The Problem of Family Assistance in Senegal: Practices, Linguistic Attitudes and Social Representations in the Public and Family Space in Dakar

Author: Babacar Faye, Mame-Birame Ndiaye (University in Dakar – Senegal)
Speaker: Mame-Birame Ndiaye
Topic: Anthropological Linguistics
The GLOCAL AFALA 2023 General Session

Abstract

Like narrative medicine, which integrates the patient’s story at the heart of the medical act, the notion of family caregiver links the problem of the assisted to the caregiver’s response in a social context that is changing beyond the scientificity of the medical act. Thus, neurodegenerative diseases, old age, and disability are all realities that can alter human relationships, prefiguring the
particular discursive production between caregivers and the cared-for in a family context or in the public space. This leads us to ask the following questions:
What is the social typology of caregiving in the Senegalese terrain and more specifically in the urban area of Dakar? In a plurilingual and pluricultural context, we ask what are the functions of inter-linguistic (expressions in different languages) and sociological variation in the caregiver-caregiver-professional relationship.

Keywords: family caregiver, inter-linguistic variation, typology of caregiving