Doctoral Dissertation Research: Linguistic and Political borders in the Senegambia region

1889年，法国和英国殖民势力在冈比亚河周围划定的边界在柏林会议上得到正式承认，这是被称为“争夺非洲”进程的一部分。“这条殖民边界在塞内加尔和冈比亚两国之间留下了持久的政治裂痕，尽管两国有着共同的历史、种族和土著语言。由这条边界划分的主要民族语言群体之一是沃洛夫人。虽然沃洛夫语仍然是这些国家之间的一种重要的共同语言，但发言者承认塞内加尔和冈比亚的沃洛夫语存在分歧。语言通常被用来构建和加强种族、社会和民族身份，并能唤起说话者之间强烈的团结或分离感。正如彼得·奥尔所指出的，国家边界不仅可以帮助构建语言边界，而且语言差异也可以加强国家边界。本文将聚焦于多民族、多语言的边境地区，在那里，民族与语言有着密切的联系。在Brian Joseph博士的指导下，Jane Mitsch将在Senegambia边境地区进行为期八个月的社会语言学访谈和沃洛夫人的民族志实地考察。本论文旨在考察具有共同民族身份但不同民族身份的人们的语言实践，探讨政治边界在这些年轻民族的语言实践中的作用，获取关于不同身份亲和力（民族，种族，宗教等）的数据，并与其他政治边界语言学研究的结果进行比较。这项研究将为有关非洲国家及其边界的实力的政治学问题带来语言输入。这项研究还将导致创建一个口语沃洛夫语语料库，将捕捉沃洛夫语口头传统的一些重要方面，如民间故事和谚语。

A border drawn around the Gambia River by French and British colonial powers was officially recognized in the 1889 by the Berlin Conference, as part of the process known as the "Scramble for Africa." This colonial boundary has left an enduring political rift between the nations of Senegal and The Gambia in spite of their shared history, ethnicities, and indigenous languages. One of the major ethnolinguistic groups divided by this border is the Wolof. Although Wolof continues to be an important shared language between these countries, speakers recognize divergence in the Wolof of Senegal and The Gambia. Language is often used to construct and reinforce ethnic, social, and national identity and can evoke a strong sense of solidarity or separation among speakers. As Peter Auer has argued, not only can the national border help construct a linguistic border, but the linguistic divergence can also serve to reinforce the national border. This dissertation will focus on the border in a multiethnic, multilingual area where ethnicity is strongly associated with language.Under the direction of Dr. Brian Joseph, Jane Mitsch will spend eight months in the Senegambia border areas conducting sociolinguistic interviews and ethnographic fieldwork among Wolof people. This dissertation aims to examine the linguistic practices of people with shared ethnic identity but different national identity, to explore the role of the political border in the linguistic practices of these young nations, to elicit data on different identity affinities (national, ethnic, religious etc.), and to compare the linguistic results to other linguistic studies of political borders. This study will bring linguistic input to political science questions about the strength of African nations and their borders. This research will also lead to the creation of a corpus of spoken Wolof that will capture some of the important aspects of the Wolof oral tradition such as folktales and proverbs.