What is it about?
Surveys the state of sociolinguistics in the area and argues for the wider importance of themes emerging from this work - multilingualism as default and new descriptive frameworks to address the problem posed by the impossibility of consistently distinguishing langauge from dialect. Instead of using these english terms (or equivalents from other natural languages) we consider a new analytical set of terms: ‘doculects’, languoids’, and ‘glossonyms’.
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Why is it important?
Assumptions of multilingualism as default imply changes to wider linguistics. Also the descriptive framework used by linguistics needs to change. A model is suggested from Harnischfeger,Leger, & Storch, as well as Good and di Carlo
Perspectives
Completely rewritten after the first edition. Of much wider significance than just West African linguistics. Starting with the idea of a default multilingualism changes how linguistics has to be conceptualised. And leaving terms like language and dialect to be analysed without using them in the analysis is challenging but can enable a consistent discipline.
Professor David Zeitlyn
University of Oxford
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This page is a summary of: Sociolinguistic Studies of West And Central Africa, June 2023, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003198345-36.
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