Effets de variation dans un roman de Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

Abstract

This article aims to analyze some aspects of linguistic and stylistic variation in the novel Silence du chœur by Senegalese writer Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. The novel tells the life of a group of young African migrants in a small Sicilian town. It is a documentary and choral novel, employing a polyphonic and multilingual aesthetic. In fact, to fully describe the characters, whose nationality and sociocultural status are considered, the novelist strives, on the one hand, to reproduce the original idioms and, on the other, to imitate the spoken language (in this case, current French). This gives rise to an oralization effect that runs through the pages of the novel with the aim of achieving a ‘reality effect’.