This article aims to identify the meaning of the morphosyntactic particularities that corroborate the notion of linguistic error in the novel §§§§Broken Glass.§§§§ Drawing on enunciative and sociolinguistic approaches, the aim was to reveal the different strategies of language concealment through the oral style, translational calques, puns, and neologisms that consolidate Alain Mabanckou’s narrative writing. The linguistic error or mistake, which ultimately turns into a stylistic deviation, rather reflects the meaning of lexical creativity, of defection from classical French norms, and of the multilinguistic situation of the writer who, faced with the ultimate obligation to preserve both his mother tongues (Congolese) and French, his adopted language, feels literally thrown off–kilter.