Rebellion of substandards

Abstract

The way in which a standardized African language, in this case Swahili, is affected by substandards such as sociolects on the one hand and common, colloquial, and dialectal language varieties on the other, is described. Swahili has successfully established its position as the national language of Tanzania and Kenya. Nevertheless it has to be taken into account that standard Swahili is the result of academic efforts to create a written medium for educational, administrative, and literary purposes. As a result of its country-wide spread, however, Swahili-speakers soon started to contest standardized norms in language practice. In the popular view provincial, i.e. rural, creolized, and pidgin Swahili, are condemned as sorts of ‘broken Swahili’ whereas colloquial Swahili, slang, jargon, and dialectal Swahili, especially employed in Zanzibar and Mombasa, are accepted as urban or areal varieties. Under the influence of urban substrata Swahili-speakers favour the transformation of norms typical of standard Swahili. It has to be seen if the vox populi will be used by language promotore as a corrective factor or if a dual system of national communication will develop. In the latter case standard Swahili in use may become an artificial linguistic superstratum.