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

研究生莎拉M. Hillewaert，在Judith T.欧文，将进行青年语言和符号学的做法在受移民，城市化和旅游业影响的社会环境的研究。研究者将探讨语言是否以及如何为年轻人提供一种科普快速变化的社会环境以及“传统”与“现代”矛盾要求的手段。“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。研究人员将研究青年如何谈判他们的关系，肯尼亚大陆城市青年语言，盛，而生活在一个环境，赋予价值的纯粹形式的斯瓦希里语。研究者将检验两个关键假设：1）旅游、城市化和移民在年轻人中灌输了疏离感和流离失所感，他们调动了更广泛的语言库，试图重新定义他们在社会中的地位; 2）不断变化的语言和符号学实践提供了应对社会变迁的手段。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。这将使人们能够深入了解青年的创造力，以根据传统和新的社会和经济关系重塑人格和机构。四种研究方法将被用来调查这些命题：长期参与观察;半结构化访谈;日常互动的详细语言分析;和空间分析-使用地图和视觉文件来记录人的位置和运动。这项研究将有助于人类学理论，允许新的理解如何位置，身份和语言是重新想象和重新发明的相互关系和快速变化的社会背景。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.