Ahmadou Kourouma et la transposition de la parole malinké

Abstract

In his novel Allah n’est pas obligé the Ivorian writer Ahmadou Kourouma tries to convey his Malinké identity in the French language through a process of malinkisation – he interlaces Malinké words, syntactic structures and rhythm with French, playing with the two codes that he masters and portraying a fresh linguistic atmosphere. Kourouma exploits the potentiality, the richness of French linguistic varieties and thus legitimises their value. In the first part, this paper tries to analyse Kourouma’s linguistic play by focusing mainly on the language of the narrator, the child soldier Birahima. The second part of the paper attempts at proving how Kourouma’s malinkisation is part of a broader and more general project of legitimisation as regards his language(s), culture, and work as a writer.

Keywords

• Ahmadou Kourouma. Legitimisation. Linguistic insecurity. Malinkisation. Orality