye is a real capitalist

In this rst episode of Boy Dakar Lazou has learned that he is not the onlyone seeking to survive in an urban environment The policeman who represents abureaucratic system that is fundamentally out of touch with reality is no matchfor Baye Galaye and his creative improvisations that are characteristic of systegravemeD (for deacutebrouillard lsquosavvyrsquo) as it is known in francophone Africa Baye Galayeis a master in the art of getting by which is what Lazou has to learn Theinformal system or systegraveme D is ultimately superior to the formal system asillustrated by the way in which Baye Galaye fools the policeman and thanksironically to the policemanrsquos intervention comes out on top by collecting twiceas much money as he had originally asked for By appealing to values such asrespect for onersquos elders Baye Galaye also teaches Lazou that civility must bemaintained in such interactions

Ass4 and Oussou the main characters of the second comic series are twinbrothers who have just arrived from the country In physical terms they areopposites Ass is tall and thin with a thick head of hair while Oussou his foil isshort and fat with a shaved head Their attitudes and knowledge about the cityare also diametrically opposed Oussou is a simple and honest person who doesnot like to misrepresent himself while Ass continuously experiments withsystegraveme D seizing every opportunity for possible employment and constantlygetting himself and Oussou into xes In the rst episode which appeared on 19August 1988 Ass tells Oussou lsquo Tes trucs de champ tu les laissesau village vursquo (lsquoThis is the cityW Your country ways leave them in thevillage OKFrsquo) Several episodes later Ass tells a potential employer who wantsto hire them to run a snack bar that Oussou has had two yearsrsquo experience in theprofession When Oussou protests that Ass is misrepresenting him Ass counterswith the same line lsquoJe te lrsquoai deacutejagrave dit Pour reacuteussir il faut qursquoonsache mettre tous les atouts de notre cocircteacutersquo (lsquoIrsquove already told youF this is thecityW To succeed we have to know how to play all the trumps on our sideFrsquo)

Becoming urban as Ass is trying to tell Oussou is a process oftransformation in which an old identity is temporarily (or sometimespermanently) shed and a new one more appropriate to the surroundings isassumed Oussoursquos lack of urban knowledge nostalgia for the country and failureto adapt to how things are done in Dakar are a constant source of frustration toAss who wants desperately to succeed in the city The two characters the savvyand the naiumlve are played off against each other re ecting a dichotomy betweenappropriate urban and non-urban identities This dichotomy is not unfamiliar to agreat many Senegalese who travel back and forth between rural and urban areasslipping out of one identity and into another as easily as if they were changingclothes For many such people discourse on the components of uid identityinvolves both language and ethnicity

4 The name Ass is a Wolo zed version of the title El-Hajj which is given to one who

has made the pilgrimage to Mecca It is a common given name in Senegal

158 Fiona McLaughlin

An earlier study on language and identity in Senegal (McLaughlin 1995)shows that language is a key factor in self-reported adaptation strategies ofpeople who move back and forth on a regular basis from Dakar where theywork to other parts of the country where their families live Signi cantly manypeople reported that they spoke Wolof one way at home and another way inDakar The speci c examples included using fewer French words at home andusing different noun classes in the two places favouring the default class in theurban context While many people reported speaking Wolof in a different way inthe city even more striking was the comment by a teacher from the region ofSine who claimed that his ethnicity changed when he was in the city lsquoQuand jesuis chez moi je suis Haalpulaar quand je suis agrave Dakar je suis Wolofrsquo (lsquoWhen Iam at home I am Haalpulaar when I am in Dakar I am Wolofrsquo) (McLaughlin1995 156)

While contemporary anthropology has contributed much to our understandingof the uidity of ethnic identity (see for example Amselle 1990 and Clifford1988) even where it is no longer appropriate the notion of ethnicity as aprimordial category dies hard in Africanist discourse In looking at the notion ofurban identity as re ected in the writing of urban Wolof at a particular historicalmoment what is intriguing is the apparent emergence of an as yet inchoateidentity that goes by the cover name of Wolof Wolof ethnicity and Woloflanguage In an attempt to put together the pieces of the puzzle of the relationshipbetween language and ethnicity in Senegal Swigart (1990) suggests that in theurban context people claim to be ethnically Wolof because Wolof is all theyspeak She cites a worker from the 1988 census who reported that when people inDakar responded to one of the census questions on their ethnicity they oftenhesitated cited the ethnicity or ethnicities of their parents and then added lsquoJustput Wolof thatrsquos all I speakrsquo (Swigart 1990 4) At face value this examplesuggests that ethnicity in the urban Senegalese context is in some sense de nedby language but it also raises a much larger question is ethnicity really the issuehere In an essay entitled lsquoBeyond Identityrsquo in which he probes some of theseissues within the context of what he terms lsquothe postidentitarian predicamentrsquoMiller (1998 173) writes lsquoThe easy positive means of identity de nition basedon ready-made categories such as gender race ethnicity and nation havebecome unsatisfactory but the terms of any new paradigm are not immediatelyapparentrsquo I suggest that within this context when the teacher cited above saysthat in Dakar he is Wolof rather than Haalpulaar and when Baaba Maal sings

in Wolof as opposed to Pulaar they are using the ready-made terms ofthe old paradigms of identity namely ethnicity and language but they are in facttalking about a newly con gured urban identity for which there is as yet no term

Taking these observations one step further I would suggest that claiming thatone is Wolof for lack of any other plausible ethnic identity is in fact anunconscious abandonment of ethnicity as an identifying category Wolof andespecially Wolof in the urban context is simply the unmarked or defaultethnicity when there is nothing else to fall back on in self-de nition Thecategory of ethnicity is not always satisfactory as we see in the report by the

Dakar Wolof 159

census worker but the ready-made terms of the old paradigm are still in use Inthis case individuals fall back on language as a determiner of ethnicity Sincelanguage and ethnicity in many other Senegalese contexts are still a major aspectof identity (McLaughlin 1995) the ready-made concept is maintained in urbanidentity but when there is nothing to ll it it becomes vacuous Seen in this wayBaaba Maalrsquos choice to sing in Wolof is not a switch in allegianceaway from the language of his own ethnic group and towards that of another it issimply a way to re ect the urban focus of the song Similarly the teacher who isHaalpulaar at home and Wolof in Dakar is really saying that when he is in thecapital he is as fully integrated an urbanite as anyone else

3 Urban Wolof

Of cially a francophone country and one whose rst president LeacuteopoldSenghor exhorted his people to speak French lsquocomme (des) bourgeois de Parisrsquo(lsquolike Parisian bourgeoisrsquo) and was subsequently (if not consequently) electedmember of the Acadeacutemie Franccedilaise Senegal is remarkable for how little Frenchis actually used The 1988 census gures estimate that only twenty- ve per centof the population is literate in French (Cruise OrsquoBrien 1998 37) making thecountry that hosted the 1989 international Francophonie summit a de jure ratherthan de facto francophone state The language that has lled the role of linguafranca in Senegal is Wolof Although no such of cial status has been granted itWolof is frequently referred to as the national language not only by native Wolofspeakers but by speakers of many of the other languages spoken in SenegalWolof has been gaining speakers steadily in a spread that began during thecolonial period ndash the areas of Senegal rst colonized by the French were Wolof-speaking ndash and picked up momentum with sustained migration of ruralpopulations from the countryside into the cities Moreover the social andeconomic in uence of the Mouride Su order whose origins are in the Wolofheartland has also favoured the ascent of the Wolof language (Cruise OrsquoBrien1998 1979 Swigart 2001) Figures from the 1988 Senegalese census also showthat more than eighty per cent of the Senegalese population speaks Wolof whileonly 437 per cent are ethnically Wolof Due to this language shift Senegal maymore accurately be described as a wolofphone than a francophone country

Wolo zation or the spread of Wolof as a lingua franca is essentially an urbanphenomenon and urban Wolof is a language that has arisen out of continuoussustained contact between Wolof and French5 Although I use the terms lsquoDakarWolofrsquo and lsquourban Wolofrsquo interchangeably in this essay the language is notgeographically limited to Dakar but is spoken in most Senegalese urban areasand even in Banjul the Gambian capital where English is the of cial language

5 Although they are not the focus of this study loanwords from other languages

especially English and Pulaar are also incorporated into urban Wolof The semioticsof English loanwords have undergone an interesting change in recent yearsOriginally associated with the language of delinquence they now bespeak acosmopolitanism primarily associated with the international trading networks of theMouride Su order (Degraveme 1999)

160 Fiona McLaughlin

In addition to the numerous English loans found in urban Gambian Wolof thereare also many French loans that have entered the language secondhand via urbanWolof rather than through direct contact with French Given the speci cpeculiarities of urban dialects and the pressures placed on rapidly spreadinglanguages it is not surprising that urban Wolof has undergone and is continuingto undergo rather drastic changes in many areas of its grammar leading to amarked dialectal difference between urban and non-urban varieties of the samelanguage The emerging urban language the nature of which will be elaboratedon below is a hybrid language characterized primarily but not exclusively byextensive lexical borrowing from French In considering the situation of Wolof inSenegal what emerges is a portrait of considerable complexity in which twoversions of the same language coexist Speakers may be competent in one or theother or frequently in both In this latter case speakers may be able tomanipulate a variety of styles or registers along a continuum that ranges from

ndash or lsquodeep Wolofrsquo as it is called ndash free of any French in uences tothe hybrid language that is urban Wolof depending on the context

What then is urban Wolof and how is it differentiated from other varieties ofWolof In traditional parlance the term lsquocodeswitchingrsquo is used to describesituations in which two (or more) languages are used in a given stretch ofdiscourse Gumperz (1982 59) de nes codeswitching as lsquothe juxtaposition withinthe same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two differentgrammatical systems or subsystemsrsquo Taken at face value Gumperzrsquos de nitionserves as a point of departure for the formal analysis of a hybrid language likeurban Wolof It is also useful to adopt Myers-Scottonrsquos (1993) terminology ofmatrix language and embedded language One of the two languages involved incodeswitching or code-mixing can be said to be the matrix language in that itsupplies the overall morphological and syntactic structure of the discourse whilethe embedded language supplies lexical items that can be plugged into the matrixstructure In the case of urban Wolof Wolof serves as the matrix language andFrench as the embedded language as the following examples of naturallyoccurring sentences show6 Wolof words are indicated by typewriter-style typewhile French words are in italics

(1) Structure contenu cent points structure DET and content DET one-hundred points 3S7

The structure and the content are (worth) one hundred points(2) Feu rouge

Traf c-light DET red 3SThe traf c light turned red

6 These and all other examples in this essay are naturally occurring utterances which I

recorded during periods of eldwork in Senegal between 1989 and 20007 The following abbreviations are used in the glosses D E T determiner IMP

imperfective NEG negative OBJ object 123 rstsecondthird person S singularPL plural

Dakar Wolof 161

(3) errer monde 3S PASTIMP wander in world DET justHe was just wandering around the world

(4) il-faut-que rondhook it-is-necessary-that 3S roundHooks have to be round

(5) AG- eskaA(ssembleacutee)-G(eacuteneacuterale)+2PL already INTERROGHave you already AGrsquod (had a General Assembly)

Although it is not dif cult to identify the French words in the Wolof sentencesthe adequacy of the traditional term codeswitching namely the juxtaposition oftwo different grammatical systems is thrown into question by the simple fact thatwhile the speakers who uttered the sentences in (1) (3) and (5) can speak bothFrench and Wolof those who uttered the sentences in (2) and (4) do not speakFrench an issue to which I will return below

The term lsquocode mixingrsquo has been used by some sociolinguists to designate amore local switching of codes in which a single word may contain morphemesfrom two different grammatical systems as shown in the following exampleswhere stems that come from French are frequently combined with other Wolofmorphemes in word formation

(6) Akise- accuse-1SNEG 2S-OBJ nothingI didnrsquot accuse you of anything

(7) Seer- expensive-3SNEGItrsquos not expensive

(8) baraase- 2SNEGIMPERATIVE 3SOBJ plug-in-ITERATIVEDonrsquot plug it in again

(9) grev- what 3PL-IMP strike-ITERATIVEWhat are they striking about again

(10) Arieer- behind-2SIMPERATIVEReverse

The sentences in (6) and (7) show verb stems from French accuser lsquoto accusersquoand the adjective cher lsquoexpensiversquo while the respective negative morphemes( rst person singular - and third person singular - ) are from WolofExample (8) shows the Wolof iterative suf x - attaching to a verb stemfrom French brancher lsquoto plug inrsquo in order to give the meaning lsquoplug in againrsquowhile (9) shows an iterative suf x attaching to a verb stem formed from theFrench noun gregraveve lsquostrikersquo The nal example (10) involves the suf xation ofthe Wolof imperative - to the French arriegravere lsquobehindrsquo to get the verbalcommand lsquoreversersquo

It is evident from the examples in (1-10) that French loanwords undergophonological changes that adapt their pronunciation to the sound patterns of

162 Fiona McLaughlin

Wolof The high front rounded vowel in French becomes unrounded inWolof to as in (11) and (12) the voiced labiodental fricative in Frenchbecomes the labiovelar glide in Wolof as in (13) and (14) and the fricatives

and in French become in Wolof as in (15) and (16) One lastphonological observation is that permissible consonant clusters in French arefrequently split up in Wolof especially among speakers who do not speakFrench since Wolof licenses only CV or CVC syllables Examples of theseinclude the word-initial clusters as in (17) and (18) and as in (19)

FRENCH WOLOF GLOSS(11) perdu lost(12) tu you singular(13 valise suitcase(14) voyou scoundrel(15) cher expensive(16) garage garage(17) grave serious grave(18) griot griot(19) client customer client

The examples cited above are typical of Dakar Wolof however it should benoted that there is much variation in the language much of which depends on thespeakerrsquos command of French and Wolof In some cases where the speaker is uent in French fewer adaptations to Wolof phonology will be made in othercases where the speaker has little or no knowledge of French the adaptation toWolof phonology may be complete

Urban Wolof and languages like it such as Town Bemba spoken in urbanZambia (Spitulnik 1999) are readily characterizable as hybrid languages But tocall a language a hybrid is to make a statement about its history namely that it isderived from diverse sources and as we know people do not inherit the historyof their language when they inherit the language In the case of urban Wolof thesources are Wolof and French distinct grammatical systems that are readilyidenti able and isolatable within Gumperzrsquos de nition of codeswitching But thisis if and only if one recognizes a distinction between the two grammaticalsystems So to return to the utterances in (2) and (4) as well as those in (7) and(10) all of which were uttered by speakers who do not know French the notionof codeswitching falls substantially short of describing a reality For thosespeakers there are no distinct grammatical systems juxtaposed in their utterancesndash there is only one the grammatical system of urban Wolof What substantiallycomplicates the analysis of urban Wolof is that those who speak it have diverselinguistic repertoires Some may speak urban Wolof French and lsquodeep Wolofrsquo( ) as well as other Senegalese languages others may speak a subsetof those languages and still others may speak only urban Wolof The resultingsituation is that speakers of urban Wolof vary in their ability to recognize theFrench in uences in their language Speakers who are uent in French recognizeand even joke about French loans in their Wolof on the other hand those whoknow no French are frequently oblivious to its in uences in their own speechFor example when asked if there had been many people attending a naming

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

Dakar Wolof 155

Bacirc which had a short-lived appearance of two privately published issues thatsold for 100CFA francs a copy in Dakar and Ass et Oussou by Omar Diakiteacutewhich appeared over the course of several months in 1988 and 1989 on the backpage of what was then an Islamic weekly news magazine Wal Fadjri2 The twocomics have much in common in addition to treating picaresque themes that dealwith foibles and urban social problems especially unemployment among youngmen they are also among the rst sustained attempts to produce urban Wolof inwritten form These comics serve as chronicles of acute urban social problemswith a particular focus on unemployment an all-too-important factor in thedisillusionment and attendant violence of 1989 But their contribution goes wellbeyond that of social critique The transfer of what is essentially an oral languageto written form provides us with a valuable document on the perception of thecomplexity of the urban linguistic environment In addition the actual encodingof Dakar Wolof in written form reveals much about writing conventions andliteracy in the Senegalese context The act of writing in a hybrid language whichup to that point had been circumscribed to the domain of the oral is a gesture oflegitimation ndash legitimation of an urban language an urban culture and an urbanidentity Moreover and as we shall see the manner in which Dakar Wolof isinscribed in the comics is more than a simple attempt to record an urbanlanguage it is also an act of literary and cultural creation a step that both re ectsand helps create the moment of con guration of an urban Senegalese identity

2 Urban identity

Among the hundreds of passengers who emerge each day from the various bushtaxis at Colobane station in Dakar are newly arrived immigrants from otherregions of Senegal drawn to the capital in search of work and a source of incometo contribute to the growing needs of their families left behind in smaller townsand villages As the rural exodus towards the African city grows so does the cityitself with its ever-expanding crowded suburbs like Pikine and Guediawayeteeming with young men and women in search of a chance at a better life Butdespite the allure of the city the urban environment is a dif cult one In order toget by rural immigrants have to learn how to be urban to integrate themselvesto absorb and ultimately become part of the hectic vibrancy of urban culture

Dakar like any large African city is characterized by a certain boundlessness A frenzy of commerce spills from the markets outwards onto the streetsobliterating the sidewalks and sharing space with Qurrsquoanic schools beggarsimpromptu restaurants the cardboard boxes of the homeless and the homelessthemselves Finally the markets become ambulatory watches perfume coathangers mangoes and prayer rugs circulate through the city in the hands ofitinerant merchants who thrust their goods at passers-by through bus taxi andcar rapide windows in an attempt to sell them In this sense Dakar closely

2 Wal Fadjri has evolved from being an Islamic weekly magazine into one of the most

prominent independent daily newspapers published in Senegal

156 Fiona McLaughlin

resembles Mbembersquos (1997 153) description of the Cameroonian post-colonialurban world of which he writes

In these circumstances the best way to get results is to experimentExperimentation takes various forms On the one hand to move around amidst thecrowd made up of customers passers-by and beggars one always has tomanoeuvre in and out get round or step over things and people But manoeuvringin and out getting round and stepping over are things that everyone has to doThey constitute a determining element of behaviour and urban knowledge

Urban knowledge as Mbembe terms it is the ability to improvise survive andultimately succeed in the city Such knowledge can only be acquired in apractical manner but it also invites experimentation and improvisation Thecharacters who people the pages of Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou areexperimenters and consummate deacutebrouillard s who continuously invent creativesolutions to the problems they face

In the rst frame of the rst issue of Boy Dakar we are introduced to thepicaresque hero Lazou as he is searching under the mattress in his modestmouse-infested room for the wallet that he has misplaced Youssou Ndourrsquos song

blares from a radio on the oor lsquo rsquo we are told lsquoil est deceux qui ont toujours un petit problegraveme agrave regler dans la viersquo3 (lsquoSo this LazouW

hersquos one of those people who always has a little problem to take care of in lifeFrsquo)Lazoursquos immediate petit problegraveme is of course money which translates broadlyinto survival the principal theme of the comic book Lazou sets out to nd hiswallet by going rst to a seer who tries to give him unwanted advice on his lovelife and with whom he has a ght before retrieving his 100FCFA He then goesto Marcheacute Sandaga Dakarrsquos boundless principal market where anythingreputedly can be found and where he meets Baye Galaye who is described as alsquocommerccedilant tregraves speacutecialrsquo (lsquovery special businessmanrsquo) Baye Galayersquos specialityis selling lost passports identity cards and wallets back to their owners At rstLazou is outraged that he has to pay three hundred francs to get his own nowempty wallet back and he brings a policeman to deal with Baye Galaye BayeGalaye however charms the policeman by attering him lsquoGood morningcommissionerrsquo he says and when the policeman corrects him saying that he isnot a commissioner he retorts graciously saying lsquoIrsquoll pray that you soon becomeonersquo A voluptuous young woman a in Wolof who is addressed assuch then comes by to reclaim the lost wallet that someone had brought her fromMecca Baye Galaye hands it over to her gallantly and tells her that she need notpay her beauty suf ces thereby lending credibility to his position vis-agrave-vis thepoliceman The policeman leaves without reprimanding Baye Galaye and Lazouis left to apologize and offers to pay six hundred francs to reclaim his walletBaye Galaye accepts and tells Lazou that he should learn to respect his elders or

3 Throughout this essay (and in accordance with the conventions of this journal) I use

Times italic to indicate French and to indicate Wolof incitations of written and spoken language in which the two are mixed correspondingportions of the translation are marked with subscript F and W

Dakar Wolof 157

he will never get by in life Lazou thanks him profusely and walks away sayingto himself that Baye Galaye is a real capitalist

In this rst episode of Boy Dakar Lazou has learned that he is not the onlyone seeking to survive in an urban environment The policeman who represents abureaucratic system that is fundamentally out of touch with reality is no matchfor Baye Galaye and his creative improvisations that are characteristic of systegravemeD (for deacutebrouillard lsquosavvyrsquo) as it is known in francophone Africa Baye Galayeis a master in the art of getting by which is what Lazou has to learn Theinformal system or systegraveme D is ultimately superior to the formal system asillustrated by the way in which Baye Galaye fools the policeman and thanksironically to the policemanrsquos intervention comes out on top by collecting twiceas much money as he had originally asked for By appealing to values such asrespect for onersquos elders Baye Galaye also teaches Lazou that civility must bemaintained in such interactions

Ass4 and Oussou the main characters of the second comic series are twinbrothers who have just arrived from the country In physical terms they areopposites Ass is tall and thin with a thick head of hair while Oussou his foil isshort and fat with a shaved head Their attitudes and knowledge about the cityare also diametrically opposed Oussou is a simple and honest person who doesnot like to misrepresent himself while Ass continuously experiments withsystegraveme D seizing every opportunity for possible employment and constantlygetting himself and Oussou into xes In the rst episode which appeared on 19August 1988 Ass tells Oussou lsquo Tes trucs de champ tu les laissesau village vursquo (lsquoThis is the cityW Your country ways leave them in thevillage OKFrsquo) Several episodes later Ass tells a potential employer who wantsto hire them to run a snack bar that Oussou has had two yearsrsquo experience in theprofession When Oussou protests that Ass is misrepresenting him Ass counterswith the same line lsquoJe te lrsquoai deacutejagrave dit Pour reacuteussir il faut qursquoonsache mettre tous les atouts de notre cocircteacutersquo (lsquoIrsquove already told youF this is thecityW To succeed we have to know how to play all the trumps on our sideFrsquo)

Becoming urban as Ass is trying to tell Oussou is a process oftransformation in which an old identity is temporarily (or sometimespermanently) shed and a new one more appropriate to the surroundings isassumed Oussoursquos lack of urban knowledge nostalgia for the country and failureto adapt to how things are done in Dakar are a constant source of frustration toAss who wants desperately to succeed in the city The two characters the savvyand the naiumlve are played off against each other re ecting a dichotomy betweenappropriate urban and non-urban identities This dichotomy is not unfamiliar to agreat many Senegalese who travel back and forth between rural and urban areasslipping out of one identity and into another as easily as if they were changingclothes For many such people discourse on the components of uid identityinvolves both language and ethnicity

4 The name Ass is a Wolo zed version of the title El-Hajj which is given to one who

has made the pilgrimage to Mecca It is a common given name in Senegal

158 Fiona McLaughlin

An earlier study on language and identity in Senegal (McLaughlin 1995)shows that language is a key factor in self-reported adaptation strategies ofpeople who move back and forth on a regular basis from Dakar where theywork to other parts of the country where their families live Signi cantly manypeople reported that they spoke Wolof one way at home and another way inDakar The speci c examples included using fewer French words at home andusing different noun classes in the two places favouring the default class in theurban context While many people reported speaking Wolof in a different way inthe city even more striking was the comment by a teacher from the region ofSine who claimed that his ethnicity changed when he was in the city lsquoQuand jesuis chez moi je suis Haalpulaar quand je suis agrave Dakar je suis Wolofrsquo (lsquoWhen Iam at home I am Haalpulaar when I am in Dakar I am Wolofrsquo) (McLaughlin1995 156)

While contemporary anthropology has contributed much to our understandingof the uidity of ethnic identity (see for example Amselle 1990 and Clifford1988) even where it is no longer appropriate the notion of ethnicity as aprimordial category dies hard in Africanist discourse In looking at the notion ofurban identity as re ected in the writing of urban Wolof at a particular historicalmoment what is intriguing is the apparent emergence of an as yet inchoateidentity that goes by the cover name of Wolof Wolof ethnicity and Woloflanguage In an attempt to put together the pieces of the puzzle of the relationshipbetween language and ethnicity in Senegal Swigart (1990) suggests that in theurban context people claim to be ethnically Wolof because Wolof is all theyspeak She cites a worker from the 1988 census who reported that when people inDakar responded to one of the census questions on their ethnicity they oftenhesitated cited the ethnicity or ethnicities of their parents and then added lsquoJustput Wolof thatrsquos all I speakrsquo (Swigart 1990 4) At face value this examplesuggests that ethnicity in the urban Senegalese context is in some sense de nedby language but it also raises a much larger question is ethnicity really the issuehere In an essay entitled lsquoBeyond Identityrsquo in which he probes some of theseissues within the context of what he terms lsquothe postidentitarian predicamentrsquoMiller (1998 173) writes lsquoThe easy positive means of identity de nition basedon ready-made categories such as gender race ethnicity and nation havebecome unsatisfactory but the terms of any new paradigm are not immediatelyapparentrsquo I suggest that within this context when the teacher cited above saysthat in Dakar he is Wolof rather than Haalpulaar and when Baaba Maal sings

in Wolof as opposed to Pulaar they are using the ready-made terms ofthe old paradigms of identity namely ethnicity and language but they are in facttalking about a newly con gured urban identity for which there is as yet no term

Taking these observations one step further I would suggest that claiming thatone is Wolof for lack of any other plausible ethnic identity is in fact anunconscious abandonment of ethnicity as an identifying category Wolof andespecially Wolof in the urban context is simply the unmarked or defaultethnicity when there is nothing else to fall back on in self-de nition Thecategory of ethnicity is not always satisfactory as we see in the report by the

Dakar Wolof 159

census worker but the ready-made terms of the old paradigm are still in use Inthis case individuals fall back on language as a determiner of ethnicity Sincelanguage and ethnicity in many other Senegalese contexts are still a major aspectof identity (McLaughlin 1995) the ready-made concept is maintained in urbanidentity but when there is nothing to ll it it becomes vacuous Seen in this wayBaaba Maalrsquos choice to sing in Wolof is not a switch in allegianceaway from the language of his own ethnic group and towards that of another it issimply a way to re ect the urban focus of the song Similarly the teacher who isHaalpulaar at home and Wolof in Dakar is really saying that when he is in thecapital he is as fully integrated an urbanite as anyone else

3 Urban Wolof

Of cially a francophone country and one whose rst president LeacuteopoldSenghor exhorted his people to speak French lsquocomme (des) bourgeois de Parisrsquo(lsquolike Parisian bourgeoisrsquo) and was subsequently (if not consequently) electedmember of the Acadeacutemie Franccedilaise Senegal is remarkable for how little Frenchis actually used The 1988 census gures estimate that only twenty- ve per centof the population is literate in French (Cruise OrsquoBrien 1998 37) making thecountry that hosted the 1989 international Francophonie summit a de jure ratherthan de facto francophone state The language that has lled the role of linguafranca in Senegal is Wolof Although no such of cial status has been granted itWolof is frequently referred to as the national language not only by native Wolofspeakers but by speakers of many of the other languages spoken in SenegalWolof has been gaining speakers steadily in a spread that began during thecolonial period ndash the areas of Senegal rst colonized by the French were Wolof-speaking ndash and picked up momentum with sustained migration of ruralpopulations from the countryside into the cities Moreover the social andeconomic in uence of the Mouride Su order whose origins are in the Wolofheartland has also favoured the ascent of the Wolof language (Cruise OrsquoBrien1998 1979 Swigart 2001) Figures from the 1988 Senegalese census also showthat more than eighty per cent of the Senegalese population speaks Wolof whileonly 437 per cent are ethnically Wolof Due to this language shift Senegal maymore accurately be described as a wolofphone than a francophone country

Wolo zation or the spread of Wolof as a lingua franca is essentially an urbanphenomenon and urban Wolof is a language that has arisen out of continuoussustained contact between Wolof and French5 Although I use the terms lsquoDakarWolofrsquo and lsquourban Wolofrsquo interchangeably in this essay the language is notgeographically limited to Dakar but is spoken in most Senegalese urban areasand even in Banjul the Gambian capital where English is the of cial language

5 Although they are not the focus of this study loanwords from other languages

especially English and Pulaar are also incorporated into urban Wolof The semioticsof English loanwords have undergone an interesting change in recent yearsOriginally associated with the language of delinquence they now bespeak acosmopolitanism primarily associated with the international trading networks of theMouride Su order (Degraveme 1999)

160 Fiona McLaughlin

In addition to the numerous English loans found in urban Gambian Wolof thereare also many French loans that have entered the language secondhand via urbanWolof rather than through direct contact with French Given the speci cpeculiarities of urban dialects and the pressures placed on rapidly spreadinglanguages it is not surprising that urban Wolof has undergone and is continuingto undergo rather drastic changes in many areas of its grammar leading to amarked dialectal difference between urban and non-urban varieties of the samelanguage The emerging urban language the nature of which will be elaboratedon below is a hybrid language characterized primarily but not exclusively byextensive lexical borrowing from French In considering the situation of Wolof inSenegal what emerges is a portrait of considerable complexity in which twoversions of the same language coexist Speakers may be competent in one or theother or frequently in both In this latter case speakers may be able tomanipulate a variety of styles or registers along a continuum that ranges from

ndash or lsquodeep Wolofrsquo as it is called ndash free of any French in uences tothe hybrid language that is urban Wolof depending on the context

What then is urban Wolof and how is it differentiated from other varieties ofWolof In traditional parlance the term lsquocodeswitchingrsquo is used to describesituations in which two (or more) languages are used in a given stretch ofdiscourse Gumperz (1982 59) de nes codeswitching as lsquothe juxtaposition withinthe same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two differentgrammatical systems or subsystemsrsquo Taken at face value Gumperzrsquos de nitionserves as a point of departure for the formal analysis of a hybrid language likeurban Wolof It is also useful to adopt Myers-Scottonrsquos (1993) terminology ofmatrix language and embedded language One of the two languages involved incodeswitching or code-mixing can be said to be the matrix language in that itsupplies the overall morphological and syntactic structure of the discourse whilethe embedded language supplies lexical items that can be plugged into the matrixstructure In the case of urban Wolof Wolof serves as the matrix language andFrench as the embedded language as the following examples of naturallyoccurring sentences show6 Wolof words are indicated by typewriter-style typewhile French words are in italics

(1) Structure contenu cent points structure DET and content DET one-hundred points 3S7

The structure and the content are (worth) one hundred points(2) Feu rouge

Traf c-light DET red 3SThe traf c light turned red

6 These and all other examples in this essay are naturally occurring utterances which I

recorded during periods of eldwork in Senegal between 1989 and 20007 The following abbreviations are used in the glosses D E T determiner IMP

imperfective NEG negative OBJ object 123 rstsecondthird person S singularPL plural

Dakar Wolof 161

(3) errer monde 3S PASTIMP wander in world DET justHe was just wandering around the world

(4) il-faut-que rondhook it-is-necessary-that 3S roundHooks have to be round

(5) AG- eskaA(ssembleacutee)-G(eacuteneacuterale)+2PL already INTERROGHave you already AGrsquod (had a General Assembly)

Although it is not dif cult to identify the French words in the Wolof sentencesthe adequacy of the traditional term codeswitching namely the juxtaposition oftwo different grammatical systems is thrown into question by the simple fact thatwhile the speakers who uttered the sentences in (1) (3) and (5) can speak bothFrench and Wolof those who uttered the sentences in (2) and (4) do not speakFrench an issue to which I will return below

The term lsquocode mixingrsquo has been used by some sociolinguists to designate amore local switching of codes in which a single word may contain morphemesfrom two different grammatical systems as shown in the following exampleswhere stems that come from French are frequently combined with other Wolofmorphemes in word formation

(6) Akise- accuse-1SNEG 2S-OBJ nothingI didnrsquot accuse you of anything

(7) Seer- expensive-3SNEGItrsquos not expensive

(8) baraase- 2SNEGIMPERATIVE 3SOBJ plug-in-ITERATIVEDonrsquot plug it in again

(9) grev- what 3PL-IMP strike-ITERATIVEWhat are they striking about again

(10) Arieer- behind-2SIMPERATIVEReverse

The sentences in (6) and (7) show verb stems from French accuser lsquoto accusersquoand the adjective cher lsquoexpensiversquo while the respective negative morphemes( rst person singular - and third person singular - ) are from WolofExample (8) shows the Wolof iterative suf x - attaching to a verb stemfrom French brancher lsquoto plug inrsquo in order to give the meaning lsquoplug in againrsquowhile (9) shows an iterative suf x attaching to a verb stem formed from theFrench noun gregraveve lsquostrikersquo The nal example (10) involves the suf xation ofthe Wolof imperative - to the French arriegravere lsquobehindrsquo to get the verbalcommand lsquoreversersquo

It is evident from the examples in (1-10) that French loanwords undergophonological changes that adapt their pronunciation to the sound patterns of

162 Fiona McLaughlin

Wolof The high front rounded vowel in French becomes unrounded inWolof to as in (11) and (12) the voiced labiodental fricative in Frenchbecomes the labiovelar glide in Wolof as in (13) and (14) and the fricatives

and in French become in Wolof as in (15) and (16) One lastphonological observation is that permissible consonant clusters in French arefrequently split up in Wolof especially among speakers who do not speakFrench since Wolof licenses only CV or CVC syllables Examples of theseinclude the word-initial clusters as in (17) and (18) and as in (19)

FRENCH WOLOF GLOSS(11) perdu lost(12) tu you singular(13 valise suitcase(14) voyou scoundrel(15) cher expensive(16) garage garage(17) grave serious grave(18) griot griot(19) client customer client

The examples cited above are typical of Dakar Wolof however it should benoted that there is much variation in the language much of which depends on thespeakerrsquos command of French and Wolof In some cases where the speaker is uent in French fewer adaptations to Wolof phonology will be made in othercases where the speaker has little or no knowledge of French the adaptation toWolof phonology may be complete

Urban Wolof and languages like it such as Town Bemba spoken in urbanZambia (Spitulnik 1999) are readily characterizable as hybrid languages But tocall a language a hybrid is to make a statement about its history namely that it isderived from diverse sources and as we know people do not inherit the historyof their language when they inherit the language In the case of urban Wolof thesources are Wolof and French distinct grammatical systems that are readilyidenti able and isolatable within Gumperzrsquos de nition of codeswitching But thisis if and only if one recognizes a distinction between the two grammaticalsystems So to return to the utterances in (2) and (4) as well as those in (7) and(10) all of which were uttered by speakers who do not know French the notionof codeswitching falls substantially short of describing a reality For thosespeakers there are no distinct grammatical systems juxtaposed in their utterancesndash there is only one the grammatical system of urban Wolof What substantiallycomplicates the analysis of urban Wolof is that those who speak it have diverselinguistic repertoires Some may speak urban Wolof French and lsquodeep Wolofrsquo( ) as well as other Senegalese languages others may speak a subsetof those languages and still others may speak only urban Wolof The resultingsituation is that speakers of urban Wolof vary in their ability to recognize theFrench in uences in their language Speakers who are uent in French recognizeand even joke about French loans in their Wolof on the other hand those whoknow no French are frequently oblivious to its in uences in their own speechFor example when asked if there had been many people attending a naming

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

156 Fiona McLaughlin

resembles Mbembersquos (1997 153) description of the Cameroonian post-colonialurban world of which he writes

In these circumstances the best way to get results is to experimentExperimentation takes various forms On the one hand to move around amidst thecrowd made up of customers passers-by and beggars one always has tomanoeuvre in and out get round or step over things and people But manoeuvringin and out getting round and stepping over are things that everyone has to doThey constitute a determining element of behaviour and urban knowledge

Urban knowledge as Mbembe terms it is the ability to improvise survive andultimately succeed in the city Such knowledge can only be acquired in apractical manner but it also invites experimentation and improvisation Thecharacters who people the pages of Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou areexperimenters and consummate deacutebrouillard s who continuously invent creativesolutions to the problems they face

In the rst frame of the rst issue of Boy Dakar we are introduced to thepicaresque hero Lazou as he is searching under the mattress in his modestmouse-infested room for the wallet that he has misplaced Youssou Ndourrsquos song

blares from a radio on the oor lsquo rsquo we are told lsquoil est deceux qui ont toujours un petit problegraveme agrave regler dans la viersquo3 (lsquoSo this LazouW

hersquos one of those people who always has a little problem to take care of in lifeFrsquo)Lazoursquos immediate petit problegraveme is of course money which translates broadlyinto survival the principal theme of the comic book Lazou sets out to nd hiswallet by going rst to a seer who tries to give him unwanted advice on his lovelife and with whom he has a ght before retrieving his 100FCFA He then goesto Marcheacute Sandaga Dakarrsquos boundless principal market where anythingreputedly can be found and where he meets Baye Galaye who is described as alsquocommerccedilant tregraves speacutecialrsquo (lsquovery special businessmanrsquo) Baye Galayersquos specialityis selling lost passports identity cards and wallets back to their owners At rstLazou is outraged that he has to pay three hundred francs to get his own nowempty wallet back and he brings a policeman to deal with Baye Galaye BayeGalaye however charms the policeman by attering him lsquoGood morningcommissionerrsquo he says and when the policeman corrects him saying that he isnot a commissioner he retorts graciously saying lsquoIrsquoll pray that you soon becomeonersquo A voluptuous young woman a in Wolof who is addressed assuch then comes by to reclaim the lost wallet that someone had brought her fromMecca Baye Galaye hands it over to her gallantly and tells her that she need notpay her beauty suf ces thereby lending credibility to his position vis-agrave-vis thepoliceman The policeman leaves without reprimanding Baye Galaye and Lazouis left to apologize and offers to pay six hundred francs to reclaim his walletBaye Galaye accepts and tells Lazou that he should learn to respect his elders or

3 Throughout this essay (and in accordance with the conventions of this journal) I use

Times italic to indicate French and to indicate Wolof incitations of written and spoken language in which the two are mixed correspondingportions of the translation are marked with subscript F and W

Dakar Wolof 157

he will never get by in life Lazou thanks him profusely and walks away sayingto himself that Baye Galaye is a real capitalist

In this rst episode of Boy Dakar Lazou has learned that he is not the onlyone seeking to survive in an urban environment The policeman who represents abureaucratic system that is fundamentally out of touch with reality is no matchfor Baye Galaye and his creative improvisations that are characteristic of systegravemeD (for deacutebrouillard lsquosavvyrsquo) as it is known in francophone Africa Baye Galayeis a master in the art of getting by which is what Lazou has to learn Theinformal system or systegraveme D is ultimately superior to the formal system asillustrated by the way in which Baye Galaye fools the policeman and thanksironically to the policemanrsquos intervention comes out on top by collecting twiceas much money as he had originally asked for By appealing to values such asrespect for onersquos elders Baye Galaye also teaches Lazou that civility must bemaintained in such interactions

Ass4 and Oussou the main characters of the second comic series are twinbrothers who have just arrived from the country In physical terms they areopposites Ass is tall and thin with a thick head of hair while Oussou his foil isshort and fat with a shaved head Their attitudes and knowledge about the cityare also diametrically opposed Oussou is a simple and honest person who doesnot like to misrepresent himself while Ass continuously experiments withsystegraveme D seizing every opportunity for possible employment and constantlygetting himself and Oussou into xes In the rst episode which appeared on 19August 1988 Ass tells Oussou lsquo Tes trucs de champ tu les laissesau village vursquo (lsquoThis is the cityW Your country ways leave them in thevillage OKFrsquo) Several episodes later Ass tells a potential employer who wantsto hire them to run a snack bar that Oussou has had two yearsrsquo experience in theprofession When Oussou protests that Ass is misrepresenting him Ass counterswith the same line lsquoJe te lrsquoai deacutejagrave dit Pour reacuteussir il faut qursquoonsache mettre tous les atouts de notre cocircteacutersquo (lsquoIrsquove already told youF this is thecityW To succeed we have to know how to play all the trumps on our sideFrsquo)

Becoming urban as Ass is trying to tell Oussou is a process oftransformation in which an old identity is temporarily (or sometimespermanently) shed and a new one more appropriate to the surroundings isassumed Oussoursquos lack of urban knowledge nostalgia for the country and failureto adapt to how things are done in Dakar are a constant source of frustration toAss who wants desperately to succeed in the city The two characters the savvyand the naiumlve are played off against each other re ecting a dichotomy betweenappropriate urban and non-urban identities This dichotomy is not unfamiliar to agreat many Senegalese who travel back and forth between rural and urban areasslipping out of one identity and into another as easily as if they were changingclothes For many such people discourse on the components of uid identityinvolves both language and ethnicity

4 The name Ass is a Wolo zed version of the title El-Hajj which is given to one who

has made the pilgrimage to Mecca It is a common given name in Senegal

158 Fiona McLaughlin

An earlier study on language and identity in Senegal (McLaughlin 1995)shows that language is a key factor in self-reported adaptation strategies ofpeople who move back and forth on a regular basis from Dakar where theywork to other parts of the country where their families live Signi cantly manypeople reported that they spoke Wolof one way at home and another way inDakar The speci c examples included using fewer French words at home andusing different noun classes in the two places favouring the default class in theurban context While many people reported speaking Wolof in a different way inthe city even more striking was the comment by a teacher from the region ofSine who claimed that his ethnicity changed when he was in the city lsquoQuand jesuis chez moi je suis Haalpulaar quand je suis agrave Dakar je suis Wolofrsquo (lsquoWhen Iam at home I am Haalpulaar when I am in Dakar I am Wolofrsquo) (McLaughlin1995 156)

While contemporary anthropology has contributed much to our understandingof the uidity of ethnic identity (see for example Amselle 1990 and Clifford1988) even where it is no longer appropriate the notion of ethnicity as aprimordial category dies hard in Africanist discourse In looking at the notion ofurban identity as re ected in the writing of urban Wolof at a particular historicalmoment what is intriguing is the apparent emergence of an as yet inchoateidentity that goes by the cover name of Wolof Wolof ethnicity and Woloflanguage In an attempt to put together the pieces of the puzzle of the relationshipbetween language and ethnicity in Senegal Swigart (1990) suggests that in theurban context people claim to be ethnically Wolof because Wolof is all theyspeak She cites a worker from the 1988 census who reported that when people inDakar responded to one of the census questions on their ethnicity they oftenhesitated cited the ethnicity or ethnicities of their parents and then added lsquoJustput Wolof thatrsquos all I speakrsquo (Swigart 1990 4) At face value this examplesuggests that ethnicity in the urban Senegalese context is in some sense de nedby language but it also raises a much larger question is ethnicity really the issuehere In an essay entitled lsquoBeyond Identityrsquo in which he probes some of theseissues within the context of what he terms lsquothe postidentitarian predicamentrsquoMiller (1998 173) writes lsquoThe easy positive means of identity de nition basedon ready-made categories such as gender race ethnicity and nation havebecome unsatisfactory but the terms of any new paradigm are not immediatelyapparentrsquo I suggest that within this context when the teacher cited above saysthat in Dakar he is Wolof rather than Haalpulaar and when Baaba Maal sings

in Wolof as opposed to Pulaar they are using the ready-made terms ofthe old paradigms of identity namely ethnicity and language but they are in facttalking about a newly con gured urban identity for which there is as yet no term

Taking these observations one step further I would suggest that claiming thatone is Wolof for lack of any other plausible ethnic identity is in fact anunconscious abandonment of ethnicity as an identifying category Wolof andespecially Wolof in the urban context is simply the unmarked or defaultethnicity when there is nothing else to fall back on in self-de nition Thecategory of ethnicity is not always satisfactory as we see in the report by the

Dakar Wolof 159

census worker but the ready-made terms of the old paradigm are still in use Inthis case individuals fall back on language as a determiner of ethnicity Sincelanguage and ethnicity in many other Senegalese contexts are still a major aspectof identity (McLaughlin 1995) the ready-made concept is maintained in urbanidentity but when there is nothing to ll it it becomes vacuous Seen in this wayBaaba Maalrsquos choice to sing in Wolof is not a switch in allegianceaway from the language of his own ethnic group and towards that of another it issimply a way to re ect the urban focus of the song Similarly the teacher who isHaalpulaar at home and Wolof in Dakar is really saying that when he is in thecapital he is as fully integrated an urbanite as anyone else

3 Urban Wolof

Of cially a francophone country and one whose rst president LeacuteopoldSenghor exhorted his people to speak French lsquocomme (des) bourgeois de Parisrsquo(lsquolike Parisian bourgeoisrsquo) and was subsequently (if not consequently) electedmember of the Acadeacutemie Franccedilaise Senegal is remarkable for how little Frenchis actually used The 1988 census gures estimate that only twenty- ve per centof the population is literate in French (Cruise OrsquoBrien 1998 37) making thecountry that hosted the 1989 international Francophonie summit a de jure ratherthan de facto francophone state The language that has lled the role of linguafranca in Senegal is Wolof Although no such of cial status has been granted itWolof is frequently referred to as the national language not only by native Wolofspeakers but by speakers of many of the other languages spoken in SenegalWolof has been gaining speakers steadily in a spread that began during thecolonial period ndash the areas of Senegal rst colonized by the French were Wolof-speaking ndash and picked up momentum with sustained migration of ruralpopulations from the countryside into the cities Moreover the social andeconomic in uence of the Mouride Su order whose origins are in the Wolofheartland has also favoured the ascent of the Wolof language (Cruise OrsquoBrien1998 1979 Swigart 2001) Figures from the 1988 Senegalese census also showthat more than eighty per cent of the Senegalese population speaks Wolof whileonly 437 per cent are ethnically Wolof Due to this language shift Senegal maymore accurately be described as a wolofphone than a francophone country

Wolo zation or the spread of Wolof as a lingua franca is essentially an urbanphenomenon and urban Wolof is a language that has arisen out of continuoussustained contact between Wolof and French5 Although I use the terms lsquoDakarWolofrsquo and lsquourban Wolofrsquo interchangeably in this essay the language is notgeographically limited to Dakar but is spoken in most Senegalese urban areasand even in Banjul the Gambian capital where English is the of cial language

5 Although they are not the focus of this study loanwords from other languages

especially English and Pulaar are also incorporated into urban Wolof The semioticsof English loanwords have undergone an interesting change in recent yearsOriginally associated with the language of delinquence they now bespeak acosmopolitanism primarily associated with the international trading networks of theMouride Su order (Degraveme 1999)

160 Fiona McLaughlin

In addition to the numerous English loans found in urban Gambian Wolof thereare also many French loans that have entered the language secondhand via urbanWolof rather than through direct contact with French Given the speci cpeculiarities of urban dialects and the pressures placed on rapidly spreadinglanguages it is not surprising that urban Wolof has undergone and is continuingto undergo rather drastic changes in many areas of its grammar leading to amarked dialectal difference between urban and non-urban varieties of the samelanguage The emerging urban language the nature of which will be elaboratedon below is a hybrid language characterized primarily but not exclusively byextensive lexical borrowing from French In considering the situation of Wolof inSenegal what emerges is a portrait of considerable complexity in which twoversions of the same language coexist Speakers may be competent in one or theother or frequently in both In this latter case speakers may be able tomanipulate a variety of styles or registers along a continuum that ranges from

ndash or lsquodeep Wolofrsquo as it is called ndash free of any French in uences tothe hybrid language that is urban Wolof depending on the context

What then is urban Wolof and how is it differentiated from other varieties ofWolof In traditional parlance the term lsquocodeswitchingrsquo is used to describesituations in which two (or more) languages are used in a given stretch ofdiscourse Gumperz (1982 59) de nes codeswitching as lsquothe juxtaposition withinthe same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two differentgrammatical systems or subsystemsrsquo Taken at face value Gumperzrsquos de nitionserves as a point of departure for the formal analysis of a hybrid language likeurban Wolof It is also useful to adopt Myers-Scottonrsquos (1993) terminology ofmatrix language and embedded language One of the two languages involved incodeswitching or code-mixing can be said to be the matrix language in that itsupplies the overall morphological and syntactic structure of the discourse whilethe embedded language supplies lexical items that can be plugged into the matrixstructure In the case of urban Wolof Wolof serves as the matrix language andFrench as the embedded language as the following examples of naturallyoccurring sentences show6 Wolof words are indicated by typewriter-style typewhile French words are in italics

(1) Structure contenu cent points structure DET and content DET one-hundred points 3S7

The structure and the content are (worth) one hundred points(2) Feu rouge

Traf c-light DET red 3SThe traf c light turned red

6 These and all other examples in this essay are naturally occurring utterances which I

recorded during periods of eldwork in Senegal between 1989 and 20007 The following abbreviations are used in the glosses D E T determiner IMP

imperfective NEG negative OBJ object 123 rstsecondthird person S singularPL plural

Dakar Wolof 161

(3) errer monde 3S PASTIMP wander in world DET justHe was just wandering around the world

(4) il-faut-que rondhook it-is-necessary-that 3S roundHooks have to be round

(5) AG- eskaA(ssembleacutee)-G(eacuteneacuterale)+2PL already INTERROGHave you already AGrsquod (had a General Assembly)

Although it is not dif cult to identify the French words in the Wolof sentencesthe adequacy of the traditional term codeswitching namely the juxtaposition oftwo different grammatical systems is thrown into question by the simple fact thatwhile the speakers who uttered the sentences in (1) (3) and (5) can speak bothFrench and Wolof those who uttered the sentences in (2) and (4) do not speakFrench an issue to which I will return below

The term lsquocode mixingrsquo has been used by some sociolinguists to designate amore local switching of codes in which a single word may contain morphemesfrom two different grammatical systems as shown in the following exampleswhere stems that come from French are frequently combined with other Wolofmorphemes in word formation

(6) Akise- accuse-1SNEG 2S-OBJ nothingI didnrsquot accuse you of anything

(7) Seer- expensive-3SNEGItrsquos not expensive

(8) baraase- 2SNEGIMPERATIVE 3SOBJ plug-in-ITERATIVEDonrsquot plug it in again

(9) grev- what 3PL-IMP strike-ITERATIVEWhat are they striking about again

(10) Arieer- behind-2SIMPERATIVEReverse

The sentences in (6) and (7) show verb stems from French accuser lsquoto accusersquoand the adjective cher lsquoexpensiversquo while the respective negative morphemes( rst person singular - and third person singular - ) are from WolofExample (8) shows the Wolof iterative suf x - attaching to a verb stemfrom French brancher lsquoto plug inrsquo in order to give the meaning lsquoplug in againrsquowhile (9) shows an iterative suf x attaching to a verb stem formed from theFrench noun gregraveve lsquostrikersquo The nal example (10) involves the suf xation ofthe Wolof imperative - to the French arriegravere lsquobehindrsquo to get the verbalcommand lsquoreversersquo

It is evident from the examples in (1-10) that French loanwords undergophonological changes that adapt their pronunciation to the sound patterns of

162 Fiona McLaughlin

Wolof The high front rounded vowel in French becomes unrounded inWolof to as in (11) and (12) the voiced labiodental fricative in Frenchbecomes the labiovelar glide in Wolof as in (13) and (14) and the fricatives

and in French become in Wolof as in (15) and (16) One lastphonological observation is that permissible consonant clusters in French arefrequently split up in Wolof especially among speakers who do not speakFrench since Wolof licenses only CV or CVC syllables Examples of theseinclude the word-initial clusters as in (17) and (18) and as in (19)

FRENCH WOLOF GLOSS(11) perdu lost(12) tu you singular(13 valise suitcase(14) voyou scoundrel(15) cher expensive(16) garage garage(17) grave serious grave(18) griot griot(19) client customer client

The examples cited above are typical of Dakar Wolof however it should benoted that there is much variation in the language much of which depends on thespeakerrsquos command of French and Wolof In some cases where the speaker is uent in French fewer adaptations to Wolof phonology will be made in othercases where the speaker has little or no knowledge of French the adaptation toWolof phonology may be complete

Urban Wolof and languages like it such as Town Bemba spoken in urbanZambia (Spitulnik 1999) are readily characterizable as hybrid languages But tocall a language a hybrid is to make a statement about its history namely that it isderived from diverse sources and as we know people do not inherit the historyof their language when they inherit the language In the case of urban Wolof thesources are Wolof and French distinct grammatical systems that are readilyidenti able and isolatable within Gumperzrsquos de nition of codeswitching But thisis if and only if one recognizes a distinction between the two grammaticalsystems So to return to the utterances in (2) and (4) as well as those in (7) and(10) all of which were uttered by speakers who do not know French the notionof codeswitching falls substantially short of describing a reality For thosespeakers there are no distinct grammatical systems juxtaposed in their utterancesndash there is only one the grammatical system of urban Wolof What substantiallycomplicates the analysis of urban Wolof is that those who speak it have diverselinguistic repertoires Some may speak urban Wolof French and lsquodeep Wolofrsquo( ) as well as other Senegalese languages others may speak a subsetof those languages and still others may speak only urban Wolof The resultingsituation is that speakers of urban Wolof vary in their ability to recognize theFrench in uences in their language Speakers who are uent in French recognizeand even joke about French loans in their Wolof on the other hand those whoknow no French are frequently oblivious to its in uences in their own speechFor example when asked if there had been many people attending a naming

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

Dakar Wolof 157

he will never get by in life Lazou thanks him profusely and walks away sayingto himself that Baye Galaye is a real capitalist

In this rst episode of Boy Dakar Lazou has learned that he is not the onlyone seeking to survive in an urban environment The policeman who represents abureaucratic system that is fundamentally out of touch with reality is no matchfor Baye Galaye and his creative improvisations that are characteristic of systegravemeD (for deacutebrouillard lsquosavvyrsquo) as it is known in francophone Africa Baye Galayeis a master in the art of getting by which is what Lazou has to learn Theinformal system or systegraveme D is ultimately superior to the formal system asillustrated by the way in which Baye Galaye fools the policeman and thanksironically to the policemanrsquos intervention comes out on top by collecting twiceas much money as he had originally asked for By appealing to values such asrespect for onersquos elders Baye Galaye also teaches Lazou that civility must bemaintained in such interactions

Ass4 and Oussou the main characters of the second comic series are twinbrothers who have just arrived from the country In physical terms they areopposites Ass is tall and thin with a thick head of hair while Oussou his foil isshort and fat with a shaved head Their attitudes and knowledge about the cityare also diametrically opposed Oussou is a simple and honest person who doesnot like to misrepresent himself while Ass continuously experiments withsystegraveme D seizing every opportunity for possible employment and constantlygetting himself and Oussou into xes In the rst episode which appeared on 19August 1988 Ass tells Oussou lsquo Tes trucs de champ tu les laissesau village vursquo (lsquoThis is the cityW Your country ways leave them in thevillage OKFrsquo) Several episodes later Ass tells a potential employer who wantsto hire them to run a snack bar that Oussou has had two yearsrsquo experience in theprofession When Oussou protests that Ass is misrepresenting him Ass counterswith the same line lsquoJe te lrsquoai deacutejagrave dit Pour reacuteussir il faut qursquoonsache mettre tous les atouts de notre cocircteacutersquo (lsquoIrsquove already told youF this is thecityW To succeed we have to know how to play all the trumps on our sideFrsquo)

Becoming urban as Ass is trying to tell Oussou is a process oftransformation in which an old identity is temporarily (or sometimespermanently) shed and a new one more appropriate to the surroundings isassumed Oussoursquos lack of urban knowledge nostalgia for the country and failureto adapt to how things are done in Dakar are a constant source of frustration toAss who wants desperately to succeed in the city The two characters the savvyand the naiumlve are played off against each other re ecting a dichotomy betweenappropriate urban and non-urban identities This dichotomy is not unfamiliar to agreat many Senegalese who travel back and forth between rural and urban areasslipping out of one identity and into another as easily as if they were changingclothes For many such people discourse on the components of uid identityinvolves both language and ethnicity

4 The name Ass is a Wolo zed version of the title El-Hajj which is given to one who

has made the pilgrimage to Mecca It is a common given name in Senegal

158 Fiona McLaughlin

An earlier study on language and identity in Senegal (McLaughlin 1995)shows that language is a key factor in self-reported adaptation strategies ofpeople who move back and forth on a regular basis from Dakar where theywork to other parts of the country where their families live Signi cantly manypeople reported that they spoke Wolof one way at home and another way inDakar The speci c examples included using fewer French words at home andusing different noun classes in the two places favouring the default class in theurban context While many people reported speaking Wolof in a different way inthe city even more striking was the comment by a teacher from the region ofSine who claimed that his ethnicity changed when he was in the city lsquoQuand jesuis chez moi je suis Haalpulaar quand je suis agrave Dakar je suis Wolofrsquo (lsquoWhen Iam at home I am Haalpulaar when I am in Dakar I am Wolofrsquo) (McLaughlin1995 156)

While contemporary anthropology has contributed much to our understandingof the uidity of ethnic identity (see for example Amselle 1990 and Clifford1988) even where it is no longer appropriate the notion of ethnicity as aprimordial category dies hard in Africanist discourse In looking at the notion ofurban identity as re ected in the writing of urban Wolof at a particular historicalmoment what is intriguing is the apparent emergence of an as yet inchoateidentity that goes by the cover name of Wolof Wolof ethnicity and Woloflanguage In an attempt to put together the pieces of the puzzle of the relationshipbetween language and ethnicity in Senegal Swigart (1990) suggests that in theurban context people claim to be ethnically Wolof because Wolof is all theyspeak She cites a worker from the 1988 census who reported that when people inDakar responded to one of the census questions on their ethnicity they oftenhesitated cited the ethnicity or ethnicities of their parents and then added lsquoJustput Wolof thatrsquos all I speakrsquo (Swigart 1990 4) At face value this examplesuggests that ethnicity in the urban Senegalese context is in some sense de nedby language but it also raises a much larger question is ethnicity really the issuehere In an essay entitled lsquoBeyond Identityrsquo in which he probes some of theseissues within the context of what he terms lsquothe postidentitarian predicamentrsquoMiller (1998 173) writes lsquoThe easy positive means of identity de nition basedon ready-made categories such as gender race ethnicity and nation havebecome unsatisfactory but the terms of any new paradigm are not immediatelyapparentrsquo I suggest that within this context when the teacher cited above saysthat in Dakar he is Wolof rather than Haalpulaar and when Baaba Maal sings

in Wolof as opposed to Pulaar they are using the ready-made terms ofthe old paradigms of identity namely ethnicity and language but they are in facttalking about a newly con gured urban identity for which there is as yet no term

Taking these observations one step further I would suggest that claiming thatone is Wolof for lack of any other plausible ethnic identity is in fact anunconscious abandonment of ethnicity as an identifying category Wolof andespecially Wolof in the urban context is simply the unmarked or defaultethnicity when there is nothing else to fall back on in self-de nition Thecategory of ethnicity is not always satisfactory as we see in the report by the

Dakar Wolof 159

census worker but the ready-made terms of the old paradigm are still in use Inthis case individuals fall back on language as a determiner of ethnicity Sincelanguage and ethnicity in many other Senegalese contexts are still a major aspectof identity (McLaughlin 1995) the ready-made concept is maintained in urbanidentity but when there is nothing to ll it it becomes vacuous Seen in this wayBaaba Maalrsquos choice to sing in Wolof is not a switch in allegianceaway from the language of his own ethnic group and towards that of another it issimply a way to re ect the urban focus of the song Similarly the teacher who isHaalpulaar at home and Wolof in Dakar is really saying that when he is in thecapital he is as fully integrated an urbanite as anyone else

3 Urban Wolof

Of cially a francophone country and one whose rst president LeacuteopoldSenghor exhorted his people to speak French lsquocomme (des) bourgeois de Parisrsquo(lsquolike Parisian bourgeoisrsquo) and was subsequently (if not consequently) electedmember of the Acadeacutemie Franccedilaise Senegal is remarkable for how little Frenchis actually used The 1988 census gures estimate that only twenty- ve per centof the population is literate in French (Cruise OrsquoBrien 1998 37) making thecountry that hosted the 1989 international Francophonie summit a de jure ratherthan de facto francophone state The language that has lled the role of linguafranca in Senegal is Wolof Although no such of cial status has been granted itWolof is frequently referred to as the national language not only by native Wolofspeakers but by speakers of many of the other languages spoken in SenegalWolof has been gaining speakers steadily in a spread that began during thecolonial period ndash the areas of Senegal rst colonized by the French were Wolof-speaking ndash and picked up momentum with sustained migration of ruralpopulations from the countryside into the cities Moreover the social andeconomic in uence of the Mouride Su order whose origins are in the Wolofheartland has also favoured the ascent of the Wolof language (Cruise OrsquoBrien1998 1979 Swigart 2001) Figures from the 1988 Senegalese census also showthat more than eighty per cent of the Senegalese population speaks Wolof whileonly 437 per cent are ethnically Wolof Due to this language shift Senegal maymore accurately be described as a wolofphone than a francophone country

Wolo zation or the spread of Wolof as a lingua franca is essentially an urbanphenomenon and urban Wolof is a language that has arisen out of continuoussustained contact between Wolof and French5 Although I use the terms lsquoDakarWolofrsquo and lsquourban Wolofrsquo interchangeably in this essay the language is notgeographically limited to Dakar but is spoken in most Senegalese urban areasand even in Banjul the Gambian capital where English is the of cial language

5 Although they are not the focus of this study loanwords from other languages

especially English and Pulaar are also incorporated into urban Wolof The semioticsof English loanwords have undergone an interesting change in recent yearsOriginally associated with the language of delinquence they now bespeak acosmopolitanism primarily associated with the international trading networks of theMouride Su order (Degraveme 1999)

160 Fiona McLaughlin

In addition to the numerous English loans found in urban Gambian Wolof thereare also many French loans that have entered the language secondhand via urbanWolof rather than through direct contact with French Given the speci cpeculiarities of urban dialects and the pressures placed on rapidly spreadinglanguages it is not surprising that urban Wolof has undergone and is continuingto undergo rather drastic changes in many areas of its grammar leading to amarked dialectal difference between urban and non-urban varieties of the samelanguage The emerging urban language the nature of which will be elaboratedon below is a hybrid language characterized primarily but not exclusively byextensive lexical borrowing from French In considering the situation of Wolof inSenegal what emerges is a portrait of considerable complexity in which twoversions of the same language coexist Speakers may be competent in one or theother or frequently in both In this latter case speakers may be able tomanipulate a variety of styles or registers along a continuum that ranges from

ndash or lsquodeep Wolofrsquo as it is called ndash free of any French in uences tothe hybrid language that is urban Wolof depending on the context

What then is urban Wolof and how is it differentiated from other varieties ofWolof In traditional parlance the term lsquocodeswitchingrsquo is used to describesituations in which two (or more) languages are used in a given stretch ofdiscourse Gumperz (1982 59) de nes codeswitching as lsquothe juxtaposition withinthe same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two differentgrammatical systems or subsystemsrsquo Taken at face value Gumperzrsquos de nitionserves as a point of departure for the formal analysis of a hybrid language likeurban Wolof It is also useful to adopt Myers-Scottonrsquos (1993) terminology ofmatrix language and embedded language One of the two languages involved incodeswitching or code-mixing can be said to be the matrix language in that itsupplies the overall morphological and syntactic structure of the discourse whilethe embedded language supplies lexical items that can be plugged into the matrixstructure In the case of urban Wolof Wolof serves as the matrix language andFrench as the embedded language as the following examples of naturallyoccurring sentences show6 Wolof words are indicated by typewriter-style typewhile French words are in italics

(1) Structure contenu cent points structure DET and content DET one-hundred points 3S7

The structure and the content are (worth) one hundred points(2) Feu rouge

Traf c-light DET red 3SThe traf c light turned red

6 These and all other examples in this essay are naturally occurring utterances which I

recorded during periods of eldwork in Senegal between 1989 and 20007 The following abbreviations are used in the glosses D E T determiner IMP

imperfective NEG negative OBJ object 123 rstsecondthird person S singularPL plural

Dakar Wolof 161

(3) errer monde 3S PASTIMP wander in world DET justHe was just wandering around the world

(4) il-faut-que rondhook it-is-necessary-that 3S roundHooks have to be round

(5) AG- eskaA(ssembleacutee)-G(eacuteneacuterale)+2PL already INTERROGHave you already AGrsquod (had a General Assembly)

Although it is not dif cult to identify the French words in the Wolof sentencesthe adequacy of the traditional term codeswitching namely the juxtaposition oftwo different grammatical systems is thrown into question by the simple fact thatwhile the speakers who uttered the sentences in (1) (3) and (5) can speak bothFrench and Wolof those who uttered the sentences in (2) and (4) do not speakFrench an issue to which I will return below

The term lsquocode mixingrsquo has been used by some sociolinguists to designate amore local switching of codes in which a single word may contain morphemesfrom two different grammatical systems as shown in the following exampleswhere stems that come from French are frequently combined with other Wolofmorphemes in word formation

(6) Akise- accuse-1SNEG 2S-OBJ nothingI didnrsquot accuse you of anything

(7) Seer- expensive-3SNEGItrsquos not expensive

(8) baraase- 2SNEGIMPERATIVE 3SOBJ plug-in-ITERATIVEDonrsquot plug it in again

(9) grev- what 3PL-IMP strike-ITERATIVEWhat are they striking about again

(10) Arieer- behind-2SIMPERATIVEReverse

The sentences in (6) and (7) show verb stems from French accuser lsquoto accusersquoand the adjective cher lsquoexpensiversquo while the respective negative morphemes( rst person singular - and third person singular - ) are from WolofExample (8) shows the Wolof iterative suf x - attaching to a verb stemfrom French brancher lsquoto plug inrsquo in order to give the meaning lsquoplug in againrsquowhile (9) shows an iterative suf x attaching to a verb stem formed from theFrench noun gregraveve lsquostrikersquo The nal example (10) involves the suf xation ofthe Wolof imperative - to the French arriegravere lsquobehindrsquo to get the verbalcommand lsquoreversersquo

It is evident from the examples in (1-10) that French loanwords undergophonological changes that adapt their pronunciation to the sound patterns of

162 Fiona McLaughlin

Wolof The high front rounded vowel in French becomes unrounded inWolof to as in (11) and (12) the voiced labiodental fricative in Frenchbecomes the labiovelar glide in Wolof as in (13) and (14) and the fricatives

and in French become in Wolof as in (15) and (16) One lastphonological observation is that permissible consonant clusters in French arefrequently split up in Wolof especially among speakers who do not speakFrench since Wolof licenses only CV or CVC syllables Examples of theseinclude the word-initial clusters as in (17) and (18) and as in (19)

FRENCH WOLOF GLOSS(11) perdu lost(12) tu you singular(13 valise suitcase(14) voyou scoundrel(15) cher expensive(16) garage garage(17) grave serious grave(18) griot griot(19) client customer client

The examples cited above are typical of Dakar Wolof however it should benoted that there is much variation in the language much of which depends on thespeakerrsquos command of French and Wolof In some cases where the speaker is uent in French fewer adaptations to Wolof phonology will be made in othercases where the speaker has little or no knowledge of French the adaptation toWolof phonology may be complete

Urban Wolof and languages like it such as Town Bemba spoken in urbanZambia (Spitulnik 1999) are readily characterizable as hybrid languages But tocall a language a hybrid is to make a statement about its history namely that it isderived from diverse sources and as we know people do not inherit the historyof their language when they inherit the language In the case of urban Wolof thesources are Wolof and French distinct grammatical systems that are readilyidenti able and isolatable within Gumperzrsquos de nition of codeswitching But thisis if and only if one recognizes a distinction between the two grammaticalsystems So to return to the utterances in (2) and (4) as well as those in (7) and(10) all of which were uttered by speakers who do not know French the notionof codeswitching falls substantially short of describing a reality For thosespeakers there are no distinct grammatical systems juxtaposed in their utterancesndash there is only one the grammatical system of urban Wolof What substantiallycomplicates the analysis of urban Wolof is that those who speak it have diverselinguistic repertoires Some may speak urban Wolof French and lsquodeep Wolofrsquo( ) as well as other Senegalese languages others may speak a subsetof those languages and still others may speak only urban Wolof The resultingsituation is that speakers of urban Wolof vary in their ability to recognize theFrench in uences in their language Speakers who are uent in French recognizeand even joke about French loans in their Wolof on the other hand those whoknow no French are frequently oblivious to its in uences in their own speechFor example when asked if there had been many people attending a naming

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

158 Fiona McLaughlin

An earlier study on language and identity in Senegal (McLaughlin 1995)shows that language is a key factor in self-reported adaptation strategies ofpeople who move back and forth on a regular basis from Dakar where theywork to other parts of the country where their families live Signi cantly manypeople reported that they spoke Wolof one way at home and another way inDakar The speci c examples included using fewer French words at home andusing different noun classes in the two places favouring the default class in theurban context While many people reported speaking Wolof in a different way inthe city even more striking was the comment by a teacher from the region ofSine who claimed that his ethnicity changed when he was in the city lsquoQuand jesuis chez moi je suis Haalpulaar quand je suis agrave Dakar je suis Wolofrsquo (lsquoWhen Iam at home I am Haalpulaar when I am in Dakar I am Wolofrsquo) (McLaughlin1995 156)

While contemporary anthropology has contributed much to our understandingof the uidity of ethnic identity (see for example Amselle 1990 and Clifford1988) even where it is no longer appropriate the notion of ethnicity as aprimordial category dies hard in Africanist discourse In looking at the notion ofurban identity as re ected in the writing of urban Wolof at a particular historicalmoment what is intriguing is the apparent emergence of an as yet inchoateidentity that goes by the cover name of Wolof Wolof ethnicity and Woloflanguage In an attempt to put together the pieces of the puzzle of the relationshipbetween language and ethnicity in Senegal Swigart (1990) suggests that in theurban context people claim to be ethnically Wolof because Wolof is all theyspeak She cites a worker from the 1988 census who reported that when people inDakar responded to one of the census questions on their ethnicity they oftenhesitated cited the ethnicity or ethnicities of their parents and then added lsquoJustput Wolof thatrsquos all I speakrsquo (Swigart 1990 4) At face value this examplesuggests that ethnicity in the urban Senegalese context is in some sense de nedby language but it also raises a much larger question is ethnicity really the issuehere In an essay entitled lsquoBeyond Identityrsquo in which he probes some of theseissues within the context of what he terms lsquothe postidentitarian predicamentrsquoMiller (1998 173) writes lsquoThe easy positive means of identity de nition basedon ready-made categories such as gender race ethnicity and nation havebecome unsatisfactory but the terms of any new paradigm are not immediatelyapparentrsquo I suggest that within this context when the teacher cited above saysthat in Dakar he is Wolof rather than Haalpulaar and when Baaba Maal sings

in Wolof as opposed to Pulaar they are using the ready-made terms ofthe old paradigms of identity namely ethnicity and language but they are in facttalking about a newly con gured urban identity for which there is as yet no term

Taking these observations one step further I would suggest that claiming thatone is Wolof for lack of any other plausible ethnic identity is in fact anunconscious abandonment of ethnicity as an identifying category Wolof andespecially Wolof in the urban context is simply the unmarked or defaultethnicity when there is nothing else to fall back on in self-de nition Thecategory of ethnicity is not always satisfactory as we see in the report by the

Dakar Wolof 159

census worker but the ready-made terms of the old paradigm are still in use Inthis case individuals fall back on language as a determiner of ethnicity Sincelanguage and ethnicity in many other Senegalese contexts are still a major aspectof identity (McLaughlin 1995) the ready-made concept is maintained in urbanidentity but when there is nothing to ll it it becomes vacuous Seen in this wayBaaba Maalrsquos choice to sing in Wolof is not a switch in allegianceaway from the language of his own ethnic group and towards that of another it issimply a way to re ect the urban focus of the song Similarly the teacher who isHaalpulaar at home and Wolof in Dakar is really saying that when he is in thecapital he is as fully integrated an urbanite as anyone else

3 Urban Wolof

Of cially a francophone country and one whose rst president LeacuteopoldSenghor exhorted his people to speak French lsquocomme (des) bourgeois de Parisrsquo(lsquolike Parisian bourgeoisrsquo) and was subsequently (if not consequently) electedmember of the Acadeacutemie Franccedilaise Senegal is remarkable for how little Frenchis actually used The 1988 census gures estimate that only twenty- ve per centof the population is literate in French (Cruise OrsquoBrien 1998 37) making thecountry that hosted the 1989 international Francophonie summit a de jure ratherthan de facto francophone state The language that has lled the role of linguafranca in Senegal is Wolof Although no such of cial status has been granted itWolof is frequently referred to as the national language not only by native Wolofspeakers but by speakers of many of the other languages spoken in SenegalWolof has been gaining speakers steadily in a spread that began during thecolonial period ndash the areas of Senegal rst colonized by the French were Wolof-speaking ndash and picked up momentum with sustained migration of ruralpopulations from the countryside into the cities Moreover the social andeconomic in uence of the Mouride Su order whose origins are in the Wolofheartland has also favoured the ascent of the Wolof language (Cruise OrsquoBrien1998 1979 Swigart 2001) Figures from the 1988 Senegalese census also showthat more than eighty per cent of the Senegalese population speaks Wolof whileonly 437 per cent are ethnically Wolof Due to this language shift Senegal maymore accurately be described as a wolofphone than a francophone country

Wolo zation or the spread of Wolof as a lingua franca is essentially an urbanphenomenon and urban Wolof is a language that has arisen out of continuoussustained contact between Wolof and French5 Although I use the terms lsquoDakarWolofrsquo and lsquourban Wolofrsquo interchangeably in this essay the language is notgeographically limited to Dakar but is spoken in most Senegalese urban areasand even in Banjul the Gambian capital where English is the of cial language

5 Although they are not the focus of this study loanwords from other languages

especially English and Pulaar are also incorporated into urban Wolof The semioticsof English loanwords have undergone an interesting change in recent yearsOriginally associated with the language of delinquence they now bespeak acosmopolitanism primarily associated with the international trading networks of theMouride Su order (Degraveme 1999)

160 Fiona McLaughlin

In addition to the numerous English loans found in urban Gambian Wolof thereare also many French loans that have entered the language secondhand via urbanWolof rather than through direct contact with French Given the speci cpeculiarities of urban dialects and the pressures placed on rapidly spreadinglanguages it is not surprising that urban Wolof has undergone and is continuingto undergo rather drastic changes in many areas of its grammar leading to amarked dialectal difference between urban and non-urban varieties of the samelanguage The emerging urban language the nature of which will be elaboratedon below is a hybrid language characterized primarily but not exclusively byextensive lexical borrowing from French In considering the situation of Wolof inSenegal what emerges is a portrait of considerable complexity in which twoversions of the same language coexist Speakers may be competent in one or theother or frequently in both In this latter case speakers may be able tomanipulate a variety of styles or registers along a continuum that ranges from

ndash or lsquodeep Wolofrsquo as it is called ndash free of any French in uences tothe hybrid language that is urban Wolof depending on the context

What then is urban Wolof and how is it differentiated from other varieties ofWolof In traditional parlance the term lsquocodeswitchingrsquo is used to describesituations in which two (or more) languages are used in a given stretch ofdiscourse Gumperz (1982 59) de nes codeswitching as lsquothe juxtaposition withinthe same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two differentgrammatical systems or subsystemsrsquo Taken at face value Gumperzrsquos de nitionserves as a point of departure for the formal analysis of a hybrid language likeurban Wolof It is also useful to adopt Myers-Scottonrsquos (1993) terminology ofmatrix language and embedded language One of the two languages involved incodeswitching or code-mixing can be said to be the matrix language in that itsupplies the overall morphological and syntactic structure of the discourse whilethe embedded language supplies lexical items that can be plugged into the matrixstructure In the case of urban Wolof Wolof serves as the matrix language andFrench as the embedded language as the following examples of naturallyoccurring sentences show6 Wolof words are indicated by typewriter-style typewhile French words are in italics

(1) Structure contenu cent points structure DET and content DET one-hundred points 3S7

The structure and the content are (worth) one hundred points(2) Feu rouge

Traf c-light DET red 3SThe traf c light turned red

6 These and all other examples in this essay are naturally occurring utterances which I

recorded during periods of eldwork in Senegal between 1989 and 20007 The following abbreviations are used in the glosses D E T determiner IMP

imperfective NEG negative OBJ object 123 rstsecondthird person S singularPL plural

Dakar Wolof 161

(3) errer monde 3S PASTIMP wander in world DET justHe was just wandering around the world

(4) il-faut-que rondhook it-is-necessary-that 3S roundHooks have to be round

(5) AG- eskaA(ssembleacutee)-G(eacuteneacuterale)+2PL already INTERROGHave you already AGrsquod (had a General Assembly)

Although it is not dif cult to identify the French words in the Wolof sentencesthe adequacy of the traditional term codeswitching namely the juxtaposition oftwo different grammatical systems is thrown into question by the simple fact thatwhile the speakers who uttered the sentences in (1) (3) and (5) can speak bothFrench and Wolof those who uttered the sentences in (2) and (4) do not speakFrench an issue to which I will return below

The term lsquocode mixingrsquo has been used by some sociolinguists to designate amore local switching of codes in which a single word may contain morphemesfrom two different grammatical systems as shown in the following exampleswhere stems that come from French are frequently combined with other Wolofmorphemes in word formation

(6) Akise- accuse-1SNEG 2S-OBJ nothingI didnrsquot accuse you of anything

(7) Seer- expensive-3SNEGItrsquos not expensive

(8) baraase- 2SNEGIMPERATIVE 3SOBJ plug-in-ITERATIVEDonrsquot plug it in again

(9) grev- what 3PL-IMP strike-ITERATIVEWhat are they striking about again

(10) Arieer- behind-2SIMPERATIVEReverse

The sentences in (6) and (7) show verb stems from French accuser lsquoto accusersquoand the adjective cher lsquoexpensiversquo while the respective negative morphemes( rst person singular - and third person singular - ) are from WolofExample (8) shows the Wolof iterative suf x - attaching to a verb stemfrom French brancher lsquoto plug inrsquo in order to give the meaning lsquoplug in againrsquowhile (9) shows an iterative suf x attaching to a verb stem formed from theFrench noun gregraveve lsquostrikersquo The nal example (10) involves the suf xation ofthe Wolof imperative - to the French arriegravere lsquobehindrsquo to get the verbalcommand lsquoreversersquo

It is evident from the examples in (1-10) that French loanwords undergophonological changes that adapt their pronunciation to the sound patterns of

162 Fiona McLaughlin

Wolof The high front rounded vowel in French becomes unrounded inWolof to as in (11) and (12) the voiced labiodental fricative in Frenchbecomes the labiovelar glide in Wolof as in (13) and (14) and the fricatives

and in French become in Wolof as in (15) and (16) One lastphonological observation is that permissible consonant clusters in French arefrequently split up in Wolof especially among speakers who do not speakFrench since Wolof licenses only CV or CVC syllables Examples of theseinclude the word-initial clusters as in (17) and (18) and as in (19)

FRENCH WOLOF GLOSS(11) perdu lost(12) tu you singular(13 valise suitcase(14) voyou scoundrel(15) cher expensive(16) garage garage(17) grave serious grave(18) griot griot(19) client customer client

The examples cited above are typical of Dakar Wolof however it should benoted that there is much variation in the language much of which depends on thespeakerrsquos command of French and Wolof In some cases where the speaker is uent in French fewer adaptations to Wolof phonology will be made in othercases where the speaker has little or no knowledge of French the adaptation toWolof phonology may be complete

Urban Wolof and languages like it such as Town Bemba spoken in urbanZambia (Spitulnik 1999) are readily characterizable as hybrid languages But tocall a language a hybrid is to make a statement about its history namely that it isderived from diverse sources and as we know people do not inherit the historyof their language when they inherit the language In the case of urban Wolof thesources are Wolof and French distinct grammatical systems that are readilyidenti able and isolatable within Gumperzrsquos de nition of codeswitching But thisis if and only if one recognizes a distinction between the two grammaticalsystems So to return to the utterances in (2) and (4) as well as those in (7) and(10) all of which were uttered by speakers who do not know French the notionof codeswitching falls substantially short of describing a reality For thosespeakers there are no distinct grammatical systems juxtaposed in their utterancesndash there is only one the grammatical system of urban Wolof What substantiallycomplicates the analysis of urban Wolof is that those who speak it have diverselinguistic repertoires Some may speak urban Wolof French and lsquodeep Wolofrsquo( ) as well as other Senegalese languages others may speak a subsetof those languages and still others may speak only urban Wolof The resultingsituation is that speakers of urban Wolof vary in their ability to recognize theFrench in uences in their language Speakers who are uent in French recognizeand even joke about French loans in their Wolof on the other hand those whoknow no French are frequently oblivious to its in uences in their own speechFor example when asked if there had been many people attending a naming

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

Dakar Wolof 159

census worker but the ready-made terms of the old paradigm are still in use Inthis case individuals fall back on language as a determiner of ethnicity Sincelanguage and ethnicity in many other Senegalese contexts are still a major aspectof identity (McLaughlin 1995) the ready-made concept is maintained in urbanidentity but when there is nothing to ll it it becomes vacuous Seen in this wayBaaba Maalrsquos choice to sing in Wolof is not a switch in allegianceaway from the language of his own ethnic group and towards that of another it issimply a way to re ect the urban focus of the song Similarly the teacher who isHaalpulaar at home and Wolof in Dakar is really saying that when he is in thecapital he is as fully integrated an urbanite as anyone else

3 Urban Wolof

Of cially a francophone country and one whose rst president LeacuteopoldSenghor exhorted his people to speak French lsquocomme (des) bourgeois de Parisrsquo(lsquolike Parisian bourgeoisrsquo) and was subsequently (if not consequently) electedmember of the Acadeacutemie Franccedilaise Senegal is remarkable for how little Frenchis actually used The 1988 census gures estimate that only twenty- ve per centof the population is literate in French (Cruise OrsquoBrien 1998 37) making thecountry that hosted the 1989 international Francophonie summit a de jure ratherthan de facto francophone state The language that has lled the role of linguafranca in Senegal is Wolof Although no such of cial status has been granted itWolof is frequently referred to as the national language not only by native Wolofspeakers but by speakers of many of the other languages spoken in SenegalWolof has been gaining speakers steadily in a spread that began during thecolonial period ndash the areas of Senegal rst colonized by the French were Wolof-speaking ndash and picked up momentum with sustained migration of ruralpopulations from the countryside into the cities Moreover the social andeconomic in uence of the Mouride Su order whose origins are in the Wolofheartland has also favoured the ascent of the Wolof language (Cruise OrsquoBrien1998 1979 Swigart 2001) Figures from the 1988 Senegalese census also showthat more than eighty per cent of the Senegalese population speaks Wolof whileonly 437 per cent are ethnically Wolof Due to this language shift Senegal maymore accurately be described as a wolofphone than a francophone country

Wolo zation or the spread of Wolof as a lingua franca is essentially an urbanphenomenon and urban Wolof is a language that has arisen out of continuoussustained contact between Wolof and French5 Although I use the terms lsquoDakarWolofrsquo and lsquourban Wolofrsquo interchangeably in this essay the language is notgeographically limited to Dakar but is spoken in most Senegalese urban areasand even in Banjul the Gambian capital where English is the of cial language

5 Although they are not the focus of this study loanwords from other languages

especially English and Pulaar are also incorporated into urban Wolof The semioticsof English loanwords have undergone an interesting change in recent yearsOriginally associated with the language of delinquence they now bespeak acosmopolitanism primarily associated with the international trading networks of theMouride Su order (Degraveme 1999)

160 Fiona McLaughlin

In addition to the numerous English loans found in urban Gambian Wolof thereare also many French loans that have entered the language secondhand via urbanWolof rather than through direct contact with French Given the speci cpeculiarities of urban dialects and the pressures placed on rapidly spreadinglanguages it is not surprising that urban Wolof has undergone and is continuingto undergo rather drastic changes in many areas of its grammar leading to amarked dialectal difference between urban and non-urban varieties of the samelanguage The emerging urban language the nature of which will be elaboratedon below is a hybrid language characterized primarily but not exclusively byextensive lexical borrowing from French In considering the situation of Wolof inSenegal what emerges is a portrait of considerable complexity in which twoversions of the same language coexist Speakers may be competent in one or theother or frequently in both In this latter case speakers may be able tomanipulate a variety of styles or registers along a continuum that ranges from

ndash or lsquodeep Wolofrsquo as it is called ndash free of any French in uences tothe hybrid language that is urban Wolof depending on the context

What then is urban Wolof and how is it differentiated from other varieties ofWolof In traditional parlance the term lsquocodeswitchingrsquo is used to describesituations in which two (or more) languages are used in a given stretch ofdiscourse Gumperz (1982 59) de nes codeswitching as lsquothe juxtaposition withinthe same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two differentgrammatical systems or subsystemsrsquo Taken at face value Gumperzrsquos de nitionserves as a point of departure for the formal analysis of a hybrid language likeurban Wolof It is also useful to adopt Myers-Scottonrsquos (1993) terminology ofmatrix language and embedded language One of the two languages involved incodeswitching or code-mixing can be said to be the matrix language in that itsupplies the overall morphological and syntactic structure of the discourse whilethe embedded language supplies lexical items that can be plugged into the matrixstructure In the case of urban Wolof Wolof serves as the matrix language andFrench as the embedded language as the following examples of naturallyoccurring sentences show6 Wolof words are indicated by typewriter-style typewhile French words are in italics

(1) Structure contenu cent points structure DET and content DET one-hundred points 3S7

The structure and the content are (worth) one hundred points(2) Feu rouge

Traf c-light DET red 3SThe traf c light turned red

6 These and all other examples in this essay are naturally occurring utterances which I

recorded during periods of eldwork in Senegal between 1989 and 20007 The following abbreviations are used in the glosses D E T determiner IMP

imperfective NEG negative OBJ object 123 rstsecondthird person S singularPL plural

Dakar Wolof 161

(3) errer monde 3S PASTIMP wander in world DET justHe was just wandering around the world

(4) il-faut-que rondhook it-is-necessary-that 3S roundHooks have to be round

(5) AG- eskaA(ssembleacutee)-G(eacuteneacuterale)+2PL already INTERROGHave you already AGrsquod (had a General Assembly)

Although it is not dif cult to identify the French words in the Wolof sentencesthe adequacy of the traditional term codeswitching namely the juxtaposition oftwo different grammatical systems is thrown into question by the simple fact thatwhile the speakers who uttered the sentences in (1) (3) and (5) can speak bothFrench and Wolof those who uttered the sentences in (2) and (4) do not speakFrench an issue to which I will return below

The term lsquocode mixingrsquo has been used by some sociolinguists to designate amore local switching of codes in which a single word may contain morphemesfrom two different grammatical systems as shown in the following exampleswhere stems that come from French are frequently combined with other Wolofmorphemes in word formation

(6) Akise- accuse-1SNEG 2S-OBJ nothingI didnrsquot accuse you of anything

(7) Seer- expensive-3SNEGItrsquos not expensive

(8) baraase- 2SNEGIMPERATIVE 3SOBJ plug-in-ITERATIVEDonrsquot plug it in again

(9) grev- what 3PL-IMP strike-ITERATIVEWhat are they striking about again

(10) Arieer- behind-2SIMPERATIVEReverse

The sentences in (6) and (7) show verb stems from French accuser lsquoto accusersquoand the adjective cher lsquoexpensiversquo while the respective negative morphemes( rst person singular - and third person singular - ) are from WolofExample (8) shows the Wolof iterative suf x - attaching to a verb stemfrom French brancher lsquoto plug inrsquo in order to give the meaning lsquoplug in againrsquowhile (9) shows an iterative suf x attaching to a verb stem formed from theFrench noun gregraveve lsquostrikersquo The nal example (10) involves the suf xation ofthe Wolof imperative - to the French arriegravere lsquobehindrsquo to get the verbalcommand lsquoreversersquo

It is evident from the examples in (1-10) that French loanwords undergophonological changes that adapt their pronunciation to the sound patterns of

162 Fiona McLaughlin

Wolof The high front rounded vowel in French becomes unrounded inWolof to as in (11) and (12) the voiced labiodental fricative in Frenchbecomes the labiovelar glide in Wolof as in (13) and (14) and the fricatives

and in French become in Wolof as in (15) and (16) One lastphonological observation is that permissible consonant clusters in French arefrequently split up in Wolof especially among speakers who do not speakFrench since Wolof licenses only CV or CVC syllables Examples of theseinclude the word-initial clusters as in (17) and (18) and as in (19)

FRENCH WOLOF GLOSS(11) perdu lost(12) tu you singular(13 valise suitcase(14) voyou scoundrel(15) cher expensive(16) garage garage(17) grave serious grave(18) griot griot(19) client customer client

The examples cited above are typical of Dakar Wolof however it should benoted that there is much variation in the language much of which depends on thespeakerrsquos command of French and Wolof In some cases where the speaker is uent in French fewer adaptations to Wolof phonology will be made in othercases where the speaker has little or no knowledge of French the adaptation toWolof phonology may be complete

Urban Wolof and languages like it such as Town Bemba spoken in urbanZambia (Spitulnik 1999) are readily characterizable as hybrid languages But tocall a language a hybrid is to make a statement about its history namely that it isderived from diverse sources and as we know people do not inherit the historyof their language when they inherit the language In the case of urban Wolof thesources are Wolof and French distinct grammatical systems that are readilyidenti able and isolatable within Gumperzrsquos de nition of codeswitching But thisis if and only if one recognizes a distinction between the two grammaticalsystems So to return to the utterances in (2) and (4) as well as those in (7) and(10) all of which were uttered by speakers who do not know French the notionof codeswitching falls substantially short of describing a reality For thosespeakers there are no distinct grammatical systems juxtaposed in their utterancesndash there is only one the grammatical system of urban Wolof What substantiallycomplicates the analysis of urban Wolof is that those who speak it have diverselinguistic repertoires Some may speak urban Wolof French and lsquodeep Wolofrsquo( ) as well as other Senegalese languages others may speak a subsetof those languages and still others may speak only urban Wolof The resultingsituation is that speakers of urban Wolof vary in their ability to recognize theFrench in uences in their language Speakers who are uent in French recognizeand even joke about French loans in their Wolof on the other hand those whoknow no French are frequently oblivious to its in uences in their own speechFor example when asked if there had been many people attending a naming

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

160 Fiona McLaughlin

In addition to the numerous English loans found in urban Gambian Wolof thereare also many French loans that have entered the language secondhand via urbanWolof rather than through direct contact with French Given the speci cpeculiarities of urban dialects and the pressures placed on rapidly spreadinglanguages it is not surprising that urban Wolof has undergone and is continuingto undergo rather drastic changes in many areas of its grammar leading to amarked dialectal difference between urban and non-urban varieties of the samelanguage The emerging urban language the nature of which will be elaboratedon below is a hybrid language characterized primarily but not exclusively byextensive lexical borrowing from French In considering the situation of Wolof inSenegal what emerges is a portrait of considerable complexity in which twoversions of the same language coexist Speakers may be competent in one or theother or frequently in both In this latter case speakers may be able tomanipulate a variety of styles or registers along a continuum that ranges from

ndash or lsquodeep Wolofrsquo as it is called ndash free of any French in uences tothe hybrid language that is urban Wolof depending on the context

What then is urban Wolof and how is it differentiated from other varieties ofWolof In traditional parlance the term lsquocodeswitchingrsquo is used to describesituations in which two (or more) languages are used in a given stretch ofdiscourse Gumperz (1982 59) de nes codeswitching as lsquothe juxtaposition withinthe same speech exchange of passages of speech belonging to two differentgrammatical systems or subsystemsrsquo Taken at face value Gumperzrsquos de nitionserves as a point of departure for the formal analysis of a hybrid language likeurban Wolof It is also useful to adopt Myers-Scottonrsquos (1993) terminology ofmatrix language and embedded language One of the two languages involved incodeswitching or code-mixing can be said to be the matrix language in that itsupplies the overall morphological and syntactic structure of the discourse whilethe embedded language supplies lexical items that can be plugged into the matrixstructure In the case of urban Wolof Wolof serves as the matrix language andFrench as the embedded language as the following examples of naturallyoccurring sentences show6 Wolof words are indicated by typewriter-style typewhile French words are in italics

(1) Structure contenu cent points structure DET and content DET one-hundred points 3S7

The structure and the content are (worth) one hundred points(2) Feu rouge

Traf c-light DET red 3SThe traf c light turned red

6 These and all other examples in this essay are naturally occurring utterances which I

recorded during periods of eldwork in Senegal between 1989 and 20007 The following abbreviations are used in the glosses D E T determiner IMP

imperfective NEG negative OBJ object 123 rstsecondthird person S singularPL plural

Dakar Wolof 161

(3) errer monde 3S PASTIMP wander in world DET justHe was just wandering around the world

(4) il-faut-que rondhook it-is-necessary-that 3S roundHooks have to be round

(5) AG- eskaA(ssembleacutee)-G(eacuteneacuterale)+2PL already INTERROGHave you already AGrsquod (had a General Assembly)

Although it is not dif cult to identify the French words in the Wolof sentencesthe adequacy of the traditional term codeswitching namely the juxtaposition oftwo different grammatical systems is thrown into question by the simple fact thatwhile the speakers who uttered the sentences in (1) (3) and (5) can speak bothFrench and Wolof those who uttered the sentences in (2) and (4) do not speakFrench an issue to which I will return below

The term lsquocode mixingrsquo has been used by some sociolinguists to designate amore local switching of codes in which a single word may contain morphemesfrom two different grammatical systems as shown in the following exampleswhere stems that come from French are frequently combined with other Wolofmorphemes in word formation

(6) Akise- accuse-1SNEG 2S-OBJ nothingI didnrsquot accuse you of anything

(7) Seer- expensive-3SNEGItrsquos not expensive

(8) baraase- 2SNEGIMPERATIVE 3SOBJ plug-in-ITERATIVEDonrsquot plug it in again

(9) grev- what 3PL-IMP strike-ITERATIVEWhat are they striking about again

(10) Arieer- behind-2SIMPERATIVEReverse

The sentences in (6) and (7) show verb stems from French accuser lsquoto accusersquoand the adjective cher lsquoexpensiversquo while the respective negative morphemes( rst person singular - and third person singular - ) are from WolofExample (8) shows the Wolof iterative suf x - attaching to a verb stemfrom French brancher lsquoto plug inrsquo in order to give the meaning lsquoplug in againrsquowhile (9) shows an iterative suf x attaching to a verb stem formed from theFrench noun gregraveve lsquostrikersquo The nal example (10) involves the suf xation ofthe Wolof imperative - to the French arriegravere lsquobehindrsquo to get the verbalcommand lsquoreversersquo

It is evident from the examples in (1-10) that French loanwords undergophonological changes that adapt their pronunciation to the sound patterns of

162 Fiona McLaughlin

Wolof The high front rounded vowel in French becomes unrounded inWolof to as in (11) and (12) the voiced labiodental fricative in Frenchbecomes the labiovelar glide in Wolof as in (13) and (14) and the fricatives

and in French become in Wolof as in (15) and (16) One lastphonological observation is that permissible consonant clusters in French arefrequently split up in Wolof especially among speakers who do not speakFrench since Wolof licenses only CV or CVC syllables Examples of theseinclude the word-initial clusters as in (17) and (18) and as in (19)

FRENCH WOLOF GLOSS(11) perdu lost(12) tu you singular(13 valise suitcase(14) voyou scoundrel(15) cher expensive(16) garage garage(17) grave serious grave(18) griot griot(19) client customer client

The examples cited above are typical of Dakar Wolof however it should benoted that there is much variation in the language much of which depends on thespeakerrsquos command of French and Wolof In some cases where the speaker is uent in French fewer adaptations to Wolof phonology will be made in othercases where the speaker has little or no knowledge of French the adaptation toWolof phonology may be complete

Urban Wolof and languages like it such as Town Bemba spoken in urbanZambia (Spitulnik 1999) are readily characterizable as hybrid languages But tocall a language a hybrid is to make a statement about its history namely that it isderived from diverse sources and as we know people do not inherit the historyof their language when they inherit the language In the case of urban Wolof thesources are Wolof and French distinct grammatical systems that are readilyidenti able and isolatable within Gumperzrsquos de nition of codeswitching But thisis if and only if one recognizes a distinction between the two grammaticalsystems So to return to the utterances in (2) and (4) as well as those in (7) and(10) all of which were uttered by speakers who do not know French the notionof codeswitching falls substantially short of describing a reality For thosespeakers there are no distinct grammatical systems juxtaposed in their utterancesndash there is only one the grammatical system of urban Wolof What substantiallycomplicates the analysis of urban Wolof is that those who speak it have diverselinguistic repertoires Some may speak urban Wolof French and lsquodeep Wolofrsquo( ) as well as other Senegalese languages others may speak a subsetof those languages and still others may speak only urban Wolof The resultingsituation is that speakers of urban Wolof vary in their ability to recognize theFrench in uences in their language Speakers who are uent in French recognizeand even joke about French loans in their Wolof on the other hand those whoknow no French are frequently oblivious to its in uences in their own speechFor example when asked if there had been many people attending a naming

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

Dakar Wolof 161

(3) errer monde 3S PASTIMP wander in world DET justHe was just wandering around the world

(4) il-faut-que rondhook it-is-necessary-that 3S roundHooks have to be round

(5) AG- eskaA(ssembleacutee)-G(eacuteneacuterale)+2PL already INTERROGHave you already AGrsquod (had a General Assembly)

Although it is not dif cult to identify the French words in the Wolof sentencesthe adequacy of the traditional term codeswitching namely the juxtaposition oftwo different grammatical systems is thrown into question by the simple fact thatwhile the speakers who uttered the sentences in (1) (3) and (5) can speak bothFrench and Wolof those who uttered the sentences in (2) and (4) do not speakFrench an issue to which I will return below

The term lsquocode mixingrsquo has been used by some sociolinguists to designate amore local switching of codes in which a single word may contain morphemesfrom two different grammatical systems as shown in the following exampleswhere stems that come from French are frequently combined with other Wolofmorphemes in word formation

(6) Akise- accuse-1SNEG 2S-OBJ nothingI didnrsquot accuse you of anything

(7) Seer- expensive-3SNEGItrsquos not expensive

(8) baraase- 2SNEGIMPERATIVE 3SOBJ plug-in-ITERATIVEDonrsquot plug it in again

(9) grev- what 3PL-IMP strike-ITERATIVEWhat are they striking about again

(10) Arieer- behind-2SIMPERATIVEReverse

The sentences in (6) and (7) show verb stems from French accuser lsquoto accusersquoand the adjective cher lsquoexpensiversquo while the respective negative morphemes( rst person singular - and third person singular - ) are from WolofExample (8) shows the Wolof iterative suf x - attaching to a verb stemfrom French brancher lsquoto plug inrsquo in order to give the meaning lsquoplug in againrsquowhile (9) shows an iterative suf x attaching to a verb stem formed from theFrench noun gregraveve lsquostrikersquo The nal example (10) involves the suf xation ofthe Wolof imperative - to the French arriegravere lsquobehindrsquo to get the verbalcommand lsquoreversersquo

It is evident from the examples in (1-10) that French loanwords undergophonological changes that adapt their pronunciation to the sound patterns of

162 Fiona McLaughlin

Wolof The high front rounded vowel in French becomes unrounded inWolof to as in (11) and (12) the voiced labiodental fricative in Frenchbecomes the labiovelar glide in Wolof as in (13) and (14) and the fricatives

and in French become in Wolof as in (15) and (16) One lastphonological observation is that permissible consonant clusters in French arefrequently split up in Wolof especially among speakers who do not speakFrench since Wolof licenses only CV or CVC syllables Examples of theseinclude the word-initial clusters as in (17) and (18) and as in (19)

FRENCH WOLOF GLOSS(11) perdu lost(12) tu you singular(13 valise suitcase(14) voyou scoundrel(15) cher expensive(16) garage garage(17) grave serious grave(18) griot griot(19) client customer client

The examples cited above are typical of Dakar Wolof however it should benoted that there is much variation in the language much of which depends on thespeakerrsquos command of French and Wolof In some cases where the speaker is uent in French fewer adaptations to Wolof phonology will be made in othercases where the speaker has little or no knowledge of French the adaptation toWolof phonology may be complete

Urban Wolof and languages like it such as Town Bemba spoken in urbanZambia (Spitulnik 1999) are readily characterizable as hybrid languages But tocall a language a hybrid is to make a statement about its history namely that it isderived from diverse sources and as we know people do not inherit the historyof their language when they inherit the language In the case of urban Wolof thesources are Wolof and French distinct grammatical systems that are readilyidenti able and isolatable within Gumperzrsquos de nition of codeswitching But thisis if and only if one recognizes a distinction between the two grammaticalsystems So to return to the utterances in (2) and (4) as well as those in (7) and(10) all of which were uttered by speakers who do not know French the notionof codeswitching falls substantially short of describing a reality For thosespeakers there are no distinct grammatical systems juxtaposed in their utterancesndash there is only one the grammatical system of urban Wolof What substantiallycomplicates the analysis of urban Wolof is that those who speak it have diverselinguistic repertoires Some may speak urban Wolof French and lsquodeep Wolofrsquo( ) as well as other Senegalese languages others may speak a subsetof those languages and still others may speak only urban Wolof The resultingsituation is that speakers of urban Wolof vary in their ability to recognize theFrench in uences in their language Speakers who are uent in French recognizeand even joke about French loans in their Wolof on the other hand those whoknow no French are frequently oblivious to its in uences in their own speechFor example when asked if there had been many people attending a naming

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

162 Fiona McLaughlin

Wolof The high front rounded vowel in French becomes unrounded inWolof to as in (11) and (12) the voiced labiodental fricative in Frenchbecomes the labiovelar glide in Wolof as in (13) and (14) and the fricatives

and in French become in Wolof as in (15) and (16) One lastphonological observation is that permissible consonant clusters in French arefrequently split up in Wolof especially among speakers who do not speakFrench since Wolof licenses only CV or CVC syllables Examples of theseinclude the word-initial clusters as in (17) and (18) and as in (19)

FRENCH WOLOF GLOSS(11) perdu lost(12) tu you singular(13 valise suitcase(14) voyou scoundrel(15) cher expensive(16) garage garage(17) grave serious grave(18) griot griot(19) client customer client

The examples cited above are typical of Dakar Wolof however it should benoted that there is much variation in the language much of which depends on thespeakerrsquos command of French and Wolof In some cases where the speaker is uent in French fewer adaptations to Wolof phonology will be made in othercases where the speaker has little or no knowledge of French the adaptation toWolof phonology may be complete

Urban Wolof and languages like it such as Town Bemba spoken in urbanZambia (Spitulnik 1999) are readily characterizable as hybrid languages But tocall a language a hybrid is to make a statement about its history namely that it isderived from diverse sources and as we know people do not inherit the historyof their language when they inherit the language In the case of urban Wolof thesources are Wolof and French distinct grammatical systems that are readilyidenti able and isolatable within Gumperzrsquos de nition of codeswitching But thisis if and only if one recognizes a distinction between the two grammaticalsystems So to return to the utterances in (2) and (4) as well as those in (7) and(10) all of which were uttered by speakers who do not know French the notionof codeswitching falls substantially short of describing a reality For thosespeakers there are no distinct grammatical systems juxtaposed in their utterancesndash there is only one the grammatical system of urban Wolof What substantiallycomplicates the analysis of urban Wolof is that those who speak it have diverselinguistic repertoires Some may speak urban Wolof French and lsquodeep Wolofrsquo( ) as well as other Senegalese languages others may speak a subsetof those languages and still others may speak only urban Wolof The resultingsituation is that speakers of urban Wolof vary in their ability to recognize theFrench in uences in their language Speakers who are uent in French recognizeand even joke about French loans in their Wolof on the other hand those whoknow no French are frequently oblivious to its in uences in their own speechFor example when asked if there had been many people attending a naming

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

Dakar Wolof 163

ceremony in her Dakar neighbourhood an elderly monolingual Wolof womanreplied lsquo rsquo (lsquoLotsrsquo) a word that has origins in the French expression enpagaille In an ensuing discussion it was apparent that she did not recognize theFrench origin of the word although she was aware that urban Wolof has beenin uenced by French presumably because it is a frequent topic of conversation

As language contact and new languages that emerge from such contact cometo be better understood scholarly emphasis is starting to shift away from thetraditional concepts of codeswitching and code mixing towards a more uidspeaker-based approach to the topic As Spitulnik (1999 35) writes lsquoin manycases of languages in contact code boundaries that appear distinct at a formallinguistic level are not experienced or even functionally operating as such incontexts of usersquo Such is the case of the monolingual Wolof speakers whoseutterances have been cited above I would even claim that while urban Wolofspeakers who also speak French may be able to sort out code boundaries at aformal linguistic level when they re ect on their speech when they speak DakarWolof those boundaries do not operate functionally The shift towards focusingon speakersrsquo multiple experiences of their own languages becomes all the morecrucial in light of recent work by Woolard who in a Bakhtinian mode showsthat single utterances may sometimes be lsquobivalentrsquo or uttered simultaneously intwo languages Woolardrsquos examples involve Catalan and Spanish relatedlanguages that are typologically similar and have similar vocabularies but thesame phenomenon can be applied to speakers of urban Wolof who incorporateFrench loanwords into their Wolof Such words can be intended or understood aseither French or Wolof In such cases the two distinct grammatical systems arenot even juxtaposed but rather simultaneous

The frequent metalinguistic commentary on Dakar Wolof by everyone fromtaxi drivers to radio talkshow hosts af rms that it is a topic of great interest to itsspeakers Attitudes towards the different varieties of Wolof are howeverambivalent Set off against the lsquodeep Wolofrsquo ( ) spoken in Baol andCayor the Wolof heartlands Dakar Wolof is seen by many as an impurelanguage because of its extensive borrowing of French lexical itemsParadoxically the urban Wolof term for is or pureWolof being derived from the French word pur8 Taxi-drivers andshopkeepers pride themselves on being able to speak often unawarethat they are speaking a Wolof that is as urban as any Boy Dakarrsquos Radioannouncers especially in formal programs will use elliptical ways of gettingaround the inevitable French vocabulary by prefacing the use of a French wordwith the phrase lsquoas they say in Toubab (French)rsquo And Pulaar and Seereer

8 The trope of purity extends beyond the linguistic domain Diouf (1996 227-28)

writes lsquoPostcolonial urban sociology is dominated by a paradigm in which the ruralpeasantry is regarded as the fundamental expression of indigenous Africa As aconsequence the city has long been thought exclusively in terms of the colonialethnology of detribalization rural exodus and the loss of authentically African traitsand values hellip (U)rban dwellers hellip were supposed to have lost their traditionalreference systems qualities and virtuesrsquo

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

164 Fiona McLaughlin

speakers claim that their languages are superior to Wolof because they havewords for everything while Wolof speakers have to use French loans9 Thesenegative attitudes towards urban Wolof are most likely a re ection of negativeattitudes towards Dakar and the dif culties of urban life in general rather than adirect attack against a language or an ethnic group But even if the notion existsthat Wolof spoken in the heartlands away from the urban areas is in some sensebetter than urban Wolof because it has no French loans people who speak

are also regarded as unsophisticated country people who lackurban knowledge including urban linguistic norms The attitudes towards bothtypes of Wolof and urban Wolof are thus quite ambiguous Onthe one hand and from the conservative perspective is an object ofadmiration since it bespeaks a real or imagined pristine uncontaminated culturalproduct as opposed to urban Wolof which is viewed negatively as a hybridlanguage on the other hand no self-respecting urbanite would want to speak

in the capital since it would mark him or her as someone who isnot at home in the city This is especially true for youth who comprise themajority of the Dakar population and for whom language is a special mark ofidentity The ability to speak urban Wolof then is a sign of urban integrationand as such carries a certain prestige Calvet (1994 67) emphasizes the centralityof language to urban identity pointing out that the growth of an urban languagedepends on the prestige associated with it

Srsquoil y a une faccedilon bamakoise de parler bambara ou une faccedilon dakaroise de parlerwolof et si en mecircme temps le citadin est valoriseacute alors ces faccedilons urbaines deparler la langue deviennent agrave leur tour des modegraveles et on srsquoemploiera agrave les imiterpour marquer son inteacutegration urbaine[If there is a Bamakois way of speaking Bambara or a Dakarois way of speakingWolof and if thereby the city-dweller gains standing then these urban ways ofspeaking the language in turn become models and one sets to imitating them inorder to mark onersquos urban integration]

The cultural climate of the movement was one in which urbanidentity was both enhanced and legitimated As we shall see the act of writingurban Wolof is a means of legitimating its existence just as writing in a nationallanguage as opposed to a colonial language is also a means of legitimating thatlanguage

4 Wolof as a written language

Although it is viewed primarily as an oral language there is quite a respectablehistory of written Wolof in Senegal including many literary works Geacuterard(1981 72) reports that a substantial body of written texts in Wolof emerged in

9 My own observations reveal that urban varieties of Pulaar and Seereer also borrow

heavily from French but because those two languages are characterized by richin ectional morphology which is not true of Wolof loanwords are substantiallyaltered and thus disguised By way of example the Pulaar word meaninglsquohospital patientrsquo is derived from the French verb entrer lsquoenter check inrsquo but bearslittle resemblance to its French source

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

Dakar Wolof 165

the late nineteenth century as a lsquobelated effect of the wave of Muslimexpansionrsquo These texts consisted primarily of ajami religious poetry written inthe Arabic script whose emergence Camara (1997 164) dates to the seventeenthcentury Wolof writing in the Arabic script is known in Wolof as literally to lsquomake Wolofrsquo Of Degraveme (1996 150) writes

Le wolofal est la transcription graphique utiliseacutee par certains locuteurs du wolof(surtout des marabouts) qui ayant appris lrsquoarabe ont rompu avec une traditionexclusivement orale Crsquoest donc un proceacutedeacute qui consiste agrave reprendre les signes(caractegraveres) de lrsquoalphabet arabe pour repreacutesenter agrave lrsquoeacutecrit les phonegravemes de lalangue wolof

is the written transcription used by certain speakers of Wolof (especiallymarabouts) who having learned Arabic have broken with an exclusively oraltradition It is thus a process that consists of taking signs (characters) from theArabic alphabet to represent in written form the phonemes of the Woloflanguage]

As Degraveme implies originated within a religious context but it is alsofairly widely used on the contemporary scene by those who are familiar with theArabic alphabet but not the Roman to keep records and notes and especially towrite letters The use of for writing Wolof appears to be much morewidespread than the use of the Roman alphabet for the same purposes a fact thatis due to almost universal attendance by Muslim children at Qurrsquoanic schoolwhere they master the rudiments of the Arabic writing system Public schooleducation is conducted in French and thus students who attend those schoolslearn to write in the Roman script ndash but attendance at such schools is not as highas attendance at Qurrsquoanic schools and was even lower in the past

Although a standard Wolof orthography exists in the Roman alphabet it is notwidely used being almost uniquely the domain of linguists or educators workingin literacy programs as well as a handful of Senegalese authors who write inWolof Wolof written in the Roman alphabet whether in the of cial orthographyor in a French orthography presupposes a knowledge of French however basicon the part of the writer and for most people who know French that is thelanguage they will write in thus relegating Wolof or other indigenous languagesto the oral domain To summarize the general situation those Wolof speakerswho are literate in French normally write in that language those who are notwrite in The writing of Wolof in the Roman script is thus by far theleast used of all written possibilities a fact that will have repercussions on thetype of audience attracted by the comics under discussion since they are writtenin the Roman script

Before the publication of Ass et Oussou and Boy Dakar Wolof phrases oftenappeared in newspaper and magazine cartoons almost always with Frenchtranslations at the foot of the frame The publication of Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou however heralds the writing down of urban Wolof in a sustainedmanner a practice that has been continued in more recent comics such asGoorgoorlu which is quite similar in theme and content to Ass et Oussou andBoy Dakar and Lamb ji the satirical series on the 2000 presidential electionswhich portrays the candidates as traditional wrestlers All of these comics are

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

166 Fiona McLaughlin

completely in Roman script In addition to serving as a chronicle for the woes ofcontemporary urban life the comics are a window into the complex andambiguous linguistic environment of urban Senegal In the issues of Wal Fadjrithat contain the serial Ass et Oussou it is noteworthy that the comicrsquos creatorOmar Diakiteacute never quite gave up the habit of providing at the foot of eachframe a French translation of the urban Wolof phrases contained within it Abouthalfway through the serial the translations diminish and several urban Wolofutterances are left without translation but even up to the nal episode at leastsome translations are provided What this indicates is that the linguistic frame ofreference for the series is the French language and thus a French-speaking readeris implied In cases where the French translation is provided the reader wouldnot even have to know urban Wolof to understand the comic but given thevariability in the inclusion of a translation expectations as to the intendedaudiencersquos knowledge of Wolof are ambiguous The vast majority of readers ofAss et Oussou more than likely had almost no experience reading Wolof in theRoman script and in the reader response to the comics that I observedindividuals often glanced down at the French translation for help in decipheringthe Wolof Subsequent decipherment most often involved sounding out the wordorally and once it was deciphered laughter Readers reported that the humourcame from two sources what the characters were actually saying and the factthat the Wolof words appeared in written form

Boy Dakar is more radical in its approach to committing urban Wolof towritten form Here there are no translations so the intended audience is expectedto know urban Wolof and monolingual French speakers are excluded Given themore experimental nature of the depiction of language in Boy Dakar mycommentary will focus primarily on that comic

The printed pages of Boy Dakar contain three primary linguistic channels theomniscient frame for the narrative which introduces the reader to the charactersand provides commentary on their actions the representation of speech orthoughts conventionally emanating from the mouths or minds of the characters inbubbles and the written environment which includes signs and other aspects ofwhat Calvet has called the graphic environment10 To begin with the frame itsmost salient attribute is that it is almost entirely in French Like Ass et Oussouthese comics are thus intended for an audience literate in French The secondchannel namely the speech and thoughts of the characters is linguistically muchmore complex than the frame because it mirrors the continuum of languagevarieties found in the urban Senegalese context On a formal level almost all thecharacters engage in codeswitching in the Gumperzian sense within a singlebubble For example (Fig 1) the seer who returns Lazoursquos hundred francs to himsays as he hands the coin over derisorily lsquo100 francs Reprends-lesrsquo (lsquoJustW a hundred francsF Take your moneyW Take thembackFrsquo) Of the three phrases he utters the rst is in French and Wolof thesecond in Wolof and the third in French Although it is written in the Roman

10 The graphic environment of Dakar is described extensively in Dumont (1998)

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

Dakar Wolof 167

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

script the Wolof depicted in the frames of Boy Dakar does not follow thestandard orthographic conventions of Wolof in the Roman script showing rathera great deal of in uence from French spelling conventions For example thevelar fricative in the word for money is depicted as kh rather than thestandardized x This is hardly surprising since few people other than linguist sare familiar with standardized Wolof in the Roman script In addition to thedepiction of French in standard French orthography and Wolof as describedabove the author of Boy Dakar has also quite cleverly depicted a third categoryof words or phrases that have French origins but that have been Wolo zedThese words are simultaneously both French and Wolof thus bivalent inWoolardrsquos terminology and to set them off they are not written in standardFrench orthography For example in showing Lazou his lost wallet (Fig 2)

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

168 Fiona McLaughlin

Baye Galaye says lsquoCrsquoest ccedila rsquo11 (lsquoIs this itF hereFWrsquo) While crsquoest ccedila isin standard French orthography from French voilagrave has been appropriatedas a Wolof word Signi cantly later on Baye Galaye uses the same worddepicted in standard French orthography revealing that that are no absoluteparameters on what is French and what is Wolof and that boundaries betweenthem are uid

The technique of showing words that have been entirely Wolo zed throughorthographic means is used particularly with female characters who are depictedas using less French but more French in their Wolof For example (Fig 3) the

who comes to reclaim her wallet from Mecca is told by Baye GalayelsquoLe voilagrave Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pour une comme toirsquo(lsquoHere it is AF walletW like that can only be for aF W like youFrsquo) towhich she responds lsquo rsquo (lsquoEeeeW

TodayFW I was evenW negligentFW (in appearance)rsquo) Baye Galayersquos matrixlanguage in his utterance this time is French (including the word voilagrave) intowhich he inserts two Wolof words and the latter written inFrench orthography The rsquos response however includes a completelyWolo zed spelling of aujourdrsquohui lsquotodayrsquo and neacutegligeacutee lsquoneglectedrsquo whereFrench becomes Wolof and French consonant clusters are split up byvowels

Contrasting with the depiction of urban language that makes up peoplersquosthoughts and words is the depiction of the written word primarily on signs suchas Baye Galayersquos professional sign and the writing on the table and basins of aPeul milk-seller indicating what his wares are The humour comes from the factthat they are written incorrectly in French with many spelling errors This is oneof the most interesting aspects of language depicted in Boy Dakar becausesimilar conventions are used for Wolo zed French words in both oral and writtenlanguage But while reader response showed that the oral forms were consideredto be so nativized as to be Wolof the written forms were seen as errors BayeGalayersquos professional sign reads lsquoChez Baye Galaye Passpor et perdirsquo (lsquoBaye Galayersquos Lost passportsF ID cardsFW andF walletsWrsquo) (Fig 2) Thethree items passports ID cards and wallets form a written linguistic continuumof their own The spelling passpor conforms better to its pronunciation than thestandard form passeports but the fact that it is spelled incorrectly indicates thatBaye Galaye or whoever wrote the sign for him does not write well in French

is a widely used Wolo zed version of the French carte drsquoidentiteacute butthe fact that it is written as such provokes laughter on the part of the readerFinally is the Wolof word for wallet and Baye Galaye is either ignorantof the French word or thinks that is a French word The nal word perdialso re ects Wolof pronunciation of the French perdus

In the Peul milk-seller who is sleeping in his chair while a child egged on byhis two friends tries to steal some of his curdled milk we see a character who

11 Bivalent utterances are shown in typewriter-style (indicating Wolof) italics (indicating

French) additionally underlined for higher visibility and marked FW in the translation

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

Dakar Wolof 169

would not be expected to know French The sign written on his table reads lsquoJevan pa di yawoorrsquo (lsquoI donrsquot sell yoghurtrsquo) re ecting spelling that more closelymirrors colloquial spoken language The largest bucket contains lsquoLe cahie

rsquo (lsquoDeliciousW curdled milkFrsquo) as does the smallest one labelled lsquo rsquo(lsquoPureFW curdled milkWrsquo) As in Baye Galayersquos sign the milk vendorrsquos signsinvolve words in French which are spelled incorrectly Wolof words andWolo zed French words like lsquopurersquo

Part of the linguistic richness of Boy Dakar comes from the fact that it depictsboth oral and written language The attitudes of readers towards the orthographicconventions for the two media ndash namely that changes in French orthography werepermissible in the written depiction of the oral domain because they representednativized words that had become Wolof but if they occurred in the depiction ofthe written domain they were perceived as errors ndash are a perfect re ection oflinguistic reality Readers bring with them to their reading of the comics theexpectation that Wolof is an oral language but that French is also a written oneIn addition to taking into consideration the spoken environment as we sawearlier Calvet also considers what the graphic environment has to tell us about acity and its inhabitants With regard to Dakar he tells us that the graphicenvironment is lsquoindicative of a situation of transition between orality and writingof a society where the relationship to the written is not yet xedrsquo (177-78) Hebases his observation on a comparison with the graphic environment of Pariswithin a highly literate society In Paris he posits there is a constant relationshipbetween the graphic form and the linguistic content Arabic is written in theArabic alphabet Chinese in Chinese characters Thai in the Thai alphabet etc12

In Dakar on the other hand there are two writing systems Roman and Arabicand three languages to be written Wolof Arabic and French With the exceptionof French which is always written in the Roman alphabet Calvet claims thatthere is an lsquoincertitudersquo in the relations between the written and oral systems anda great uidity between languages themselves This incertitude can be expandedto include the ambiguities simultaneities and bivalency to be found in urbanWolof

As literary creations Boy Dakar and Ass et Oussou involve the artisticmediation of linguistic forms represented in their pages Consequently animportant question arises to what extent does the oral language depicted in thecomics accurately re ect real-life urban Wolof While all the elements ofhybridity are contained in the pages the ctionalized version of Dakar Wolofexhibits a curious reversal of elements found in actual spoken urban Wolof Thereversal becomes clear when we compare a naturally occurring utterance with a ctionalized utterance as in (20) and (21) The former is a naturally occurringutterance while the latter is a ctionalized form

12 Calvetrsquos observations about the graphic environment of Paris may have to be

tempered for some neighbourhoods I suspect that Parisian neighbourhoods peopledby Senegalese would probably mirror the Dakar environment to a large degree

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

170 Fiona McLaughlin

(20) veacutegeacuteter 3S-IMP vegetate just alasHersquos just vegetating alas

(21) Un comme ccedila ne peut ecirctre que pourDET wallet like that NEG can3S be except forune comme toiDET woman like 2SA wallet like that could only be for a woman like you (Boy Dakar 1 11)

The reversal has to do with what is identi able as the matrix language in eachphrase In (20) the naturally occurring phrase Wolof is most de nitely thematrix language as would be expected in urban Wolof while in the ctionalizedversion in (21) French is the matrix language Although there are examples of ctionalized speech in Boy Dakar which show Wolof to be the matrix languagemost notably emanating from female characters in general a French matrix isfavoured A plausible explanation of this discrepancy between the real and ctionalized versions of urban Wolof is the consideration that the ctionalizedversion occurs within a written medium not an oral one and the matrix forwriting is French so as a text Boy Dakar exhibits oral Wolof embedded withinwritten French The resulting product is somewhat paradoxically a writtendepiction of an oral language that reinforces the fact that it is not a writtenlanguage

5 Towards a new paradigm

Within the historical context in which they appeared Boy Dakar and Ass etOussou constitute just two of the many creative attempts to legitimate an urbanidentity and they do so by legitimating a uniquely urban language Returningnow to the question of urban identity we have seen how the term Wolof hasplayed into what Miller (1998 173) calls lsquothe terms of the new paradigmrsquo I haveargued that within the urban context Wolof is a default category when applied toethnicity and in fact represents a de-ethnicized identity which is still cast in theterms of the old paradigm More than a decade after the pivotal period of the

movement the notion of a de-ethnicized urban identity appears to begaining currency as witnessed by the following recently observed interaction inJune of 2000 a professor at the Universiteacute Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis askedanother with a typically Seereer last name if he was a Seereer The latteranswered with a smile lsquoNo Irsquom from Dakarrsquo The rst professor then saidjokingly lsquoThatrsquos the new ethnicity in Senegal now to be from Dakarrsquo Similarlyin April of 2000 an article in Wal Fadjri now a daily newspaper reported on agroup art exhibit of young urban painters Based on an interview with one of theartists Cheikh Ndiaye the article reported lsquoIl peint la nouvelle ethnieseacuteneacutegalaise lrsquoethnie urbaine qui vit dans les carsrsquo (lsquoHe paints the newSenegalese ethnic group the urban ethnic group who live on the busesrsquo) (Maitre2000 9) As these examples indicate the terms of the new paradigm are notforthcoming but the terms of the old no longer mean what they once did

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

Dakar Wolof 171

If the evolution of urban identity that I have sketched in this paper is rightthen urbanization in Senegal as well as in many similar urban contextsthroughout Africa is having a profound effect on the notion of ethnicity Newmultivalent ways of projecting and performing identity in urban Africa demandnew paradigms for viewing African societies and the study of urban languagesand the repercussions of their use should play a central role in this endeavour

FIONA MCLAUGHLIN can be contacted at the Department of Linguistics University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane Lawrence Kansas 66044-3177 USAemail fmclkuedu

REFERENCES

Amselle Jean-Loup 1990 Logiques meacutetisses Anthropologie de lrsquoidentiteacute en Afrique etailleurs Paris Payot

Calvet Louis-Jean 1994 Les voix de la ville Introduction agrave la sociolinguistiqueurbaine Paris Payot et Rivages

Camara Sana 1997 Arsquojami literature in Senegal the example of Seumlrintilde Muusaa Kapoet and biographer Research in African Literatures 28 (3) 163-182

Clifford James 1988 The Predicament of Culture Twentieth-Century EthnographyLiterature and Art Cambridge Harvard University Press

Cruise OrsquoBrien Donal B 1979 Langue et nationaliteacute au Seacuteneacutegal lrsquoenjeu politique de lawolo sation Anneacutee Africaine 319-335

mdashmdash 1998 The shadow-politics of Wolo sation Journal of Modern African Studies36 (1) 25-46

Degraveme Abdoulaye 1996 Eacutecriture dans une socieacuteteacute agrave tradition orale Le cas du wolof auSeacuteneacutegal le laquowolofalraquo In Les politiques linguistiques mythes et reacutealiteacutes ed by CJuillard and L-J Calvet pp 149-153 Beirut Fiches du Monde Arabe

mdashmdash 1999 Senegalese radio in diaspora a sociolinguistic analysis of lsquoAfrican TimersquoPaper presented at the 1999 African Studies Association Meeting Philadelphia

Diouf Mamadou 1992 Fresques murales et eacutecriture de lrsquohistoire Le SetSetal agrave DakarPolitique Africaine 46 41-54

mdashmdash 1996 Urban youth and Senegalese politics Dakar 1988-1994 Public Culture 8225-249

Dumont Myriam 1998 Les enseignes de Dakar Un essai de sociolinguistiqueafricaine Paris LrsquoHarmattan

Fall Ibou and Aziz Bacirc 1988 Boy Dakar Dakar Sen ImprimerieGeacuterard Albert S 1981 African Language Literatures an Introduction to the Literary

History of Sub-Saharan Africa Washington Three Continents PressGumperz John J 1982 Discourse Strategies Cambridge Cambridge University PressMaitre Anne 2000 Trois garccedilons dans le vent Wal Fadjri (Dakar) No 2432 April 21

p 9Mbembe Achille 1997 The lsquothingrsquo and its doubles in Cameroonian cartoons In

Readings in African Popular Culture ed by K Barber pp 151-163 BloomingtonIndiana Indiana University Press and Oxford James Currey

McLaughlin Fiona 1995 Haalpulaar identity as a response to Wolo zation AfricanLanguages and Cultures 8 (2) 153-168

Miller Christopher L 1998 Nationalists and Nomads Essays on Francophone AfricanLiterature and Culture Chicago University of Chicago Press

172 Fiona McLaughlin

Myers-Scotton Carol 1993 Duelling Languages Grammatical Structure inCodeswitching Oxford Clarendon Press

Spitulnik Debra 1999 The language of the city Town Bemba as urban hybridityJournal of Linguistic Anthropology 8 (1) 30-59

Swigart Leigh 1990 Wolof language or ethnic group The development of a nationalidentity Paper presented at the 1990 African Studies Association meeting BaltimoreMaryland

mdashmdash 2001 The limits of legitimacy language ideology and shift in contemporarySenegal Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 10 (1) 90-130

Wal Fadjri Heacutebdomadaire islamique africain drsquoinformations DakarWoolard Kathryn A 1999 Simultaneity and bivalency as strategies in bilingualism

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 8 (1) 3-29