Linguistic tribalism in the 2019–2020 electoral process in Guinea-Bissau

Abstract

Guinea-Bissau is a country located on the West Coast of Africa, marked by wide ethnic and linguistic diversity, where more than twenty ethnic languages coexist, with Creole serving as the language of national unity and Portuguese as the country’s official language. In the most recent election of 2019–2020, the nation experienced a period of political tension, during which linguistic tribalism, power relations, hatred, and social and political division were evident in the electoral process. This article is part of my master’s dissertation on tribalism in the social and political relations of Guinea-Bissau, and it proposes a reflection on how the Portuguese official language influences the country’s political and institutional dynamics. Although ethnic languages and Creole make up the historical mosaic of Guinean identity, their manipulation for political purposes has led to exclusion, inequality, and conflict. The central focus lies on the discourse of lado/lado, viva/escola versus escola/ika nada as a slogan in the speeches of militants, which permeated the political and intellectual debate between the Portuguese language and the cultural and identity values of Bissau-Guinean society. This study adopts a theoretical-qualitative approach, including literature review, analysis of videos, live broadcasts, and news on social media, through the use of the netnography method for data collection. The results indicate the practice of linguistic tribalism, according to which the domination of the Portuguese language is considered a phenomenon of privilege and a determining factor in the political and institutional representation of the country, while ethnic languages and Creole are perceived as languages of social backwardness and lower status.