MIDP Conference 2009 - Multilingualism from Below _____________________________________________________________ CECILE VAN DEN AVENNE AÏSSATOU MBODJ-POUYE LANGUAGE USE IN GRASSROOTS LITERACY PRACTICES. CODE-SWITCHING IN DREAM NARRATIVES SENT TO A LOCAL RADIO IN MOPTI, MALI. KEYWORDS: LITERACY - WRITING PRACTICES - CODE-SWITCHING - MALI (WEST AFRICA) BAMANAN (MANDE LANGUAGE) - RADIO - MULTILINGUALISM - ‘GRASSROOTS LITERACIES’ ABSTRACT (FOR PROGRAMME SCHEDULE): max. 100 words This paper deals with dream narratives sent to a local radio in Mopti (Mali) for interpretation during a live broadcast. This writing practice involves two processes of translation: from a language of oral communication (Bamanan, Fula, Songhoy) to a written language, mainly French, the official language; from French to Bamanan, the main language the broadcast runs in, with references to an Islamic corpus of texts in Arabic. The linguistic analysis of the corpus, backed upon a broader ethnographic approach, will highlight the sense of the discursive situation of the writers who take into account this whole process of translation. SHORT PAPER (FOR CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS): 500 - 1000 words This paper deals with a specific kind of written material, letters sent to the presenter of a local radio in Mopti (an half-size town of Northern Mali) for a live broadcast called “Sugon kènè” (“Sweet Dreams”). These letters are read on the air by the presenter, who will further give an interpretation, following the Islamic tradition of interpretation of dreams. This writing practice involves two processes of translation: from a local language of oral communication and experience (Bamanan, Fula, Songhoy) to a written language, mainly French, the official language and usual written language; on the air, from this written language to Bamanan, the main language the broadcast runs in. The dreams' interpretation involves another process of translation as the interpreter uses a “clé des songes” written in Arabic and translates into Arabic the words pointed as relevant in the letters in order to get the symbolic meaning associated with those words. This specific process of translation, which is part of the interpretation, may be taken into account by the dreamers who are aware of the importance of using the “right words” to tell their dreams in order to be given an accurate interpretation of them. We have collected approximately 200 letters, during an ethnographic field-work relying on observations and interviews. For this paper, we will focus on the linguistic analysis of the corpus, backed upon this wider ethnographic approach. We draw from works in linguistic anthropology which have stressed the richness of “grassroots literacy” - a label first used by Fabian (1990) and recently elaborated by Blommaert to describe a “wide variety of “non-elite” forms of writing” (Blommaert, 2008). We will devote our paper to an investigation of code-switching in these texts written mostly in French, with borrowings and interferences towards Bamanan or towards Arabic. The code-switching phenomena betray a sense of the discursive situation, as dreamers take into account the whole process of translation in which their practice is embedded. These practices offer a more complex view on the sociolinguistic situation of present Mali than usual accounts of this diglossic context. Multilingual literacies is an emergent field of research (Durgunoğlu & Verhoeven, 1998 ; Martin-Jones & Jones, 2000), but little studies really tackle with the materiality of writings involving different languages. As pointed out by Mark Sebba (2005, 2006), there is no independent theoretical framework for the phenomena of written language mixing ; all linguistic research has drawn on theoretical framework originally developed for spoken code-switching research. Sebba argues that the notion of “written code-switching” needs

to be interpreted much more broadly than looking for pattern in writing which correspond to the kind of switching identified in conversation. Taking into account the specificity of our corpus, we will focus on the meta-linguistic activity and discursive reflexivity revealed by the use of code-switching in those written materials. We will pay a special attention to the graphic devices used by the writers to index those phenomena. Drawing from the seminal work of Authier-Revuz (1997) on the heterogeneity of discourse, we will try to construct an interpretative framework to describe code-switching phenomena in grassroots texts. Bibliography AUTHIER-REVUZ J. (1997) Ces mots qui ne vont pas de soi. Boucles réflexives et noncoïncidences du dire, Larousse, coll. « Sciences du langage ». BLOMMAERT Jan (2008) Grassroots Literacy. Writing, Identity and Voice in Central Africa, London, New York, Routledge. DURGUNOGLU Aydin Yücesan, VERHOEVEN Ludo, eds (1998). Literacy Development in a Multilingual Context. Cross-Cultural Perspectives, Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum. FABIAN Johannes (1990) History from Below, Amsterdam, John Benjamins. MARTIN-JONES Marilyn, JONES Kathryn, eds (2000). Multilingual literacies: reading and writing different worlds, Amsterdam, John Benjamins. SAMB Djibril (2004) L’interprétation des rêves en Afrique Noire (la Sénégambie), Bruxelles, Ed. Ediphis. SEBBA M. (2006) « 'Written code-switching' to the 'semiotics of mixed-language texts': a new approach to plurilingual writings », Unpublished conference paper, SS16, Limerick. (2005) « Towards a typology and analytical framework for mixed-language texts », Unpublished conference paper, ISB5, Barcelona. WILLIAMS Glyn (1998) French Discourse Analysis :The Method of Post-Structuralism, Routledge.