Philip W. Rudd
- Courses4
- Reviews8
- School: Pittsburg State University
- Campus:
- Department: Literature
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Location:
1701 S Broadway St
Pittsburg, KS - 66762 - Dates at Pittsburg State University: December 2015 - May 2019
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Biography
Pittsburg State University - Literature
Professor at Pittsburg State University
Phil
Rudd
I am passionate about language.
My work experience has strongly influenced my research interests.
From 1987 to 1991, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya, where I taught in a rural secondary school.
I worked as a private contract teacher in Saudi Arabia from 1994 to 1998 and taught at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals from 1998 to 2000.
In 2000, I began a doctoral program in Applied Linguistics in the Department of English at Ball State University.
In 2005, I won a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellowship through which I returned to Kenya, where I collected data and began to write my dissertation on Sheng, Nairobi’s urban vernacular.
My research then covers Second Language Acquisition; Pragmatics; English linguistics; Ecolinguistics; Contact Linguistics; and African Linguistics.
Experience
Pittsburg State University
Professor
The courses I teach include Applied Linguistics (ENG714), History of the English Language (ENGL603 or affectionately HEL), English Linguistics (ENGL308), Grammar and Usage (ENGL202), General Literature (ENGL113), and Sociolinguistics (ENGL557/757: Topics in English).
Publications
Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Unshared Referents of Bush's Rhetoric
PRAGMATICS Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
The polemics of political rhetoric encourage the implementation of presupposed referents as though they were assumed and shared. This paper examines the presupposed referents employed by the White House, concerning the urgency of invading Iraq, and countered by the political left. Details indicate that the White House was endeavoring to build an undeniable argument for invasion. Consequently, they had to employ definite noun phrases as first mentions of previously unshared referents in order to achieve the hidden didactic goal of pre-empting counter arguments. The Democrats, the liberals, and the media had to endeavor to overcome such presuppositions and explain that addressees neither shared nor identified the assumed referents. Appeals to fear and epistemological assessment are also examined. Insights from the analysis suggest that, given the conducive political temperament of the country prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections, forestalling argumentation by implementing definite noun phrases as if they were previously shared referents is highly efficacious.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Unshared Referents of Bush's Rhetoric
PRAGMATICS Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
The polemics of political rhetoric encourage the implementation of presupposed referents as though they were assumed and shared. This paper examines the presupposed referents employed by the White House, concerning the urgency of invading Iraq, and countered by the political left. Details indicate that the White House was endeavoring to build an undeniable argument for invasion. Consequently, they had to employ definite noun phrases as first mentions of previously unshared referents in order to achieve the hidden didactic goal of pre-empting counter arguments. The Democrats, the liberals, and the media had to endeavor to overcome such presuppositions and explain that addressees neither shared nor identified the assumed referents. Appeals to fear and epistemological assessment are also examined. Insights from the analysis suggest that, given the conducive political temperament of the country prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections, forestalling argumentation by implementing definite noun phrases as if they were previously shared referents is highly efficacious.
A Case Study of the Stigmatized Code Sheng: The AUYL Syndrome
Ufahamu, A Journal of African Studies
African urban youth language (AUYL) syndrome is a sociolinguistic phenomenon. Its most distinguishing symptom is the investment of African youths in a stigmatized variety to the exclusion of more prestigious languages. AUYLs have long stumped educators, policy makers and teachers of standard languages, spawning cursory descriptions, numerous complaints, and pleas for eradication. A case study of the symptoms associated with the stigmatized code Sheng (Nairobi, Kenya), reveals generalities for other AUYLs. Detractors worry that embracing the variety will damn the youth to failure in examinations, to denial of further educational attainment, to the loss of life-long goals, such as social mobility, and perhaps even to criminality. This article examines the concept of the culture-bound syndrome—a collection of social symptoms that reflect cultural fears—and the manner in which it may be applied to Sheng and other AUYLs. An interdisciplinary exploration of colonial history, language ecosystem, language ideology and conventional wisdom provide a rationale for a sociolinguistic defense. The data disclose that the symptoms reveal more about the plaintiff than the defendant. Overcoming what is but a standard language ideological bias requires Africanists in all academic disciplines to legitimize AUYLs through continued research.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Unshared Referents of Bush's Rhetoric
PRAGMATICS Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
The polemics of political rhetoric encourage the implementation of presupposed referents as though they were assumed and shared. This paper examines the presupposed referents employed by the White House, concerning the urgency of invading Iraq, and countered by the political left. Details indicate that the White House was endeavoring to build an undeniable argument for invasion. Consequently, they had to employ definite noun phrases as first mentions of previously unshared referents in order to achieve the hidden didactic goal of pre-empting counter arguments. The Democrats, the liberals, and the media had to endeavor to overcome such presuppositions and explain that addressees neither shared nor identified the assumed referents. Appeals to fear and epistemological assessment are also examined. Insights from the analysis suggest that, given the conducive political temperament of the country prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections, forestalling argumentation by implementing definite noun phrases as if they were previously shared referents is highly efficacious.
A Case Study of the Stigmatized Code Sheng: The AUYL Syndrome
Ufahamu, A Journal of African Studies
African urban youth language (AUYL) syndrome is a sociolinguistic phenomenon. Its most distinguishing symptom is the investment of African youths in a stigmatized variety to the exclusion of more prestigious languages. AUYLs have long stumped educators, policy makers and teachers of standard languages, spawning cursory descriptions, numerous complaints, and pleas for eradication. A case study of the symptoms associated with the stigmatized code Sheng (Nairobi, Kenya), reveals generalities for other AUYLs. Detractors worry that embracing the variety will damn the youth to failure in examinations, to denial of further educational attainment, to the loss of life-long goals, such as social mobility, and perhaps even to criminality. This article examines the concept of the culture-bound syndrome—a collection of social symptoms that reflect cultural fears—and the manner in which it may be applied to Sheng and other AUYLs. An interdisciplinary exploration of colonial history, language ecosystem, language ideology and conventional wisdom provide a rationale for a sociolinguistic defense. The data disclose that the symptoms reveal more about the plaintiff than the defendant. Overcoming what is but a standard language ideological bias requires Africanists in all academic disciplines to legitimize AUYLs through continued research.
"Sheng as Fractal Language Practice" in Schmied, J. & Oloruntoba-ju, T. (Eds.). African Youth Languages: The Rural-Urban Divide (REAL Studies 11).
Cuvillier Verlag
In the glare of monoglot ideology, scholarship on African languages sometimes blindly attempts to push the square “master narrative” of colonial contact in Australia and the Americas (McLaughlin 2008) onto round African linguistic ecologies. Swahili in contact with local indigenous languages led to the development of Sheng, non-standard "ghetto dialects" in the Eastlands area of Nairobi. This postcolonial reality of Kenya’s capital leads to the misconception that Sheng is not a real language. This paper presents a brief history of Sheng and likewise proposes a reconceptualization of African Urban Youth Language or AUYL as practice rather than as object. Language usage in the postcolonial context can be depicted as “fractal practice” (McLaughlin 2015: 144). In linguistic fractal fashion, speakers at the level of discourse “mimic” what they do at the morphological level. Viewed through the prism of the metaphor of fractals, Sheng, along with other varieties of AUYL, reveals its code-mixing, code-switching, and borrowing as reflections of the practice of having an ex-colonial language (English), a local lingua franca (Swahili), and other indigenous languages, merely as the refraction of actual practice at different levels, in the daily linguistic repertoires of urban Africa. Any controversy spawns from monolingual ideological misconception. Languages are not rigidly demarcated, and though Sheng is continually changing, it is not broken or fragmented, nor deserving of dismissal for being illegitimate. On the contrary, its hybridity emanates from the diverse realities in which cosmopolitan speakers find themselves.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Unshared Referents of Bush's Rhetoric
PRAGMATICS Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
The polemics of political rhetoric encourage the implementation of presupposed referents as though they were assumed and shared. This paper examines the presupposed referents employed by the White House, concerning the urgency of invading Iraq, and countered by the political left. Details indicate that the White House was endeavoring to build an undeniable argument for invasion. Consequently, they had to employ definite noun phrases as first mentions of previously unshared referents in order to achieve the hidden didactic goal of pre-empting counter arguments. The Democrats, the liberals, and the media had to endeavor to overcome such presuppositions and explain that addressees neither shared nor identified the assumed referents. Appeals to fear and epistemological assessment are also examined. Insights from the analysis suggest that, given the conducive political temperament of the country prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections, forestalling argumentation by implementing definite noun phrases as if they were previously shared referents is highly efficacious.
A Case Study of the Stigmatized Code Sheng: The AUYL Syndrome
Ufahamu, A Journal of African Studies
African urban youth language (AUYL) syndrome is a sociolinguistic phenomenon. Its most distinguishing symptom is the investment of African youths in a stigmatized variety to the exclusion of more prestigious languages. AUYLs have long stumped educators, policy makers and teachers of standard languages, spawning cursory descriptions, numerous complaints, and pleas for eradication. A case study of the symptoms associated with the stigmatized code Sheng (Nairobi, Kenya), reveals generalities for other AUYLs. Detractors worry that embracing the variety will damn the youth to failure in examinations, to denial of further educational attainment, to the loss of life-long goals, such as social mobility, and perhaps even to criminality. This article examines the concept of the culture-bound syndrome—a collection of social symptoms that reflect cultural fears—and the manner in which it may be applied to Sheng and other AUYLs. An interdisciplinary exploration of colonial history, language ecosystem, language ideology and conventional wisdom provide a rationale for a sociolinguistic defense. The data disclose that the symptoms reveal more about the plaintiff than the defendant. Overcoming what is but a standard language ideological bias requires Africanists in all academic disciplines to legitimize AUYLs through continued research.
"Sheng as Fractal Language Practice" in Schmied, J. & Oloruntoba-ju, T. (Eds.). African Youth Languages: The Rural-Urban Divide (REAL Studies 11).
Cuvillier Verlag
In the glare of monoglot ideology, scholarship on African languages sometimes blindly attempts to push the square “master narrative” of colonial contact in Australia and the Americas (McLaughlin 2008) onto round African linguistic ecologies. Swahili in contact with local indigenous languages led to the development of Sheng, non-standard "ghetto dialects" in the Eastlands area of Nairobi. This postcolonial reality of Kenya’s capital leads to the misconception that Sheng is not a real language. This paper presents a brief history of Sheng and likewise proposes a reconceptualization of African Urban Youth Language or AUYL as practice rather than as object. Language usage in the postcolonial context can be depicted as “fractal practice” (McLaughlin 2015: 144). In linguistic fractal fashion, speakers at the level of discourse “mimic” what they do at the morphological level. Viewed through the prism of the metaphor of fractals, Sheng, along with other varieties of AUYL, reveals its code-mixing, code-switching, and borrowing as reflections of the practice of having an ex-colonial language (English), a local lingua franca (Swahili), and other indigenous languages, merely as the refraction of actual practice at different levels, in the daily linguistic repertoires of urban Africa. Any controversy spawns from monolingual ideological misconception. Languages are not rigidly demarcated, and though Sheng is continually changing, it is not broken or fragmented, nor deserving of dismissal for being illegitimate. On the contrary, its hybridity emanates from the diverse realities in which cosmopolitan speakers find themselves.
Book Review: Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology - Wiley Online Library
The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology is a publication of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association. The journal is published three times annually, in May, August, and December. Submissions to the journal should be based on original research and should engage substantively with contemporary issues (theoretical, analytical, methodological, etc.) in linguistic anthropology and allied fields of study. Other kinds of submissions include critical essays, interviews, and commentaries.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Unshared Referents of Bush's Rhetoric
PRAGMATICS Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
The polemics of political rhetoric encourage the implementation of presupposed referents as though they were assumed and shared. This paper examines the presupposed referents employed by the White House, concerning the urgency of invading Iraq, and countered by the political left. Details indicate that the White House was endeavoring to build an undeniable argument for invasion. Consequently, they had to employ definite noun phrases as first mentions of previously unshared referents in order to achieve the hidden didactic goal of pre-empting counter arguments. The Democrats, the liberals, and the media had to endeavor to overcome such presuppositions and explain that addressees neither shared nor identified the assumed referents. Appeals to fear and epistemological assessment are also examined. Insights from the analysis suggest that, given the conducive political temperament of the country prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections, forestalling argumentation by implementing definite noun phrases as if they were previously shared referents is highly efficacious.
A Case Study of the Stigmatized Code Sheng: The AUYL Syndrome
Ufahamu, A Journal of African Studies
African urban youth language (AUYL) syndrome is a sociolinguistic phenomenon. Its most distinguishing symptom is the investment of African youths in a stigmatized variety to the exclusion of more prestigious languages. AUYLs have long stumped educators, policy makers and teachers of standard languages, spawning cursory descriptions, numerous complaints, and pleas for eradication. A case study of the symptoms associated with the stigmatized code Sheng (Nairobi, Kenya), reveals generalities for other AUYLs. Detractors worry that embracing the variety will damn the youth to failure in examinations, to denial of further educational attainment, to the loss of life-long goals, such as social mobility, and perhaps even to criminality. This article examines the concept of the culture-bound syndrome—a collection of social symptoms that reflect cultural fears—and the manner in which it may be applied to Sheng and other AUYLs. An interdisciplinary exploration of colonial history, language ecosystem, language ideology and conventional wisdom provide a rationale for a sociolinguistic defense. The data disclose that the symptoms reveal more about the plaintiff than the defendant. Overcoming what is but a standard language ideological bias requires Africanists in all academic disciplines to legitimize AUYLs through continued research.
"Sheng as Fractal Language Practice" in Schmied, J. & Oloruntoba-ju, T. (Eds.). African Youth Languages: The Rural-Urban Divide (REAL Studies 11).
Cuvillier Verlag
In the glare of monoglot ideology, scholarship on African languages sometimes blindly attempts to push the square “master narrative” of colonial contact in Australia and the Americas (McLaughlin 2008) onto round African linguistic ecologies. Swahili in contact with local indigenous languages led to the development of Sheng, non-standard "ghetto dialects" in the Eastlands area of Nairobi. This postcolonial reality of Kenya’s capital leads to the misconception that Sheng is not a real language. This paper presents a brief history of Sheng and likewise proposes a reconceptualization of African Urban Youth Language or AUYL as practice rather than as object. Language usage in the postcolonial context can be depicted as “fractal practice” (McLaughlin 2015: 144). In linguistic fractal fashion, speakers at the level of discourse “mimic” what they do at the morphological level. Viewed through the prism of the metaphor of fractals, Sheng, along with other varieties of AUYL, reveals its code-mixing, code-switching, and borrowing as reflections of the practice of having an ex-colonial language (English), a local lingua franca (Swahili), and other indigenous languages, merely as the refraction of actual practice at different levels, in the daily linguistic repertoires of urban Africa. Any controversy spawns from monolingual ideological misconception. Languages are not rigidly demarcated, and though Sheng is continually changing, it is not broken or fragmented, nor deserving of dismissal for being illegitimate. On the contrary, its hybridity emanates from the diverse realities in which cosmopolitan speakers find themselves.
Book Review: Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology - Wiley Online Library
The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology is a publication of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association. The journal is published three times annually, in May, August, and December. Submissions to the journal should be based on original research and should engage substantively with contemporary issues (theoretical, analytical, methodological, etc.) in linguistic anthropology and allied fields of study. Other kinds of submissions include critical essays, interviews, and commentaries.
Book Chapter: “Haya, Basi” – “Okay so” Markers of Management and Interaction in Swahili Conversation
Proceedings of the 4th WOCAL World Congress of African Linguistics, New Brunswick 2003 Rüdiger Köppe Verlag
By assuming participants are following the maxims of the Cooperative Principle (Grice 1975), analyses of three conversations in Swahili simplify recognition of the meanings and roles of the discourse markers haya (okay) and basi (enough).
Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Unshared Referents of Bush's Rhetoric
PRAGMATICS Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
The polemics of political rhetoric encourage the implementation of presupposed referents as though they were assumed and shared. This paper examines the presupposed referents employed by the White House, concerning the urgency of invading Iraq, and countered by the political left. Details indicate that the White House was endeavoring to build an undeniable argument for invasion. Consequently, they had to employ definite noun phrases as first mentions of previously unshared referents in order to achieve the hidden didactic goal of pre-empting counter arguments. The Democrats, the liberals, and the media had to endeavor to overcome such presuppositions and explain that addressees neither shared nor identified the assumed referents. Appeals to fear and epistemological assessment are also examined. Insights from the analysis suggest that, given the conducive political temperament of the country prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections, forestalling argumentation by implementing definite noun phrases as if they were previously shared referents is highly efficacious.
A Case Study of the Stigmatized Code Sheng: The AUYL Syndrome
Ufahamu, A Journal of African Studies
African urban youth language (AUYL) syndrome is a sociolinguistic phenomenon. Its most distinguishing symptom is the investment of African youths in a stigmatized variety to the exclusion of more prestigious languages. AUYLs have long stumped educators, policy makers and teachers of standard languages, spawning cursory descriptions, numerous complaints, and pleas for eradication. A case study of the symptoms associated with the stigmatized code Sheng (Nairobi, Kenya), reveals generalities for other AUYLs. Detractors worry that embracing the variety will damn the youth to failure in examinations, to denial of further educational attainment, to the loss of life-long goals, such as social mobility, and perhaps even to criminality. This article examines the concept of the culture-bound syndrome—a collection of social symptoms that reflect cultural fears—and the manner in which it may be applied to Sheng and other AUYLs. An interdisciplinary exploration of colonial history, language ecosystem, language ideology and conventional wisdom provide a rationale for a sociolinguistic defense. The data disclose that the symptoms reveal more about the plaintiff than the defendant. Overcoming what is but a standard language ideological bias requires Africanists in all academic disciplines to legitimize AUYLs through continued research.
"Sheng as Fractal Language Practice" in Schmied, J. & Oloruntoba-ju, T. (Eds.). African Youth Languages: The Rural-Urban Divide (REAL Studies 11).
Cuvillier Verlag
In the glare of monoglot ideology, scholarship on African languages sometimes blindly attempts to push the square “master narrative” of colonial contact in Australia and the Americas (McLaughlin 2008) onto round African linguistic ecologies. Swahili in contact with local indigenous languages led to the development of Sheng, non-standard "ghetto dialects" in the Eastlands area of Nairobi. This postcolonial reality of Kenya’s capital leads to the misconception that Sheng is not a real language. This paper presents a brief history of Sheng and likewise proposes a reconceptualization of African Urban Youth Language or AUYL as practice rather than as object. Language usage in the postcolonial context can be depicted as “fractal practice” (McLaughlin 2015: 144). In linguistic fractal fashion, speakers at the level of discourse “mimic” what they do at the morphological level. Viewed through the prism of the metaphor of fractals, Sheng, along with other varieties of AUYL, reveals its code-mixing, code-switching, and borrowing as reflections of the practice of having an ex-colonial language (English), a local lingua franca (Swahili), and other indigenous languages, merely as the refraction of actual practice at different levels, in the daily linguistic repertoires of urban Africa. Any controversy spawns from monolingual ideological misconception. Languages are not rigidly demarcated, and though Sheng is continually changing, it is not broken or fragmented, nor deserving of dismissal for being illegitimate. On the contrary, its hybridity emanates from the diverse realities in which cosmopolitan speakers find themselves.
Book Review: Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology - Wiley Online Library
The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology is a publication of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association. The journal is published three times annually, in May, August, and December. Submissions to the journal should be based on original research and should engage substantively with contemporary issues (theoretical, analytical, methodological, etc.) in linguistic anthropology and allied fields of study. Other kinds of submissions include critical essays, interviews, and commentaries.
Book Chapter: “Haya, Basi” – “Okay so” Markers of Management and Interaction in Swahili Conversation
Proceedings of the 4th WOCAL World Congress of African Linguistics, New Brunswick 2003 Rüdiger Köppe Verlag
By assuming participants are following the maxims of the Cooperative Principle (Grice 1975), analyses of three conversations in Swahili simplify recognition of the meanings and roles of the discourse markers haya (okay) and basi (enough).
"The Ultimate Matthew Effect for Sheng" in Sociolinguistics in African Contexts: Perspectives and Challenges. S.l.: SPRINGER, 2017.
Springer
The Matthew effect is simply the accrual of social benefits or detriments over time. This article explores the social science term from not only a linguistic perspective but also an ecological aspect. Sheng, like other urban vernaculars, germinated in a superb hotbed of language mixing. Speakers of different languages were forced to co-exist, and a need for an unmarked ecological corridor emerged. This chapter, however, is more concerned with the disadvantages faced by first language speakers. By asserting that Sheng is nothing but a game or slang, the “educated” not only hinder education of native speakers, but also deny them status as a minority community in their own country, the ultimate Matthew effect.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Unshared Referents of Bush's Rhetoric
PRAGMATICS Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
The polemics of political rhetoric encourage the implementation of presupposed referents as though they were assumed and shared. This paper examines the presupposed referents employed by the White House, concerning the urgency of invading Iraq, and countered by the political left. Details indicate that the White House was endeavoring to build an undeniable argument for invasion. Consequently, they had to employ definite noun phrases as first mentions of previously unshared referents in order to achieve the hidden didactic goal of pre-empting counter arguments. The Democrats, the liberals, and the media had to endeavor to overcome such presuppositions and explain that addressees neither shared nor identified the assumed referents. Appeals to fear and epistemological assessment are also examined. Insights from the analysis suggest that, given the conducive political temperament of the country prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections, forestalling argumentation by implementing definite noun phrases as if they were previously shared referents is highly efficacious.
A Case Study of the Stigmatized Code Sheng: The AUYL Syndrome
Ufahamu, A Journal of African Studies
African urban youth language (AUYL) syndrome is a sociolinguistic phenomenon. Its most distinguishing symptom is the investment of African youths in a stigmatized variety to the exclusion of more prestigious languages. AUYLs have long stumped educators, policy makers and teachers of standard languages, spawning cursory descriptions, numerous complaints, and pleas for eradication. A case study of the symptoms associated with the stigmatized code Sheng (Nairobi, Kenya), reveals generalities for other AUYLs. Detractors worry that embracing the variety will damn the youth to failure in examinations, to denial of further educational attainment, to the loss of life-long goals, such as social mobility, and perhaps even to criminality. This article examines the concept of the culture-bound syndrome—a collection of social symptoms that reflect cultural fears—and the manner in which it may be applied to Sheng and other AUYLs. An interdisciplinary exploration of colonial history, language ecosystem, language ideology and conventional wisdom provide a rationale for a sociolinguistic defense. The data disclose that the symptoms reveal more about the plaintiff than the defendant. Overcoming what is but a standard language ideological bias requires Africanists in all academic disciplines to legitimize AUYLs through continued research.
"Sheng as Fractal Language Practice" in Schmied, J. & Oloruntoba-ju, T. (Eds.). African Youth Languages: The Rural-Urban Divide (REAL Studies 11).
Cuvillier Verlag
In the glare of monoglot ideology, scholarship on African languages sometimes blindly attempts to push the square “master narrative” of colonial contact in Australia and the Americas (McLaughlin 2008) onto round African linguistic ecologies. Swahili in contact with local indigenous languages led to the development of Sheng, non-standard "ghetto dialects" in the Eastlands area of Nairobi. This postcolonial reality of Kenya’s capital leads to the misconception that Sheng is not a real language. This paper presents a brief history of Sheng and likewise proposes a reconceptualization of African Urban Youth Language or AUYL as practice rather than as object. Language usage in the postcolonial context can be depicted as “fractal practice” (McLaughlin 2015: 144). In linguistic fractal fashion, speakers at the level of discourse “mimic” what they do at the morphological level. Viewed through the prism of the metaphor of fractals, Sheng, along with other varieties of AUYL, reveals its code-mixing, code-switching, and borrowing as reflections of the practice of having an ex-colonial language (English), a local lingua franca (Swahili), and other indigenous languages, merely as the refraction of actual practice at different levels, in the daily linguistic repertoires of urban Africa. Any controversy spawns from monolingual ideological misconception. Languages are not rigidly demarcated, and though Sheng is continually changing, it is not broken or fragmented, nor deserving of dismissal for being illegitimate. On the contrary, its hybridity emanates from the diverse realities in which cosmopolitan speakers find themselves.
Book Review: Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology - Wiley Online Library
The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology is a publication of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association. The journal is published three times annually, in May, August, and December. Submissions to the journal should be based on original research and should engage substantively with contemporary issues (theoretical, analytical, methodological, etc.) in linguistic anthropology and allied fields of study. Other kinds of submissions include critical essays, interviews, and commentaries.
Book Chapter: “Haya, Basi” – “Okay so” Markers of Management and Interaction in Swahili Conversation
Proceedings of the 4th WOCAL World Congress of African Linguistics, New Brunswick 2003 Rüdiger Köppe Verlag
By assuming participants are following the maxims of the Cooperative Principle (Grice 1975), analyses of three conversations in Swahili simplify recognition of the meanings and roles of the discourse markers haya (okay) and basi (enough).
"The Ultimate Matthew Effect for Sheng" in Sociolinguistics in African Contexts: Perspectives and Challenges. S.l.: SPRINGER, 2017.
Springer
The Matthew effect is simply the accrual of social benefits or detriments over time. This article explores the social science term from not only a linguistic perspective but also an ecological aspect. Sheng, like other urban vernaculars, germinated in a superb hotbed of language mixing. Speakers of different languages were forced to co-exist, and a need for an unmarked ecological corridor emerged. This chapter, however, is more concerned with the disadvantages faced by first language speakers. By asserting that Sheng is nothing but a game or slang, the “educated” not only hinder education of native speakers, but also deny them status as a minority community in their own country, the ultimate Matthew effect.
Language mixing and ecology in Africa: focus on Camfranglais and Sheng
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Contributions from an international team of experts revisit and update the concept of linguistic ecology in order to critically examine current theoretical approaches to language contact. Language is understood as a part of complex socio-historical-cultural systems, and interaction between the different dimensions and levels of these systems is considered to be essential for specific language forms. This book presents a uniform, abstract model of linguistic ecology based on, among other things, two concepts of Edmund Husserl's philosophy (parts and wholes, and foundation). It considers the individual speaker in the specific communication situation to be the essential heuristic basis of linguistic analysis. The chapters present and employ a new, transparent and accessible contact linguistic vocabulary to aid reader comprehension, and explore a wide range of language contact situations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific. This book will be fascinating reading for students and researchers across contact linguistics and cultural studies.
Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Unshared Referents of Bush's Rhetoric
PRAGMATICS Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)
The polemics of political rhetoric encourage the implementation of presupposed referents as though they were assumed and shared. This paper examines the presupposed referents employed by the White House, concerning the urgency of invading Iraq, and countered by the political left. Details indicate that the White House was endeavoring to build an undeniable argument for invasion. Consequently, they had to employ definite noun phrases as first mentions of previously unshared referents in order to achieve the hidden didactic goal of pre-empting counter arguments. The Democrats, the liberals, and the media had to endeavor to overcome such presuppositions and explain that addressees neither shared nor identified the assumed referents. Appeals to fear and epistemological assessment are also examined. Insights from the analysis suggest that, given the conducive political temperament of the country prior to the November 2002 mid-term elections, forestalling argumentation by implementing definite noun phrases as if they were previously shared referents is highly efficacious.
A Case Study of the Stigmatized Code Sheng: The AUYL Syndrome
Ufahamu, A Journal of African Studies
African urban youth language (AUYL) syndrome is a sociolinguistic phenomenon. Its most distinguishing symptom is the investment of African youths in a stigmatized variety to the exclusion of more prestigious languages. AUYLs have long stumped educators, policy makers and teachers of standard languages, spawning cursory descriptions, numerous complaints, and pleas for eradication. A case study of the symptoms associated with the stigmatized code Sheng (Nairobi, Kenya), reveals generalities for other AUYLs. Detractors worry that embracing the variety will damn the youth to failure in examinations, to denial of further educational attainment, to the loss of life-long goals, such as social mobility, and perhaps even to criminality. This article examines the concept of the culture-bound syndrome—a collection of social symptoms that reflect cultural fears—and the manner in which it may be applied to Sheng and other AUYLs. An interdisciplinary exploration of colonial history, language ecosystem, language ideology and conventional wisdom provide a rationale for a sociolinguistic defense. The data disclose that the symptoms reveal more about the plaintiff than the defendant. Overcoming what is but a standard language ideological bias requires Africanists in all academic disciplines to legitimize AUYLs through continued research.
"Sheng as Fractal Language Practice" in Schmied, J. & Oloruntoba-ju, T. (Eds.). African Youth Languages: The Rural-Urban Divide (REAL Studies 11).
Cuvillier Verlag
In the glare of monoglot ideology, scholarship on African languages sometimes blindly attempts to push the square “master narrative” of colonial contact in Australia and the Americas (McLaughlin 2008) onto round African linguistic ecologies. Swahili in contact with local indigenous languages led to the development of Sheng, non-standard "ghetto dialects" in the Eastlands area of Nairobi. This postcolonial reality of Kenya’s capital leads to the misconception that Sheng is not a real language. This paper presents a brief history of Sheng and likewise proposes a reconceptualization of African Urban Youth Language or AUYL as practice rather than as object. Language usage in the postcolonial context can be depicted as “fractal practice” (McLaughlin 2015: 144). In linguistic fractal fashion, speakers at the level of discourse “mimic” what they do at the morphological level. Viewed through the prism of the metaphor of fractals, Sheng, along with other varieties of AUYL, reveals its code-mixing, code-switching, and borrowing as reflections of the practice of having an ex-colonial language (English), a local lingua franca (Swahili), and other indigenous languages, merely as the refraction of actual practice at different levels, in the daily linguistic repertoires of urban Africa. Any controversy spawns from monolingual ideological misconception. Languages are not rigidly demarcated, and though Sheng is continually changing, it is not broken or fragmented, nor deserving of dismissal for being illegitimate. On the contrary, its hybridity emanates from the diverse realities in which cosmopolitan speakers find themselves.
Book Review: Language Documentation and Endangerment in Africa
Journal of Linguistic Anthropology - Wiley Online Library
The Journal of Linguistic Anthropology is a publication of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, a section of the American Anthropological Association. The journal is published three times annually, in May, August, and December. Submissions to the journal should be based on original research and should engage substantively with contemporary issues (theoretical, analytical, methodological, etc.) in linguistic anthropology and allied fields of study. Other kinds of submissions include critical essays, interviews, and commentaries.
Book Chapter: “Haya, Basi” – “Okay so” Markers of Management and Interaction in Swahili Conversation
Proceedings of the 4th WOCAL World Congress of African Linguistics, New Brunswick 2003 Rüdiger Köppe Verlag
By assuming participants are following the maxims of the Cooperative Principle (Grice 1975), analyses of three conversations in Swahili simplify recognition of the meanings and roles of the discourse markers haya (okay) and basi (enough).
"The Ultimate Matthew Effect for Sheng" in Sociolinguistics in African Contexts: Perspectives and Challenges. S.l.: SPRINGER, 2017.
Springer
The Matthew effect is simply the accrual of social benefits or detriments over time. This article explores the social science term from not only a linguistic perspective but also an ecological aspect. Sheng, like other urban vernaculars, germinated in a superb hotbed of language mixing. Speakers of different languages were forced to co-exist, and a need for an unmarked ecological corridor emerged. This chapter, however, is more concerned with the disadvantages faced by first language speakers. By asserting that Sheng is nothing but a game or slang, the “educated” not only hinder education of native speakers, but also deny them status as a minority community in their own country, the ultimate Matthew effect.
Language mixing and ecology in Africa: focus on Camfranglais and Sheng
Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Contributions from an international team of experts revisit and update the concept of linguistic ecology in order to critically examine current theoretical approaches to language contact. Language is understood as a part of complex socio-historical-cultural systems, and interaction between the different dimensions and levels of these systems is considered to be essential for specific language forms. This book presents a uniform, abstract model of linguistic ecology based on, among other things, two concepts of Edmund Husserl's philosophy (parts and wholes, and foundation). It considers the individual speaker in the specific communication situation to be the essential heuristic basis of linguistic analysis. The chapters present and employ a new, transparent and accessible contact linguistic vocabulary to aid reader comprehension, and explore a wide range of language contact situations in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific. This book will be fascinating reading for students and researchers across contact linguistics and cultural studies.
"The Invisible Niche of AUYL"
Oxford University Press
In African cities, post-colonial ambiguity and contradiction bombard speakers, who hybridize traditional values with new urban identities and successfully bridge the old to the new with African Urban Youth Language (AUYL), a term inclusive of argot, slang, and register usage. Sheng, the AUYL from Nairobi, Kenya, exemplifies the metaphorical reversal of the old colonial order, symbolizing an invisible niche binding speakers neither to the traditional ethnic role nor to the old colonial empire and providing a sense of cosmopolitanism. African youth construct this new and modern identity, but the elites, seeing only fragmented non-standard usage, treat the AUYL as illegitimate in order to render it non-existent. This sociocultural chapter explores grammatical tendencies and lexical manipulations to disclose how AUYL is a “stylistic practice” (Eckert 2008) or bricolage (Hebdige 1979) that empowers speakers to construct a more complex, and meaningful, post-colonial social world.
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Pittsburg State University - Pittsburg State University
