Conclusions

This final chapter brings into relief some of the most salient findings by accentuating the importance of regarding urban Wolof interactions as communicative events comprising the sociocultural décor in which the communication takes place, the multimodal resources, manual and verbal gestures, semiotic, cognitive, and linguistic resources. The chapter also highlights how a break from traditional, overworked postulations born from synchronic readings of language has opened new inroads into novel approaches which consist in privileging diachronicity. This was achieved by long ethnographic sojourns with a mobile, multilingual community of Wolophones in the diaspora. With this privilege, it was possible to examine how these diasporans translanguaged as they transmigrated, and what various identities they constructed in the process. This is language on the move and identity work in progress. The chapter recapitulates three principal identities grounded in both language practices and attitudes. Indeed, when the speakers in my study select the Wolof gradient in the UW spectrum, they are putting to the fore their identity as members of a transnational confraternity. The French gradient serves to define them as activists acting as sermonisers. The English gradient paints them as successful cosmopolitans.