Abstract EN:

We studied from a sociolinguistic point of view rather than a literary angle, west-african novels written through the medium of french and english, by indigenoux authors. Our aims was to demonstrate that these works should not be considered, as some critics do, as an exotic part of french or english literature. The reader is confronted with african literature eventhough the authors chose european languages as their medium of communication. To achieve our aim, we examined how the cultural element reveals itself in the language of the novels and were led to establish a corpus of words and expressions in pidgin english and crealized language as well as a corpus of borrowed words from african languages. The cultural element and the cultural difference are also very well illustrated in numerous proverbs, translated into french or english from african languages, that were of interest to us as well. Lastly, we wanted to present, through some major works, the recurring themes in the so-called "french and english west-african novel".