The 'colonialism of language': A critical discourse analysis of Bambara texts produced during the pre-colonial and early colonial periods in the former French Sudan

The “colonialism of language” explores how language is both a means (i.e., discourse or communicative action that the colonizer attempted to control and which facilitated the process of colonialism) and an object (i.e., the language varieties of the Other) of colonialism. This study adds to a growing body of literature on the “colonialism of language” by examining the specifics of the “colonialism of Bambara” through a critical discourse analysis of texts, concerning a West African language variety commonly known as Bambara, that were produced during the pre-colonial and early colonial periods in the former French Sudan. These texts include collections of vocabularies of African language varieties, grammatical essays, dictionaries, comprehensive linguistic studies, scholarly studies and articles, and collections of proverbs and stories. This examination reveals that Bambara was indeed both a means and an object of colonialism in West Africa and that the actions that discourse participants took in the production of these texts contributed to the construction of what is known as Bambara today—a language variety and people located in present-day Mali. The critical discourse analysis of these texts also illustrates the hidden links between language and power in discourse production; contributes to a larger discourse on ideology by demonstrating how ideology is truly effective when it appears to be commonsensical; and emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between oppositional behavior and resistance when examining the intended and unintended consequences of discourse participants' actions.