Language policy of Equatorial Guinea

My colleague Max Doppelbauer (Universität Wien) and I have written this overview of language policy events and developments in postcolonial Equatorial Guinea, published in the journal Signo y seña (44). In particular, we analyzed four legal texts: the Constitutions of 1968, 1973 and 1982, as well as the latest constitutional reform, the Fundamental Law of Equatorial Guinea of 2011/2012. We also describe and comment on the genesis and the work of the Equatoguinean Academy of the Spanish Language (AEGLE - Academia Ecuatoguineana de la Lengua Española) and, in this context, we reflect on the polemic over the terms “guineoecuatoriano” versus “ecuatoguineano”.

We see this article as an important starting point and reference for further studies on language policy in Equatorial Guinea, a topic on which no overviews have been available to date.