Introduction

In the 20th century, with the break of colonial empire, the upsurge of international migration and the development of national independence and multiculturalism, post-colonial literature saw a rapid growth. Colonial literature was once under the rule of colonials and now it is free from such rule. It is a non-mainstream literature featured by ethnic minorities, immigrants and local writers, which competes with the mainstream literature of white people in Europe and America (Forster, 1975).

They gave up the right of explaining by them via standing by their own people and asked themselves “unfiltered” voices to describe the life of their own nation. With all these, they recorded their history, opposed colonialism and reflected the social reality through their works, thus giving their works new strength, new meaning and new life enough to compete with the mainstream white literature and stand confidently among the world literature.

Since the 20th century, France has seen a declining economic strength and its international status. Especially after the Second World War, France’s comprehensive national strength has declined, and it cannot withstand the fierce implication imposed by the strong wave of national liberation, therefore, French colonies began to fall into pieces. French colonies became independent one after another, but under the long-term rule of the French colonies, many French thoughts and cultures had gradually been incorporated into these countries.

With the growth of national consciousness and the impact of multiculturalism, a large number of intellectuals in these countries demanded to inherit and accept the colonial cultural heritage critically, and at the same time they did not lose their national characteristics, so they began to create magic on colonial literary (Breeasler, 2004). French was regarded as an international language for these writers to write, and because of the influence of their native language, they earned a unique choice of words and sentences, intonation rhythm and language color, injecting a fresh impetus for the development of French.

They were all familiar with the French cultural tradition and the cultural tradition of their own nation. What is more, they all enjoyed the advantage of bilateral or even multilateral cultural integration. The marginal minority communities outside the mainstream of white society are where they lived, so a unique social structure and cultural order were organized in their works by themselves. As a minority immigrant, it is not easy to survive and develop in a white-dominated social environment, meaning they have to experience a hard struggle. Therefore, these writers are often equipped with a strong national consciousness and self-improvement mentality, which injects a certain strength and depth into their works (Forster, 1978).

Languages in many works

This phenomenon can be found in various famous works, two of which are Allah Is Not Obliged and School Days. The languages in both works reflected the fact that language was their weapon to contest the hegemony of Europe.

“Allah is not obliged to be fair about all the things he does on earth”. This is the famous sentence written by one of Africa’s most celebrated writers, Ahmadou Kourouma to describe the boy soldier Birahima. After Birahima’s mother dies when he is only ten years old, he, together with the sorcerer and cook Yacouba, says goodbye to his native village in the Ivory Coast on a way to look for his aunt Mahan. When they enter into Liberia, they are caught by defiants.

Then they are asked to be in military where Birahima is treated so badly and could only get little salary from the military service. Against a background of a long civil war, Birahima, with many other boys, sees nearly all kinds of negative things. Though he witnesses all these negative things, he still somehow manages to retain his own sanity. In the whole story, the writer uses various French words to express meanings. Repondeurs, non Kongo, non Bwa-mitan, non Savann and non neg-soubawou… In the end of the article, a list of words is added to further show the meaning of these French words in English. On the other hand, this is also a way to show that the author uses languages as a weapon to oppose the rule of Europe. What the author attempted to do was to show the meaning by French word and break the shuffle of English (Forster, 2005).

Conclusion

Fannon once pointed out that using a language means “accepting a culture.” Cutting off a person from his or her native language means disconnecting himself or herself from the native culture. Under colonial rule, it was a means of imperialist rule to suppress native languages and promote English. In the post-colonial period, native writers borrowed French to create their own forms of expression of native literature (Forster, 1979).

However, the feeling of losing one’s mother tongue does not go away. The borrowed, non-standard, but somewhat native language makes its users realize that they are on the verge of being far away from their metropolitan country and that they are also far away from their cultural roots. In the period of decolonization in particular, the use of English (or French in the French Caribbean) implied self-denial of indigenous social groups.

The debate on the decolonization of language has spread to a range of other issues. Is literature written in English a continued reliance on colonialism and a cultural reflection of the post-colonial economic relationship between the metropolitan countries and the former colonies? Whether post-colonial writers are providing literary “material” for criticism and academia in the wealthy North–material that does not need translation–on this issue, many writers have come to realize that in a multi-mixed and heterogeneous world, the so-called authenticity of culture and the purity of language are impossible under any circumstances.

Perhaps the best option for writers is to take part in the process of localizing the language of the metropolitan country, reflecting the conflicts and anomalies of post-colonial conditions in this mixed media. We can see that Francophone Postcolonial Literature regard language as a performative way to against the European hegemony. By using French words in their works, they showed their fight against the English and its culture.