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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 350

Part of Session 123: Non-standard and youth varieties in urban Africa (Other abstracts in this session)

The urban vernacular(s) of Nairobi: contact language, anti-language, or hybrid language practice?

Authors: Gibson, Maik
Submitted by: Gibson, Maik (Africa International University & SIL International, Kenya)

Many African cities have seen the development of innovative urban vernaculars, drawing on resources from many languages. Nairobi is no exception, with what is known as Sheng, variously defined as an independent language (eg Rudd 2008, Kiessling & Mous 2004, Osinde & Abdulaziz 1997), as an example of hybridity (eg Bosire 2006), or as an urban dialect of Swahili (eg Githiora 2002).

This paper looks at the questions of what qualifies as Sheng in the minds of Nairobians, and how it can then be classified. The data presented is based on qualitative interviews, as well as a review of the literature, and uses prototype theory to account for the variable uses of the terms Sheng and Kiswahili by a small sample of the population of Nairobi. We hypothesize that these two terms occupy opposite ends of a continuum, the centre of which is not lexicalized, leading to the two terms being extended into that space in different ways by different speakers, depending on which contrasts are to the fore in the mind of the speaker. Following Ud-Deen (2005), we call the centre space Nairobi Swahili (not an expression used by its speakers), which is neither fully 'Sheng' nor fully 'Kiswahili', and yet which seems to be Nairobi's lingua franca and emerging first language. This space itself has a variety of what may be called language practices, some of which demonstrate more hybridity and lexical innovation than others, though all seem to share a clearly non-standard Swahili morpho-syntax.

References:

Bosire, Mokaya. 2006. Hybrid Languages: The Case of Sheng. In Selected Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, ed. Olaoba F. Arasanyin and Michael A. Pemberton, 185-193. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project. accessed online at http://www.lingref.com/cpp/acal/36/paper1423.pdf 

Githiora, Chege. (2002). Sheng: Peer language, Swahili dialect or emerging Creole? Journal of African Cultural Studies 15, 2: 159-81. 

Kiessling, Roland and Maarten Mous. (2004). “Urban Youth Languages in Africa”. Anthropological Linguistics 46(3): 303-41. 

Osinde, Kenneth. & Abdulaziz, Mohamed. (1997). Sheng and Engsh: the development of mixed codes among the urban youth in Kenya. International Sociology of Language, vol. 125, pp 43- 63 

Rudd, Philip. (2008). Sheng: the mixed language of Nairobi. PhD thesis, Ball State University. 

Ud Deen, Kamil (2005). The Acquisition of Swahili. Benjamins: Amsterdam.