Multilingualism, Identity, and Language Endangerment in Southern Chad: The Case of the Middle Chari Area

• Autores: Florian Lionnet
• Localización: The handbook of multilingualism, identity, and language endangerment in Africa / coord. por Alireza Korangy, Evgeniya Gutova, 2025, ISBN 9789819647293, págs. 441-477
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The Middle Chari region, narrowly defined here as the two Laal speaking villages of Gori and Damtar and the neighboring Ba, Lua, and Ndam-speaking villages, is characterized by small-scale, egalitarian multilingualism (cf. Lüpke 2016; Di Carlo et al. 2019; Pakendorf et al. 2021). This chapter describes the linguistic ecology that undergirds this multilingualism: small size of language groups, exogenous and virilocal marriage practices, child-rearing practices, indexical understanding and use of language identity, linguistic ideology valuing multilingualism and framed by social strategies aiming at creating alliances and protective networks. I also show that egalitarian multilingualism does not entail strict symmetry between the languages involved: matrimonial and demographic asymmetries contribute to making some communities more multilingual than others, and, at the individual level, not all languages have the same weight in determining identity. Finally, I give a comparative assessment of language endangerment in the Middle Chari area and in two different urban contexts, showing that urban life is not necessarily synonymous with language loss, as long as the multilingual ecology sustaining the daily use of (a) language(s) is maintained.