IGBOSCHOLARS INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF IGBO SCHOLARS FORUM, NIGERIA

This study analyzes the lexical characteristics and variations of French in Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah n’est pas obligé (God is not obliged). This novel is situated within an African perspective on political violence and the absurdity of the human condition in Africa in general. The study adopts sociolinguistics as a theoretical framework, considering language production as conditioned by specific social parameters. This study places particular emphasis on the lexicon and syntax, with significant semantic implications. In Allah n’est pas obligé, it is Malinké language, the novelist’s mother tongue that has taken precedence over French, transcribing African ideas to enrich French in numerous other acceptable ways of expressing certain concepts. This underscores the fact that any language is capable of evolving. At the lexical level, we have observed the use of familiar vocabulary that is often a characteristic of spoken Malinké. These local expressions have consistently enrich French. The lexical characteristics and their use in Allah n’est pas obligé are remarkable. This study proposes that every African writer expressingthemselves in French should seek to give aesthetic value to their literary work while using certain local expressions drawn from their dialect.

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