Language shift and endangerment in urban and rural East Africa

Three case studies

Maik Gibson | Redcliffe College | SIL International

B. Araali Bagamba | SIL International

In this paper we present empirical data on three places in East Africa where language shift is occurring, two urban and one rural. In doing so, we hope that both the similarities and the differences will illuminate some of the underlying factors which influence communal choices about language maintenance and shift. All three case studies are drawn from our own work, and one is part of a larger ongoing project concerning urban language shift in East Africa. Bagamba and Gibson (forthcoming) reports on one other context in the same project, that of the Kisii community in Homa Bay, Kenya.

Keywords: choices, East Africa, ecology, EGIDS, maintenance, Nairobi, shift, Swahili, urban/urbanisation

Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 03 October 2016
https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.42.15gib

References

Bagamba, B. Araali

2007 A Study of Language Shift in Rural Africa: The Hema of the North-East of the Democratic Republic of Congo. PhD dissertation, Essex University.

2012 Study of Language Shift among the Bhele. Ms.

Bagamba, B. Araali & Gibson, M.L

2014 Urban Diasporas and Intergenerational Transmission of Vernaculars in East-Africa: The Case of Northern Hema Community in Bunia, DRC. Ms.

In press. Urban diasporas and intergenerational transmission of vernaculars in east-Africa: The Kisii in Homa Bay; Kenya.

Batibo, H

1992 The fate of ethnic languages in Tanzania. In Brenzinger (ed.). 85–98.

Brenzinger, M

(ed.) 1992 Language Death: Factual and Theoretical Explorations with Special Reference to East Africa [Contributions to the Sociology of Language 64]. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Fishman, J.A

1971 The sociology of language: An interdisciplinary social science approach to language in society. Advances in the Sociology of Language 1: 215–404.

Gibson, M.L

2012 Language shift in Nairobi. In Proceedings of the 6th World Congress of African Linguistics, Cologne, Germany, 17–21 August 2009 , M. Brenzinger & A.-M. Fehn (eds), 569–575. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe.

Karan, M.E

2011 Understanding and forecasting ethnolinguistic vitality. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 32(2):137–149.

Kaputo, S

1982 Phénomène d’Ethnicité et Conflit Ethnopolitique en Afrique Noire Post-coloniale. Kinshasa: Presse Universitaire du Zaïre.

Legère, K

1992 Language shift in Tanzania. In Brenzinger (ed.), 99–115.

Lewis, M.P. & Simons, G

2010 Assessing endangerment: Expanding Fishman’s GIDS. Revue Roumaine de Linguistique 55(2): 103–120.

Lüpke, F. & Storch, A

2013 Repertoires and Choices in African Languages. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Mufwene, S.S

2010 The role of mother-tongue schooling in eradicating poverty: A response to Language and Poverty. Language 86(4): 910–932.

Obedi Poun’ga, W

2009 Aperçu panoramique de Bunia. Revue Shalom de Développement 1111-2007-32 du troisième trimestre 2007.

Ucoun, C

2012 Transmission des langues maternelles en milieu urbain: Cas de Dhu-Alur à Bunia. PhD dissertation, ISP-Bunia.

Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Rosendal, Tove

2017. Identity Construction and Norms of Practice among Bilingual Ngoni in Rural Tanzania. Language Matters 48:2 ► pp. 3 ff.

Rosendal, Tove

2018. Speaking of tradition: how the Ngoni talk about value maintenance and change. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 39:9 ► pp. 776 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 april 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.