Quand la radio néologise au Sénégal : innovation et créativité lexicales dans le discours des journalistes en wolof

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.