| Preface | 7 |
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| List of Tables, Maps and Figures | 15 |
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| List of Languages | 21 |
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| List of figures with cited and archived web pages | 19 |
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| Copyrights for reproduced photographs | 19 |
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| Abbreviations | 27 |
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| Introduction | 29 |
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| 1 What this book is about | 29 |
| 2 Structure of the book | 38 |
| 1 Multilingualism on the ground | 41 |
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| 1.1 Societal multilingualism in Senegal | 42 |
| 1.2 Individual repertoires: six case studies | 50 |
| 1.2.1 Localist identities for moving targets | 50 |
| 1.2.2 Purposeful alienation: the ethnolinguistic chameleon | 52 |
| 1.2.3 The rhetorical return to lost roots | 56 |
| 1.2.4 A return to what roots? | 57 |
| 1.2.5 I am what I speak? | 59 |
| 1.2.6 Well, I’m not what I speak | 60 |
| 1.3 Societal practices nurturing multilingualism | 61 |
| 1.3.1 Exogynous marriage patterns and movement of daughters | 62 |
| 1.3.2 Language acquisition in peer groups and age classes | 64 |
| 1.3.3 Fostering | 67 |
| 1.3.4 Professional, ritual and crisis mobility and migration | 69 |
| 1.3.5 Joking relationships | 73 |
| 1.4 Written languages and the interaction of written and spoken repertoires | 76 |
| 1.4.1 The ecology of writing in Senegal | 77 |
| 1.4.2 The making of guilty illiterates | 82 |
| 1.4.3 African writing: what scope, which languages and scripts? | 89 |
| 1.4.3.1 Grapho- and eurocentric ideologies and “restricted literacies” | 89 |
| 1.4.3.2 Some literacies are more visible than others | 91 |
| 1.4.3.3 Ajami literacies | 93 |
| 1.4.3.4 The Ge’ez script | 98 |
| 1.4.3.5 The Bamun syllabary | 99 |
| 1.4.3.6 N’ko | 100 |
| 1.4.3.7 The Tifinagh script | 101 |
| 1.4.3.8 The Vai syllabary | 103 |
| 1.5 For an integrated view of spoken and written multilingual and multiscriptal practices | 103 |
| 2 Doing things with words | 105 |
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| 2.1 Some symbolic dimensions of language | 107 |
| 2.2 A complete language | 114 |
| 2.3 Speech registers | 117 |
| 2.3.1 Play languages | 119 |
| 2.3.2 Youth languages | 122 |
| 2.3.3 Respect languages and other examples of paralexification | 125 |
| 2.3.4 Special purpose languages | 132 |
| 2.3.5 Avoidance languages | 134 |
| 2.3.6 Ritual languages | 137 |
| 2.3.7 Spirit languages | 144 |
| 2.4 What we can learn from users of speech registers | 148 |
| 3 Language and ideology | 151 |
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| 3.1 Language and power | 153 |
| 3.1.1 Missionary activities and literacy development efforts | 156 |
| 3.1.2 Power relationships | 161 |
| 3.1.3 Conflicting language ideologies | 162 |
| 3.2 Reducing diversity and creating standards | 164 |
| 3.3 Constructing linguistic deficits and reacting to language obsolescence | 169 |
| 3.3.1 Lack of words, abundance of sounds | 170 |
| 3.3.2 The visible and the invisible | 179 |
| 3.4 Remaining who we are: local theories and concepts of translation | 183 |
| 3.4.1 Socio-historical background | 184 |
| 3.4.2 Foreign text in women’s tales | 186 |
| 3.4.3 Translating silence | 188 |
| 3.5 Ways of making history | 190 |
| 3.5.1 Eastern origins | 192 |
| 3.5.2 Hone interpretations of Kisra traditions | 195 |
| 3.5.3 Spirits of the past | 200 |
| 3.5.4 Where people think (and don’t think) they come from | 202 |
| 3.6 Ideologies, semiotics and multilingualism | 203 |
| 4 Language and knowledge | 209 |
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| 4.1 Creation of knowledge | 209 |
| 4.1.1 The invention of tradition | 209 |
| 4.1.2 The view from within | 224 |
| 4.1.3 Essentialization vs. inclusion | 234 |
| 4.2 Invention of evolution: colonial encounters | 236 |
| 4.2.1 Why collect, count and classify African languages? | 238 |
| 4.2.2 Linguistics as science, and language as evolution | 239 |
| 4.2.3 The origin of data | 242 |
| 4.2.4 Borders based on typology: noun class ideologies | 247 |
| 4.3 Epistemes and the expression of knowledge | 251 |
| 4.3.1 Terminologies | 252 |
| 4.3.2 Categories and the power of tradition | 257 |
| 4.3.3 Emic and etic perspectives: Baïnounk noun classes | 261 |
| 4.4 The language of knowledge | 272 |
| 4.4.1 Evidentials and perception | 273 |
| 4.4.2 When knowledge systems converge: Atlantic noun classes again | 281 |
| 4.5 Endangered knowledge | 285 |
| 5 Language dynamics | 295 |
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| 5.1 A glance at linguistic diversity | 295 |
| 5.2 Africa in the cont
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