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

研究生萨拉·M·希勒瓦特将在朱迪思·T·欧文博士的指导下，在受移民、城市化和旅游业影响的社会环境中，从事青年语言和符号实践的研究。研究人员将调查语言是否以及如何为年轻人提供了一种手段，以应对快速变化的社会背景以及“传统”和“现代”的矛盾要求。这项研究将在拉穆岛进行，这是肯尼亚最古老的斯瓦希里人聚居地。这位研究人员将研究年轻人如何与肯尼亚大陆城市青年语言盛语谈判，同时生活在一个给予纯斯瓦希里语价值的环境中。研究人员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疏离和流离失所的感觉，他们动员更广泛的语言曲目，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实践提供了一种应对社会流动的手段。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在参照传统和新的社会和经济关系重塑人格和机构方面的创造力。四种研究方法将被用来调查这些命题：长期参与者观察；半结构化访谈；日常互动的详细语言分析；以及空间分析--使用绘图和视觉文件来记录人的位置和移动。这项研究将有助于对位置、身份和语言如何相对于彼此和快速变化的社会背景重新想象和重新发明的新理解，从而为人类学理论做出贡献。这项研究还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.