Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Language, Space and Identity: Linguistic Practices Among Youth in Lamu (Kenya)

研究生Sarah M. Hillewaert将在Judith T. Irvine博士的指导下，对受移民、城市化和旅游业影响的社会环境中的青年语言和符号学实践进行研究。研究人员将调查语言是否以及如何为年轻人提供一种手段来应对快速变化的社会环境以及“传统”和“现代”的矛盾要求。这项研究将在肯尼亚最古老的斯瓦希里人定居点拉穆岛进行。这位研究人员将研究年轻人如何在生活在一个重视纯粹斯瓦希里语的环境中，处理他们与肯尼亚大陆城市青年语言“生”的关系。研究人员将测试两个关键假设：1)旅游、城市化和移民在年轻人中灌输疏离感和流离失所感，他们动员更广泛的语言库，试图重新定义他们在社会中的地位；不断变化的语言和符号学实践为应对社会变化提供了一种手段。她将分析肯尼亚人对语言使用的解释，以及这些解释如何调解社会群体、身份或关系的形成。这将使我们能够深入了解青年的创造力，根据传统和新的社会和经济关系重新塑造人格和能动性。本文将采用四种研究方法对这些命题进行研究：长期参与观察；半结构化面试;日常互动的详细语言分析；空间分析——使用地图和视觉文件记录人们的位置和运动。这项研究将有助于人类学理论的发展，让人们对地理位置、身份和语言如何在相互关系中以及在快速变化的社会背景下被重新想象和重新发明有了新的理解。这项研究也将有助于社会科学家的教育。

Graduate student Sarah M. Hillewaert, under the guidance of Dr. Judith T. Irvine, will undertake research on youth linguistic and semiotic practices in a social environment affected by migration, urbanization, and tourism. The researcher will investigate whether and how language offers young people a means to cope with rapidly changing social contexts and with the contradictory demands of "tradition" and "modernity." The research will be carried on the island of Lamu, which is Kenya's oldest Swahili settlement. The researcher will examine how youth negotiate their relation to Kenya's mainland urban youth language, Sheng, while living in an environment that gives value to a pure form of Swahili. The researcher will test two key hypotheses: 1) Tourism, urbanization, and migration instil feelings of alienation and displacement among youth, who mobilize broadened linguistic repertoires in an attempt to redefine their positions in society; 2) Changing linguistic and semiotic practices offer a means to grapple with social flux. She will analyze Kenyans' interpretations of language use, and how these mediate the formation of social groups, identities, or relations. This will permit insight into the creativity of youth to reinvent personhood and agency in reference to tradition and new sets of social and economic relationships. Four research methods will be utilized to investigate these propositions: long term participant observation; semi-structured interviews; detailed linguistic analysis of daily interactions; and spatial analysis - using mapping and visual documentation to record the placement and movement of people. This research will contribute to anthropological theory by allowing new understandings of how location, identity, and language are re-imagined and re-invented in relation to each other and to a rapidly changing social context. The research also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.