This thesis explores the notion of the ethnotext, which is, in Chantal Zabus’ terms, composed of: ‘[…] discursive elements ranging from rules of address, riddles, praise names and dirges to the use of proverbs”. (Zabus, The African Palimpsest) as a way of resistance to linguistic domination. This notion will be studied in relation to three forms of linguistic domination: French colonialism in Algeria and Morocco; postcolonial linguistic policies applied by these two new nation states; European settlement in Canada and the United States of America and the neocolonial linguistic policies affecting Amerindian languages such as Mi’kmaq and Choctaw. The study will be illustrated with a corpus of four autobiographies: Mouloud Feraoun’s The Poor Man’s Son (1954) [Kabyle in Algeria]; Mohamed Choukri’s For Bread Alone (1982) [Rifian from Morocco]; Rilla Askew’s The Mercy Seat (1997), [Choctaw from the U.S.A] and Rita Joe’s Song of Rita Joe: Autobiography of a Mi’kmaq Poet (1996) [in Canada]. This comparison aims at contrasting these four cases of linguistic resistance to seek their common points, resistance strategies and cultural resemblance in order to establish the ethnotext’s transatlantic dimension. Transatlanticism will in turn be contextualised against a broader canvas that of the possible extinction of endangered languages faced with globalised societies.