Different Languages, Different Futures: Language, Education, and Social Mobility in Dakar, Senegal

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: Multilingualism Across Contexts and Countries

Abstract

In African contexts, social mobility was historically tied to the completion of public secondary education and acquisition of the official language. However, increased privatization of education systems and the push for English acquisition, coupled with shrinking local job markets, have shifted the playing field. Drawing on a larger 22-month ethnographic study, this paper explores the effects of these changes at two private bilingual schools (French-English and French-Arabic) in Dakar, Senegal. It compares how students’ educational and linguistic practices and ideologies are linked to their understandings of and strategies for social mobility, and focuses on the divergent ways in which students talk about and understand the value of the languages they are learning and how these differing understandings shape students’ aspirations.

Author

• Teresa Speciale, University of Wisconsin - Madison