The discursive pathway of two centuries of raciolinguistic stereotyping: ‘Africans as incapable of speaking French’

TLDR

The article examines how the grammatical structure y'a bon has become an emblem in Hexagonal France for labeling sub‑Saharan Africans—and by extension all Africans—as incapable of speaking French competently. The study traces the pathways of this stereotype to uncover the historicities of its production, circulation, and interpretation, and to investigate the socio‑historical conditions that sustain it. The stereotype is rooted in long‑standing ideologies that portray French as exceptional and African languages and speakers as primitive, and the rise of first‑age mass culture in the nineteenth century facilitated its entextualization and circulation. Keywords: stereotypes, mediatization, enregisterment, language ideology, France, Africa.

Abstract

Abstract This article is about the discursive pathway of grammatical structures such as y'a bon ‘there's good’, documenting how, in Hexagonal France, it has become an ‘enregistered emblem’ for indexing sub-Saharan Africans and, by extension, any African as allegedly incapable of speaking French competently. I argue that tracing pathways makes it possible to unveil the intricacy of the historicities of production, circulation, and interpretations of such racially based linguistic stereotypes. One of the central questions addressed in this article is: What are the sociohistorical conditions of the emergence and maintenance of these linguistic stereotypes? I show that these are grounded in long-standing linguistic ideologies of French as an exceptional language and of African languages and, therefore, their speakers, as primitive. I demonstrate how the rise of first age mass culture in the nineteenth century contributed to both the entextualization and the circulation of these stereotypical representations. (Stereotypes, mediatization, enregisterment, language ideology, France, Africa)*