Cover not available

Article published In: Language of Empire, Language of Power
Edited by Kees Versteegh
[Language Ecology 2:1/2] 2018
► pp. 60–76

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
authorization required

Français tirailleur

Not just a “language of power”

 | Stockholms Universitet
Published online: 9 November 2018
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/le.18009.par
Abstract
Français-Tirailleur is the conventional name for the French-lexicon pidgin used in France’s African army during the 19th and 20th centuries. Tirailleur literally translates as ‘rifleman’ or ‘sharpshooter’, but in time, and in practice, it came to refer specifically to indigenous colonial soldiers. The literature on the variety is anything but vast, but some publications are partly or entirely devoted it, almost invariably drawing on one and the same source (an anonymously authored phrasebook intended for use by French officers commanding African soldiers; Anon. 1916. Le français tel que le parlent nos tirailleurs sénégalais. Paris: Imprimerie Militaire Universielle L. Fournier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Another thing most of them have in common is that they see the language as an instrument of oppression, and as we shall see, quite a few claim that the pidgin was even invented for this specific purpose.
Article outline
  • 1.Historical background
  • 2.Did Français-Tirailleur exist?
    • 2.1An example: Vigouroux (2017)
    • 2.2Counter-evidence I
    • 2.3Counter-evidence II: Comparing the anonymous phrase book with other sources
  • 3.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (60)
References
Angrand, Jean-Charles. 2012. Lucie Cousturier: dame de cœur et valets de pique. Témoignages 2012–08–09.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anon. 1916. Le français tel que le parlent nos tirailleurs sénégalais. Paris: Imprimerie Militaire Universielle L. Fournier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Avenne, Cécile van den. 2005. Bambara et français-tirailleur. Une analyse de la politique linguistique de l’armée coloniale française: la Grande Guerre et après. Société internationale pour l’histoire du français langue étrangère ou seconde 351: 123–150.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. “Petit-nègre” et romans “y a bon”. Le Monde des livres 2006–06–09, p 2.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baker, Philip and Lise Winer. 1998. Separating the wheat from the chaff. How far can we rely on old pidgin and creole texts? In Philip Baker and Adrienne Bruyn, eds. St. Kitts and the Atlantic Creoles. London: Westminster University Press. 103–122.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Baratier, Albert. 1912a. Épopées africaines. Revue des deux Mondes 82(10): 173–198.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1912b. Épopées Africaines. Paris: Arthème Fayarde.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1914. Au Congo: Souvenirs de la mission Marchand. Paris: Modern-Bibliothèque Arthème Fayard et Cie.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barret, Paul. 1888. L’Afrique occidentale: la nature et l’homme noir, vol. 21. Paris: Challamel.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Béchet, Eugène. 1889. Cinq ans de séjour au Soudan français. Paris: Librairie Plon. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bérard, Victor. 1911. La leçon du Figuig. Revue de Paris 18(4): 201–224.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Binger, Louis Gustave. 1892b. Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi, vol. 21. Paris: Hachette. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cantilly, Louis de. 1906. Femmes de tirailleurs sénégalais. Le Magasin pittoresque 3(7): 353–356.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carrère, Frédérique & Paul Holle. 1855. De la Sénégambie française. Paris: Firmin Didot.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Champeaux, Antoine. 2008. La Force noire a Fréjus. In: Roger Little, eds. Lucie Cousturier, les tirailleurs sénégalais et la question coloniale. Paris: L’Harmattan. 101–123.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corne, Chris. 1999. From French to Creole. London: University of Westminster Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cornet, Charles Joseph Alexandre. 1911. Au Tchad: trois ans chez les Senoussistes, les Ouaddaïens et les Kirdis. Paris: Plon-Nourrit et cie. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cousturier, Lucie. 1920. Des inconnus chez moi. Paris: Éditions de la Sirène.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Desclaux [no first name], ed. 1931. Histoire militaire de l’Afrique équatoriale française. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Desjardins, Raoul. 1937. En vague d’assaut le 18 juillet 1918. La Revue de Paris 44(15): 586–615.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dornel, Laurent. 1995. Les usages du racialisme. Le cas de la main-d’œuvre coloniale en France pendant la Première Guerre mondiale. Genèses 20(20): 48–72. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Echenberg, Myron. 1986. Slaves into soldiers: Social origins of the Tirailleurs Senegalais. In Philip Curtin and Paul Lovejoy, eds. Africans in Bondage. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 311–333.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1991. Colonial Conscripts. The Tirailleurs Sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960. Portsmouth & London: Heinemann/James Currey.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Faure, Claude. 1920. La garnison européenne du Sénégal et le recrutement des premières troupes noirs (1779–1858). Revue de l’histoire des colonies françaises 8(2): 5–108.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fogarty, Richard Standish. 2008. Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Frémeaux, Jacques. 2004. Les contingents impériaux au coeur de la guerre. Historie, économie et société 23(2): 215–233. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gallieni, Joseph-Simon. 1885. Mission d’exploration du Haut-Niger: voyage au Soudan français (Haut-Niger et pays de Ségou). Paris: Hachette. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gorju, Joseph. 1915. La Côte d’Ivoire chrétienne. Lyon & Paris: Librarie Catholique Emmanuel Vite.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Green, Christopher. 2013. On the role of prosodic structure in French loanword incorporation into Bambara. In Olanike Ola Orie and Karen Sanders, eds. Selected Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Conference on African Linguistics. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. 90–105.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grosclaude, Etienne. 1898. Un Parisien à Madagascar; aventures et impressions de voyage. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Guignard, Alfred. 1911. Toumané, Tirailleur. La Revue hebdomadaire 20(5): 221–242.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Houis, Maurice. 1984. Une variété idéologique du français: le langage tirailleur. Afrique et langage 211: 5–17.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Joly, Eric. 2013. Un nègre en hiver. Une histoire des tirailleurs sénégalais, de la brousse à la tragédie du Corneau. Bordeaux: Éditions Confluences.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kamian, Bakari. 2001. Des tranchées de Verdun à l’église Saint-Bernard. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Langlois, Paul Jean François Joseph. 1900. Souvenirs de Madagascar (1895). Paris & Limoges: Henri Charles-Lavauzelle.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lunn, Joe. 1998. Memoirs of the Maelstrom: a Senegalese Oral History of the First World War. Portsmouth, Oxford & Cape Town: Heinemann/James Currey/David Philip.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leymaire, Henri. 1898. La mort de Mabiala le féticheur. À travers le monde 161: 121–124.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mangeot [no first name]. 1922. Manuel à l’usage des troupes opérant au Soudan français. Bulletin du comité d’études historiques et scientifiques de l’Afrique occidentale française 41: 590–648.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mangin, Charles. 1910. La Force Noire. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marche, Alfred. 1879. Trois voyages dans l’Afrique occidentale. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Massé, Daniel. 1899. Au Dahomey. Revue de Paris 6(5): 169–196.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Michel, Marc. 2003. Les Africains et la grande guerre: l’appel à l’Afrique, 1914–1918. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. « Avant j’étais nègre, maintenant je suis français »: les soldats noirs de la Grande Guerre. In Roger Little, ed. Lucie Cousturier, les tirailleurs sénégalais et la question coloniale. Paris: l’Harmattan. 85–100.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Miller, Christopher. 1999. Nationalists and Nomads: Essays on Francophone African Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mouragues, Jean-François. 2010. Soldats de la république: les tirailleurs dans la tourmente. Paris: l’Harmattan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mufwene, Salikoko. 2015. The emergence of Creoles and language change. In Nancy Bonvillain, ed. The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology. London/ New York: Routledge. 348–365.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nordenck, Coffinières de. 1886. Voyage aux pays des Bagas et du Rio-Nuñez. Le Tour du Monde 511: 273–304.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Poulot, Brice. 2011. L’enseignement du français aux troupes coloniales en Afrique. Revue historique des armées 2651: 14–23.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prinz, Manfred. 1989. Überlegungen zur Sprache der “Tirailleurs”. In János Riesz and Joachim Schultz, eds. Tirailleurs Sénégalais. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 239–259.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Queffélec, Ambroise. 1995. Le français en Afrique noire. In Gérald Antoine and Robert Martin, eds. Histoire de la langue française. Paris: CNRS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rançon, André. 1894. Dans la Haute-Gambie. Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saugnier & Brisson. 1792. Voyages to the Coast of Africa by Mess, Saugnier & Brisson. London: G.G.J. and J. Robinson.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shurtleff, Leonard. n.d. France at war: Tirailleurs Sénégalais. [URL]. Downloaded 5 July 2001.
Sœur Marie-Victoria. 1921. Les petits Sénégalais à Biskra. Les Missions Catholiques 53: 488, 499–500.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sœur Victorien. 1908. Dahomey. Les Missions catholiques 401: 339–340.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Téramond, Guy de. 1902. Les fétiches. Gil Blas, 1902–08–10. 1–2.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Toutée, Georges Joseph. 1897. Dahomé, Niger, Touareg. Paris: A. Colin. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vignon, Louis. 1919. Un programme de politique coloniale: les questions indigènes. Paris: Plon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vigouroux, Cécile. 2017. The discursive pathway of two centuries of raciolinguistic stereotyping: ‘Africans as incapable of speaking French’. Language in Society 46(1): 5–21. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Woodfork, Jacqueline. 2001. Senegalese Soldiers in the Second World War: Loyalty and Identity Politics in the French Colonial Army. Ph.D. thesis, University of Texas at Austin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Nolan, Joanna
2023. The Mixed Fortunes of Sabir. In Lingua Franca and Français Tirailleur, ► pp. 77 ff. DOI logo
Nolan, Joanna
2023. Parallels of Sabir and Français Tirailleur. In Lingua Franca and Français Tirailleur, ► pp. 43 ff. DOI logo
Nolan, Joanna
2023. Louis Faidherbe, Colonialist and Linguist. In Lingua Franca and Français Tirailleur, ► pp. 19 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue