Kujibizana: Questions of language and power in nineteenth and twentieth century poetry in Kiswahili by Ann Biersteker (review)

BOOK NOTICES 671 Academic Press): here S concludes that the maximum number and grammatical case of actants expressible in the causative constructions of a given language are determined by the same rule ( 'NP density control') that governs the actantial structure of noncausative sentences in that language. Disconcerting about S's work is the fact that he periodically concedes the incompleteness of his data, portraying it as a shortcoming of the grammars he has consulted (17, 39, 52, 67, and passim). However, despite the worldwide accessibility of numerous articles published specifically on the causative constructions of various Slavic and Baltic languages, for example, S's 'database' appendix (188-207) includes only one work each for Bulgarian and Lithuanian . Curiously, neither of these works describes, or even purports to describe, any causative constructions whatsoever. Even for a Slavic language like Russian, for which exhaustive grammatical descriptions abound, S provides nothing more than an artificial paraphrase of an actual causative construction (Ja sdelal tak, ctoby Dion usël ? did [something] so that John would leave', which S misleadingly glosses as ? made John leave' [66]). Such omissions leave one wondering just how carefully S has in fact investigated causative constructions in the 'more than 600 languages' that he claims to have examined. [Gary H. Toops, Wichita State University.] Kujibizana: Questions of language and power in nineteenth and twentieth century poetry in Kiswahili. By Ann Biersteker . East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1996. Pp. 368. $35.00. Biersteker's book is a multileveled and often provocative discussion of the sociopolitical uses of the Swahili verse tradition over the last two centuries. In terms of cited scholars, both European and African , the book takes the perspective of literary analysis . However, sometimes explicitly and always implicitly, its discussions inevitably offer much valuable information for sociolinguistic theory. While the interests and material of sociolinguistics, literary theory , and anthropological ethnography overlap a great deal, a sociolinguistic orientation might give greater prominence to the fact that Swahili is one of the few Niger-Congo languages which long before European colonialism had a well developed written tradition with a relatively standardized language based on the Northern varieties. B does not dwell on this point nor even on the continuity ofthe function ofthe verse tradition from the precolonial through the postcolonical period. Instead, she shows in her analyses of the content of the written verse tradition how it has been used for political commentary and dialogue during the colonial and postcolonial periods. Thus, she does not discuss the political motives through which the colonial authorities ignored the already developed written verse standard in engineering a new written prose standard based on Southern Swahili varieties. Instead, she focuses on the continuing argumentative function of the written verse tradition at a level which transcends whatever particular linguistic variety is used. Far from criticizing her choice of focus here, I am suggesting that much sociolinguistic information can be gleaned from her discussion, for example, how the process of standardization is shaped by political conflict over control of literacy and literature. The five chapters which constitute the major substance of the book all present examples of Swahili poems of sociopolitical import, in the original and in translation, discuss their context and content, and, where appropriate, their relationships to each other. Although the title concept kujibizana, in context, dialogue through written verse (one poem follows the structure and responds to the content of an earlier poem), is most fully discussed in Ch. 2, the continuity of colonial and postcolonial with the precolonial verse tradition is anticipated in Ch. 1. Here it is shown that in the later periods poets often make reference to the form and content ofimportant precolonial poems, adopting their responses to current circumstances . Ch. 1 also demonstrates the importance of verse to Swahili and now wider East African political culture, a point of contrast with any Western political culture. Ch. 3 is particularly interesting for its discussion of colonial attempts to 'restructure' the forms and functions of Swahili literature. The same level of interest is sustained in Ch. 4, about the attempt by a late nineteenth century British missionary to participate in Swahili's dialogic verse tradition. Ch. 5 exemplifies the continuation of this...