Coined by geographer Onésime Reclus (“France, Algérie et colonies” [France, Algeria and Colonies], 1880) to designate a vast group of French speakers, the language of Republican values, the term “francophonie” remains filled, since its creation, with ambiguities from the French colonial expansion. The neglect of native languages in territories where French has coerced itself helps measure the linguistic blindness of the best-intentioned. After the wave of decolonisation, the term was reappropriated by three African presidents, Senghor, Bourguiba and Diori, and was then supposed to symbolise a postcolonial...
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