ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the local configurations of language contact in West Africa. The chapter discusses this region as a zone in which fragmentation and high linguistic diversity coexist with convergence areas. Continuing divergence is explained through the importance of multilingualism to index social difference and thus to counteract homogenizing tendencies. Ideas of languages and language territorialization and the heterogeneous speech communities resulting from them are introduced, and the notions of emblematicity, scale and perspective in categorization of forms in heteroglossic and multilingual speech are discussed, and recent epistemological and methodological developments close the chapter.
