Ahmadou Kourouma: On the appropriation of French in The Suns of Independence

Abstract

This article attempts to describe how the francophone Ivoirian writer Ahmadou Kourouma (1927-2003) appropriates French in his first novel entitled “The Suns of independence” (1968/1970). It is important to mention that this appropriation seems to be inevitable with regard to the inability of French, foreign language and colonizer’s heir, so rich and prestigious, to express some sociocultural realities relating to Malinké’s language and culture of his author, highly marked by orality. How this so-called appropriation has been made? Which language aspect has it focused on? The study attempts to answer these two main questions via an analytic reading of the novel.