Language and law: The right to the mother tongue in a French and Kirundi diglossic context in Burundi

Author: Baptiste Bigirimana, Jean

Source: Language Problems & Language Planning, Volume 32, Number 1, 2008 , pp. 23-46(24)

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

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Abstract:

As a result of colonization, the French language has imposed itself for a century on Burundi and ended up occupying a position of domination, compared to Kirundi and the other languages in the area. Over the years, after having supplanted Kirundi as the language of the law, it has continued to spread, so that today it remains de facto the language of the administration and of many other essential fields related to the life of a Burundi nevertheless broadly monolingual — despite the limitation, indeed the rejection, of its hitherto official status in the 1992 constitution and the recently (2005) adopted constitution. Out of respect for national laws and international legal instruments, and also in the context of ongoing universalization of human rights, a certain claim for a right to the mother tongue seems to emerge, based on the critical role played by the mother tongue in building sound and sustainable development. Such a conclusion raises an obvious internal contradiction, given the goals of a "francophonie" concerned, in principle, with ensuring a respectful partnership with local languages in Africa and elsewhere, but, in practice, given the prevailing Kirundi-French diglossic situation in Burundi, still perceived as a colonial vestige because of the cultural aura and weight of the French language. Accordingly, a key component in the reshaping of post-colonial Burundi is a kind of linguistic and social hybridization, which the management of multilingualism, as well as its political implications, must take into account going forward.

Keywords: LAW AND LANGUAGE; BURUNDI; DIGLOSSIA; KIRUNDI LANGUAGE; FRENCH LANGUAGE; CONSTITUTIONAL LAW

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1075/lplp.32.1.03big

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