Linguistic borrowing as evidence of the social history of the Senegalese speech community

Abstract

Language always carries along the social, cultural, and political history of its speakers. Deroy (1956: 316) pointed out that loanwords are evidence of the major historical events of a society. In other words, by analyzing lexical borrowings between languages, one can see the social, political, ideological, or cultural forces that once shaped or still influence a given community. In this respect, lexical borrowings constitute a reservoir of crystallized verbal forms used to refer to past or current foreign beliefs, practices, or way of life that have influenced a given community. Rather than offering a comprehensive theory of borrowings in Wolof (the major lingua franca spoken by over 80% of the Senegalese population, as either a first language or a second language), this study only examines the cultural and sociohistorical aspects of loans in the Senegalese speech community. The study uses loanwords as a means of understanding how the linguistic and sociohistorical systems cooperate in a multilingual and multicultural society such as Senegal (both in the past and in present times). It demonstrates that lexical borrowing does not occur randomly but is the product of social, cultural, political, or ideological interventions. First, the study intends to decode the social, political, cultural, and ideological history of Senegal encoded in French, Arabic, English, and Spanish lexical loanwords in Wolof. Second, the paper analyzes the linguistic nature of loanwords and their current sociolinguistic implications in Senegal today.