Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at metaphor in Tsotsitaal (South Africa) and Sheng (Kenya), to illustrate how urban youth draw from both modern/ European and archaic/ rural paradigms and languages in their linguistic performances.

Paper long abstract:

Research into youth languages in Africa has focused primarily on urban forms springing up in the large urban centres such as Nairobi (Kenya) and Johannesburg (South Africa). Language practices such as Sheng from Kenya and Tsotsitaal from South Africa have received significant attention in terms of the multilingual resources drawn on by youth in their performance. However, recent research has indicated that these practices are also prevalent in what could be considered as 'rural' areas. Authors such as Kioko (2015) and Hurst (2017) have considered the spread of these forms from urban centres into rural areas; simultaneously, Hurst (2016) suggests that urban youth language also draws on rural practices in its resources.

Metaphor is an important aspect of these youth language practices, and can highlight the interchange between rural and urban language, as well as the types of indigenous knowledge drawn on in the practices of urban youth. This paper will present data on Zulu-based Tsotsitaal from Kwa-Zulu Natal, Xhosa-based Tsotsitaal from Cape Town, and Swahili-based Sheng from Nairobi, to illustrate how urban youth do not only draw from modern/ European paradigms and languages in their linguistic performances, but also draw from archaic and rural forms to create layers of meaning and indexicality, in their constructions of African modernity.

Paper short abstract:

The urban vernacular of Nairobi, Kenya, reflects a history in which English and Swahili converged with local indigenous languages into Sheng, a medium of wider social communication. A metaphor of fractals explains how the hybridity reflects the diversity in the language and society.

Paper long abstract:

In the glare of monoglot ideology, scholarship on African languages sometimes blindly attempts to push the square "master narrative" of colonial contact in Australia and the Americas (McLaughlin 2008) onto round African linguistic ecologies. Swahili in contact with local indigenous languages led to the development of Sheng, non-standard "ghetto dialects" in the Eastlands area of Nairobi. This postcolonial reality of Kenya's capital leads to the misconception that Sheng is not a real language. This paper presents a brief history of Sheng and likewise proposes a reconceptualization of African Urban Youth Language or AUYL as practice rather than as object. Language usage in the postcolonial context can be depicted as "fractal practice" (McLaughlin 2015: 144). In linguistic fractal fashion, speakers at the level of discourse "mimic" what they do at the morphological level. Viewed through the prism of the metaphor of fractals, Sheng, along with other varieties of AUYL, reveals its code-mixing, code-switching, and borrowing as reflections of the practice of having an ex-colonial language (English), a local lingua franca (Swahili), and other indigenous languages, merely as the refraction of actual practice at different levels, in the daily linguistic repertoires of urban Africa. Any controversy spawns from monolingual ideological misconception. Languages are not rigidly demarcated, and though Sheng is continually changing, it is not broken or fragmented, nor deserving of dismissal for being illegitimate. On the contrary, its hybridity emanates from the diverse realities in which cosmopolitan speakers find themselves.

Paper short abstract:

This paper is the place for us to show the preponderant role of the local Ivorian languages in the enrichment of the lexical stock of the urban speech that is the nouchi.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is the place for us to show the preponderant role of the local Ivorian languages in the enrichment of the lexical stock of the urban speech that is the nouchi. As indicated by the whole reflection on the subject, the nouchi is a linguistic melting pot, made of "snippets" of ivorian (endogenous) languages and foreign (exogenous) languages inter-influencing in a sociolinguistic context fairly atypical. Often times, the reflection has not failed to remind us of this and above all to emphasize the influence of the official language that is French on the nouchi and vis-versa. It would be interesting to observe, in addition, this sociolinguistic dynamic, through the nouchi relationship (urban youth language) - ivorian languages, in particular. Thus, through this article, we will demonstrate how the nouchi is enriched by the Ivorian languages from ideophones and onomatopoeias.

Key-words : ideophone, onomatopoeia, nouchi, french, ivorian

Paper short abstract:

Au Maghreb, les villes sont des chantiers à ciel ouvert. Le déplacement des populations de l’ancienne à la nouvelle ville s’accompagne d’un bouleversement puissant mais peu apparent des pratiques langagières et des discours épilinguistiques des jeunes.

Paper long abstract:

Face à toutes ces données, nous nous proposons à une étude sociolinguistique des parlers des jeunes maghrébins en mettant l'accent sur les changements que le déplacement peut provoquer au niveau de leurs pratiques langagières. Cette étude mettra en relief les impacts de la mobilité sociospatiale sur la langue française. Cette composante a souvent été présente dans le paysage sociolinguistique des pays nord-africains, à côté des autres langues maternelles, nationales et officielles locales. Il s'agit donc d'établir une description de cette langue telle qu'elle est employée par les jeunes. L'objectif est d'élucider le lien entre la langue et les territoires de la ville, et de comprendre les multiples interactions entre les jeunes urbains et les codes linguistiques qu'ils utilisent (ou qu'ils rencontrent)

Nous nous basons sur plusieurs travaux réalisés dans tous les contextes magrébins pour mieux cadrer notre problématique. Néanmoins, notre recherche va faire intervenir des enquêtes en triangulation méthodologique (par questionnaire et entretien, analyse des tchats et des forums de discussions sur Internet) qui vont être menées à distance avec l'aide des amis et collègues habitants les pays concernés.

Paper short abstract:

Speakers of minority languages tend to shift to dominant languages. However, Irrespective of the fact that urban youth language users adopt structures from the dominant languages, their discursive practices are observed to be characterized by structures from indigenous languages.

Paper long abstract:

Non-native English speakers in Cameroon do not adopt the English format of asking and answering questions, thus, departing from that of English native speakers. This study aims at investigating such questioning patterns in order to demonstrate the nature of the use of African indigenous language in urban youth language. It explores Camfranglais question types so as to figure out the trends of usage vis a vis Ejagham and Kenyang, spoken in the Manyu Division in South West Cameroon. The paper explores the hypothesis that the questioning pattern of Camfranglais is more like that of African indigenous languages. Using Bourdieu's theory of Cultural Reproduction, the paper employs a mixed methods design to collect authentic online chats of 50 L2 learners from the University of Buea, Faculty of Arts. 25 Anglophone and 25 Francophone chats were collected. The paper then investigates the trends of indigenous language structures in terms of questioning patterns in Camfranglais. Such structures were matched with Ejagham and Kenyang in order to test the hypothesis of the study. An eclectic model in analyzing data is also adopted in matching the Camfranglais questioning patterns with those of Ejagham and Kenyang and ascertaining the impact on indigenous grammars on the urban language.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the interface and cross fertilisation between rural youth language varieties spoken in different parts of Uganda with that which is spoken in the urban space commonly known as Luyaaye. The analysis in this paper is limited to both lexical and morphological levels.

Paper long abstract:

Cross fertilisation between urban and rural youth varieties spoken in Uganda: A study case study of Luyaaye

Luyaaye is a youth language predominantly spoken in Kampala the capital city of Uganda. It is based on Luganda and thus draws its syntactic framework from that of Luganda. Although Luyaaye is considered an urban youth language variety, Namyalo (2015) observes that it is gradually becoming more of a youth language spoken both in the urban space as well as in the different rural areas especially in small towns across the country. The emergence of rural varieties based on different indigenous languages spoken in Uganda and the cross fertilisation between these varieties has given rise to a more complex variety spoken in the urban space. Against this backdrop, the paper seeks to answer the following questions:

i) What has lead to the emergence of rural Luyaaye varieties spoken in the rural areas?

ii) In what ways do the rural varieties differ or similar to the variety which is spoken in the urban space?

iii) How do rural youth languages spoken in various parts of Uganda influence the Luyaaye variety spoken in the urban space and vice versa?

The data for this paper is drawn from the on-going study which aims at describing the different youth languages spoken in different parts of Uganda.

References

Namyalo, Saudah. 2015, Linguistic Strategies in Luyaaye: Word-play and Conscious Language Manipulation. In: Nassenstein, Nico & Andrea Wolvers. Youth Languages in Africa and Beyond. New York- Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter

Paper short abstract:

La dénomination de « langue des jeunes » est problématique car de tout temps et dans toutes les cultures, appartenir à un groupe social signifie une certaine façon de parler. Donc le terme « langue des jeunes » relève d’un abus de langage car il détruit la fluidité lexicale entre générations.

Paper long abstract:

Le but de cette communication, c'est de démontrer que le terme « langue des jeunes » devient problématique dès lors que l'on considère que cette catégorisation purement sociodémographique dissimule une question sociale voire ethnique. De tout temps et dans toutes les cultures, les adolescents se distinguent des adultes par un recours accentué à des pratiques langagières spécifiques tels que les codages. Si les usages langagiers propres aux jeunes ont longtemps été observés et analysés, leur considération comme sociolecte est récent car il est désormais établi que cette parlure est née de l'émergence d'un nouveau statut économique et social pour les plus défavorisés, le tout sur fond de ghettoïsation urbaine progressive qui exacerbe ou dilue le sentiment identitaire (Kiessling et Mous 2004, Nassenstein et Hollington 2015). Grâce à son dynamisme avéré, ce sociolecte s'invite de plus en plus dans les affiches publicitaires en République du Bénin. A la faveur de corpus tirés des affiches publicitaires des réseaux de téléphonie mobile et d'une société de brasserie du Bénin, nous prouvons que l'expression « langue des jeunes » est un abus de langage car il semble aller de soi que l'appartenance à un groupe social a toujours impliqué une certaine façon de s'exprimer, et utilisé ce terme revient à annihiler l'évidence d'une fluidité lexicale ou même discursive entre générations. Les interrogations suivantes articulent notre problématique : la « langue des jeunes » correspond-elle aux normes linguistiques futures?, et inversement la langue des aînés correspond-elle nécessairement à des normes plus anciennes ?

Paper short abstract:

This paper will look at how the morpheme “-kho” is borrowed and put into use in the language of the town dwellers to reduce the impact of requests and offers on addressee and increase the relative level of indirectness and in so doing lessen any negative effects associated with the illocution.

Paper long abstract:

"-KO" THE ONLY WAY TO POLITENESS: A CASE OF BORROWINGS FROM LUHYA TO KISWAHILI

Kiswahili is the national language of Kenya and a Lingua franca. Though a lingua franca it is perceived as a difficult language and therefore the majority of Kenyans end up speaking in Sheng a Kiswahili patois which has been influenced by many languages (Githiora, 2002). Kakamega town located on the Western part of Kenya has a large population that speaks Luhya as the native language. Luhya language is spoken in the outskirts of Kakamega and the dwellers of the town originate from the local villages. Luhya employs the use of "-Kho" as a morpheme that marks for politeness. "-kho" has found itself in the Kiswahili used by the urban dwellers as they avoid the long and difficult vocabulary in Kiswahili that is used to denote politeness. Thus cases of "-kho" being borrowed from Luhya and reduced to "-ko" which sounds more like Kiswahili are prevalent among the town dwellers. This paper looks at how the morpheme "-kho" is borrowed and put into use in the language of the town dwellers to reduce the impact of requests and offers on addressee, increase the relative level of indirectness, to provide the hearer with much freedom of will and in so doing lessen any negative effects associated with the illocution. This paper will therefore show how lack of "-ko" in the Kiswahili utterances may not foster compliance to a request, but instead lead to misunderstanding and possibly cause annoyance.

Paper short abstract:

This article seeks to interrogate the hybrid nature of urban youth languages with their variations, uniqueness and functions are deployed and used in three films from Africa as well as their hybrid nature. The films are Kinshasa Symphony, Nairobi Half Life and From A Whisper

Paper long abstract:

The Kenyan film has experienced a rebirth in the post 2010 and one of the attributes to this renaissance has been that it speaks to the common man. The argument has been that it is the activities and actions are closer to the lives of the common Nairobian. What has not been appraised is the place of the free flowing language; and the code switching/mixing used by characters as signposts that provide markers for the average Nairobian to understand and relate to the film.

Elsewhere in Congo, the films that have been made about the life in Kinshasa have dwelt more on the dangers of infection by lethal diseases or warlords. This does not offer balanced representation of the ambivalence of the city. Additionally, the code mixing and the hybridity of the language has been narrated as a matter of course rather than as the hybrid language of the city. This paper is conceived therefore to appraise three films that tell the story of the Nairobi urban narrative as a space that affords the characters linguistic hybridity as well as one film that actualizes the linguistic hybridity that emerges in a film on Kinshasa. The paper will approach the task from the theory of hybridity as propounded by the social critic Homi Bhabha in his various writings. The three films to be analysed are Tosh Gitonga's Nairobi Half Life and Wanuri Kahiu's From a Whisper as well as Claus Wischmann's and Martin Baer's Kinshasa Symphony.