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- Title
Language policy in the Seychelles and its consequences.
- Authors
Bollée, Annegret
- Abstract
This article describes language policy in the Seychelles and its consequences. In 1979, three years after independence and two years after the Socialist government of President France-Albert René came into power, Creole was elevated to the status of an official language, together with English and French. Seychellois Creole was thus the first French-based Creole to gain official recognition. Before independence, the sociolinguistic situation in the Seychelles could be described in terms of diglossia as analyzed in the Diglossia article of Charles A. Ferguson. The establishment of official trilingualism was the second step in the language policy of the Seychelles after independence, the first step being the reintroduction of French as an official language. In September 1976, the new Republic had proclaimed a so-called bilinguisme équilibré of English and French, which meant that the French language, having remained the mother tongue of part of the upper class, regained its rightful place. The third and last step in the language policy of the Seychelles followed in 1981, when Creole became the first national language of the Republic, English second and French third, and when it was decided that Creole should become the primary medium of instruction in the schools.
- Subjects
SEYCHELLES; LANGUAGE policy; FRENCH Creole dialects; DIGLOSSIA (Linguistics); SOCIOLINGUISTICS; LANGUAGE planning
- Publication
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1993, Vol 1993, Issue 102, p85
- ISSN
0165-2516
- Publication type
Article