Language Planning and Policy in Africa, Vol. 2: Algeria, Cte d'Ivoire, Nigeria and Tunisia (Language Planning and Policy, 7) (Vo,New

Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Language Planning and Policy in Africa, Vol. 2Algeria, Cte d'Ivoire, Nigeria and TunisiaBy Robert B. Kaplan, Richard B. Baldauf Jr.Multilingual MattersCopyright 2007 Robert B. Kaplan, Richard B. Baldauf Jr. and the authors of individual chaptersAll rights reserved.ISBN: 9781847690111ContentsSeries Overview, 1, Language Policy and Planning in Algeria, Cte d'Ivoire, Nigeria and Tunisia: Some Common Issues Robert B. Kaplan and Richard B. Baldauf Jr, 6, The Language Situation in Algeria Mohamed Benrabah, 25, Language Planning in Cte d'Ivoire Paulin Djit, 149, The Language Situation in Cte d'Ivoire since 2000: An Update Paulin Djit and JeanFranois Y. K. Kpli, 185, Language Policy and Planning in Nigeria Efurosibina Adegbija, 190, The Language Situation in Tunisia Mohamed Daoud, 256, Biographical Notes on Contributors, 308, CHAPTER 1Language Policy and Planning in Algeria, Cte d'Ivoire, Nigeria and Tunisia: Some Common IssuesRobert B. KaplanProfessor Emeritus, Applied Linguistics, University of Southern California. Mailing Address: PO Box 577, Port Angeles, WA 98362 USA Richard B. Baldauf Jr.Associate Professor of TESOL, School of Education, University of Queensland, QLD 4072 Australia IntroductionThis volume brings together four language policy and planning studies related to Africa. (See the 'Series Overview' for a more general discussion of the nature of the series, Appendix A for the 22 questions each study set out to address, and Kaplan et al. 2000 for a discussion of the underlying concepts for the studies themselves.) In this paper, in addition to providing an introductory summary of the material covered in these studies, we want to draw out and discuss some of the more general issues raised by them.Although Algeria, Cte d'Ivoire, Nigeria and Tunisia do not represent a geographic cluster, they do have in common a number of factors: all four of the countries are participants in francophonie, the association of French speaking nations; following global trends, in the three francophone countries, there is evidence that language shift is occurring away from French as a lingua franca (Wright, 2006) to a greater use of English; Arabicisation is a national issue in Algeria and Tunisia (Sirles, 1999) and Arabic use is a regional and religious issue in the north of Cte d'Ivoire and Nigeria; geographically, they represent two distinct clusters: Algeria and Tunisia in the Maghreb in the northwest corner of the continent, and Cte d'Ivoire and Nigeria in Central West Africa. Thus, the group is not geographically coherent except in the sense that all the polities lie in western Africa; Algeria and Tunisia (see, Daoud, this volume) are in fact part of a coherent grouping Morocco (see, Marley, 2000) is the remaining major member of this Magrhebian group, and all have French as a major exogenous language. Cte d'Ivoire is also a Frenchspeaking polity, and Nigeria where French has been made the second official language (Omoniyi, 2003) has joined the francophonie.French has been maintained as an important language in many of France's former colonies, especially in Africa. In postindependence Africa, there has developed a sharp rivalry between Arabic and French, and ongoing competition between these two languages and national/ethnic languages for the position of official language. The role of the French language in the Francophone world must be set in the context of the preoccupations that Francophones themselves have about the importance of their own languages, about their relationship to France and about postindependence governments not only from a postcolonial point of view but also from the standpoint of an understanding that national/ethnic languages are also an essential dimension of their development. Consequently, French has become a language of communication between cultures as well as a vehicle for transmitting French culture. (See, Salhi, 20