Microvariation and youth language practices in Africa

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This project seeks to examine grammatical variation in African youth languages with a focus on three geographical areas. It investigates youth languages practices amongst speakers of Kiswahili in East and Central Africa (Tanzania, Kenya and DRC), Lingala in Central Africa (DRC) and isiZulu-Ndebele 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 work 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 microvariation 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 erstwhile distinct strands of work together and provide an improved understanding of youth languages practices on the one hand (moving away from the focus on manipulation and ethnographic approaches), and a better understanding of structural variation across the Bantu languages on the other. It is also anticipated that this innovative approach will contribution to an improved understanding of the structural variation found in African youth 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 workstream focusing on Lingala. The two teams will work jointly on isiZulu-Ndebele, as well as collaborating on a final comparative stream. Crucial to the project is the involvement of international experts and close collaboration with partners based on the African continent.