Microvariation and youth language practices in Africa

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Nico Nassenstein
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 468426344

This project seeks to examine morphosyntactic variation in African youth languages with a focus on three geographical areas of widely diffused languages. It investigates youth language practices amongst speakers of Kiswahili in East and Central Africa (Tanzania, Kenya and DRC), Lingala in Central Africa (DRC) and isiZulu-isiNdebele in Southern Africa (these are names which refer to a continuum of sorts spoken in areas between Zimbabwe and South Africa). Previous studies have tended to focus on specific aspects of youth languages, particularly in the African context. This includes studies looking at the creative manipulation and word play with which youth languages are commonly associated, as well as the rapidly changing vocabularies. A parallel development in recent years has seen an increasing body of work examining aspects of structural variation in the Bantu languages – a group of some 450-600 languages spoken across much of Central, Eastern and Southern Africa. The language family exhibits a range of broad similarities but also a high degree of fine-grained more subtle differences. The proposed project seeks to bring these two distinct strands of work together and provide an improved understanding of youth language practices on the one hand (moving away from the focus on manipulation and for example ethnographic approaches), and a better understanding of structural variation across the Bantu languages on the other. The project is structured around four key questions which seek to identify commonalities and differences in youth language practices found in the regions under examination. It asks: i) What features of microvariation can be identified in the youth language practices of speakers of Kiswahili, Lingala and isiZulu-isiNdebele? ii) How can parallel processes of linguistic change in the three youth languages be explained despite their often significant geographic distance? iii) To what extent are the properties found in these three areas reflective of broader patterns found across the language family? iv) How can this innovative approach provide further insights into both youth language practices and grammatical variation in Bantu languages? The project brings together an international team of experts and is structured around four streams of work. The team in the UK will lead the workstream focusing on Kiswahili and the team in Germany will lead the workshop focusing on Lingala. The two teams will work jointly on isiZulu-isiNdebele, as well as a final comparative stream. Crucial to the project is the involvement of international experts and close collaboration partners based on the continent.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Kenya, United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Hannah Gibson; Dr. Fridah Kanana Erastus, Ph.D.