Abstract: Increasing freedom to broadcast since the 1990s has led to the rise of independent
media in French-speaking African countries : newspapers and private radio stations in
particular. In Senegal, where French remains the official language, private radio stations,
set up as from 1994, opted for broadcasts in Wolof, spoken by 80 % of the population, to
be closer to the people. There is no public authority in charge of languages, and journalists
have taken over the naming process, making statements about political issues, the economy,
administrative structures, concomitantly with the use of Wolof in areas formerly reserved
almost exclusively to French. This phenomenon is examined using a list of new terms in
Wolof, validated by several groups of speakers, to test the feeling of neologicity which
these broadcasters have to bring out in the lexical innovation and creativity which these
professionals use.
