Youth Language Practices in African and Beyond ed. by Jeffrey Heath and Andrea Hollington (review)

The volume under review comes from a 2012 conference in Cologne. Subsequent conferences have been held in Cape Town (2013) and Nairobi (2015). African urban youth languages (or “practices,” or “styles,” or “registers,” or whatever; hereafter, “AUYLs”) are a red-hot topic, and why not? Africa is unique in the sheer scale of its youthfulness (median ages as low as 17 in several countries), its sprawling capital cities, its rural-urban polarization, the bittersweet aftertaste of its colonial history, its crowded slums and markets, its street-boy subculture, its thriving popular music scene, and its aspirational westernization (skyscrapers, universities, banks, smartphones, social media, hair salons, miniskirts, night clubs, hilltop villas). AUYLs are burgeoning in most African countries, and exploding in a few. I note in passing that this journal brought AUYLs to international attention and defined their central characteristics (Kiessling and Mous 2004), and it remains engaged (Brookes 2014).

Specialists in a given AUYL, whether foreigners or nationals, tend to emphasize its unique historical trajectory. Yet many accounts of individual AUYLs inadvertently parrot each other, like descriptions by proud American ethnics of the essence of “the Jewish mother,” “the Italian mother,” and so on. The core users are disadvantaged young men (delinquents, ambulatory pedlars, van and bus drivers’ assistants, pop musicians). There are elements of secrecy, misogyny, and competitive in-group self-expression. As the AUYL develops it is co-opted by middle-class students, though scorned by educational traditionalists. Eventually it gets a foothold in respectable media, gentrification sets in, and a few intellectuals bless it as a symbol of national identity and unity. Linguistic features include deformation (metathesis) and semantic repurposing of existing words and personal names in the base language, along with appropriation of loanwords, following Halliday’s “anti-language” playbook (1976). The Pan-African parallels are magnified by the synchronized succession of social and technological developments: night clubs, then FM radio, then the internet, then smartphones. Mature AUYLs are now spoken by children and seem poised to displace incumbent lingua francas in some capitals.

It sometimes seems that the only specificity of a given AUYL is what stage it currently occupies on this inexorable developmental path. Some of the country-specific papers in this volume are compatible with this impression. But there are two disruptive papers that challenge this view, not by dwelling on country-specific historical origins, rather by identifying emerging AUYL-internal counter-currents.

In “The Emergence of Langila in Kinshasa (DR Congo)” (pp. 81–98), coeditor Nico Nassenstein describes an increasingly popular “youth and artists’ language” created in 2003 by a pop musician as a reaction against an early-stage, delinquent-centered AUYL called Yanké. Langila is based on the local lingua franca Lingala (itself the product of a remarkable and tortuous history). It specializes in playful hybridization, either bilingual or involving a personal name, rather than in Yanké-style impenetrable speech disguise. Langila initially caught on in the more respectable segments of the artistic community, and is now being popularized by Facebook communities. Langila may have preempted the gentrification of Yanké, though Nassenstein does remark that Yanké, too, is starting to open its doors to the intelligentsia. It would be interesting to know more about which side hip-hop is on.

Eric Kioko’s “Regional Varieties and ‘Ethnic’ Registers of Sheng” (pp. 119–47) shows how this long-standing and heavily mediatized AUYL is remolded in different quarters of Nairobi. Reports of a rival AUYL named Engsh (English based) competing with Sheng (Swahili based) have met with some skepticism lately, but Kioko supports the distinction, and adds others. Engsh flourishes in the upscale Westlands area, functioning as a youth register that keeps tabs on American slang and rap music, while Sheng is so deeply-rooted in the eastern slums that it is becoming a mother tongue. Kioko also shows how special varieties of Sheng develop in...