ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the different varieties of Wolof and French, the complex meanings that people ascribe to them, and the ways in which they inform the Senegalese popular imagination. It also investigates how people's beliefs about those varieties affect the ways in which identity is performed through language in the Senegalese context. The chapter suggests alternative views of a postcolonial modernity reflected most clearly in language ideology. Wolof has long served as a lingua franca in northern Senegal, as in urban areas and along the Senegalese coast. Metalinguistic discourse or talk about language in Senegal provides an important window into the ways in which speakers think of Wolof and their attitudes on how it is spoken. The unmarked variety of French in Senegal is the local variety of Senegalese French. The focus is on the phonological characteristics of Senegalese French, various of which stand out for their salient difference from metropolitan French.
