Lingala only? A history of the D. R. Congo’s ideologies and counter-ideologies of monolingualism

Abstract This article investigates how ideologies of monolingualism have evolved over the course of Congolese history. Since King Leopold II’s Congo Free State (1885–1908), missionaries, linguists, and policymakers have made arguments to defend the top-down imposition of a singular language for vertical communication between the colonial state and the Congolese population. Similar debates remained at the heart of negotiations over state power throughout the late colonial and Mobutist era. While Belgian and Congolese actors evaluated the needs and possibilities of monolingualism in Congo from their own perspectives, their arguments were always driven by the conviction that language policy and the effective implementation of state power went hand in hand. As such, the myth of the so-called Congolese Tower of Babel remained a recurrent trope to justify monolingual propositions. We argue that ideologies advancing the potential of French and local languages, mainly Lingala, as sole national language have swung like a pendulum throughout the colonial and postcolonial period, shifting to the rhythm of evolving beliefs about the emancipatory potential that European and African languages could offer. Today, defenders of Lingala seem to be on the winning end: the language’s historical development within Congo’s sociolinguistic landscape has resulted in a direct association with national identity.