Books, ed. volumes, special issues by Nico Nassenstein
Naming and labelling contexts of cultural importance in Africa
Svenja Völkel, Sambulo Ndlovu & Ni... more Naming and labelling contexts of cultural importance in Africa
Svenja Völkel, Sambulo Ndlovu & Nico Nassenstein | pp. 145–150
Named entities, naming practices, and their meanings – linguistic types and cultural contexts
Svenja Völkel | pp. 151–175
(Un)packaging the “sweetness” in the naming of farms by resettled Black sugarcane farmers in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe: A study of selected names
Wellington Wasosa & Mickson Mazuruse | pp. 176–190
The dialectics of sport and history: Commemorative naming of selected stadia in the Kingdom of Eswatini
Godwin Makaudze & Vusi Musa Magongo | pp. 191–208
The toponym Bulawayo and ideologies of Ndebele language purism in Zimbabwe
Sambulo Ndlovu | pp. 209–223
The brand names of craft gins in South Africa : An onomastic analysis
Bertie Neethling† | pp. 224–239
A chameleonic evolution of a people’s wishes, identity, and aspirations: An onomastic reading of Highlanders FC names and nicknames
Liketso Dube | pp. 240–254
Performances of transparency
Anne Storch | pp. 255–268
Mobile philosophies: A case of inscriptions on public transport vehicles (kombis) used as entrepreneurial names in Harare, Zimbabwe
Emmanuel Chabata, Zvinashe Mamvura & Pedzisai Mashiri | pp. 269–287
“Venezuela hawaii, chelsea!”: Creative onomastic practice and playful (re)labelling in Langila from the Congo
Nico Nassenstein | pp. 288–305
https://benjamins.com/catalog/ijolc.10.2
Several articles are published open access
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Open access publication:
https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/books/9789027249227
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First book of a new series on Anthropological Linguistics/Linguistic Anthropology.
https://www.d... more First book of a new series on Anthropological Linguistics/Linguistic Anthropology.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110726626/html?lang=de
This book provides an overview of approaches to language and culture, and it outlines the broad interdisciplinary field of anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology. It identifies current and future directions of research, including language socialization, language reclamation, speech styles and genres, language ideology, verbal taboo, social indexicality, emotion, time, and many more. Furthermore, it offers areal perspectives on the study of language in cultural contexts (namely Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Europe), and it lays the foundation for future developments within the field. In this way, the book bridges the disciplines of cultural anthropology and linguistics and paves the way for the new book series Anthropological Linguistics.
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https://www.koeppe.de/titel_swahili-proverbs-from-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo
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Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Guest-edited special issue of the peer-reviewed open access journal
Journal of Postcolonial Ling... more Guest-edited special issue of the peer-reviewed open access journal
Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 4(2021)
Download link:
https://iacpl.net/jopol/issues/journal-of-postcolonial-linguistics-42021/
This volume brings together new and engaged contributions on languages of phantasy, resistance and alienation: work that moves beyond the strategies of inversion and mimesis, and also work that looks at language and thinking about language from a critical perspective. It features contributions on the decentering and de-marginalization of language practices, which, as a form of postcolonial mimesis, portray the Other from the perspective of marginality and subalternity. The Other, who is normally defined in the sense of Fabian (1983), where he/she is not only different, but remote and inferior, and constructed in relation to the Self, has often been denied a voice of his/her own (Spivak 1988). But this Other is constructed by productively filling derogatory, trashy labels with new meaning, so that the resulting Other’s Other can speak back, laugh back, and stain the arena in which the Other was formerly ostracized and discarded.
Papers by Thabo Ditsele, Axel Fanego Palat, Ingo H. Warnke, Suren Zolyan and Judith T. Irvine (and by the editors).
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
https://benjamins.com/catalog/clu.22
This study focuses on the language around sexuality and dis... more https://benjamins.com/catalog/clu.22
This study focuses on the language around sexuality and discourses about sex, labeled by the authors as metasex, from a broad crosslinguistic perspective. Unlike many existing studies on sexting that predominantly take into account the linguistic practices of teenagers often located in the Global North, this book offers a more holistic approach by discussing Southern concepts of body parts, their conceptualization and mediatization (“dick pics”), the interconnectedness of food and sex and its sensualization (“foodporn”) as well as processes of social cohesion around sex, sociability and conviviality (“bonding”). Based on an anthropological linguistic perspective, the authors analyze metasex practices from Nigeria, DR Congo, Uganda, the Mediterranean, and numerous other contexts. Africanist Agnes Brühwiler’s afterword on sex (talk) in Tanzania rounds off the various fresh insights this study offers.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Ed. Volume, Series: Language and Social Life 22 (C. Thurlow & D. Britain)
https://www.degruyte... more Ed. Volume, Series: Language and Social Life 22 (C. Thurlow & D. Britain)
https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/542424
While most of the more recent influential work on swearing has concentrated on English and other languages from the Global North, looking at forms and functions of swear words, this contribution redirects the necessary focus onto a sociolinguistics of swearing that puts transgressive practices in non-Western languages into the focus. The transdisciplinary volume contains innovative case studies that address swearing and cursing in parts of the world characterized by consequences of colonialism and increasingly debated inequalities. Turning away from more conventional and established methodologies and theoretical approaches, the book envisages to address transgressive linguistic practices, performances and contexts in Africa, Asia, America and Europe –including individuals' creativity, subversive power and agency. Due to its interdisciplinary and non-mainstream focus, this volume is an essential addition to the field of studies.
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Special (co-authored) issue of the open access online journal "The Mouth":
Special Issue 4, 2020 ... more Special (co-authored) issue of the open access online journal "The Mouth":
Special Issue 4, 2020 – Worte, Stimmen, Räume: Eine Einladung. Mit einem Beitrag von Ingo H. Warnke
https://themouthjournal.com/special-issue-no-4/
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Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Special issue of
International Journal of Language and Culture 6.1 (2019)
Alexandra Y. Aik... more Special issue of
International Journal of Language and Culture 6.1 (2019)
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Andrea Hollington, Nico Nassenstein & Anne Storch (eds.)
https://benjamins.com/catalog/ijolc.6.1
[no file to upload]
Introduction
Creativity in language: Secret codes, special styles and linguistic taboo
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and Anne Storch (1–9)
Articles
The idea of a yell: On metapragmatic discourse
Anne Storch (10–28)
Chibende: Linguistic creativity and play in Zimbabwe
Andrea Hollington (29–44)
Manipulation in late life: Secret agency and the unintelligible in the speech of the elderly in Eastern Congo
Nico Nassenstein (45–62)
Secrecy, sacredness and unveiling of the Kalenjin cultural initiation rites
Angelika Mietzner (63–82)
Secret language and resistance to borrowing in Chini
Joseph Brooks (83–94)
Hidden from women’s ears: Gender-based taboos in the Vaupés area
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (95–118)
Gender-switching strategies in the activity of tsinampantsi ‘joking’ among Northern Kampa Arawaks of Peru
Elena Mihas (119–147)
Parrots, peccaries, and people: Imagery and metaphor in Aguaruna (Chicham) magic songs
Simon E. Overall (148–174)
A culture of secrecy: The hidden narratives of the Ayoreo
Luca Ciucci (175–194)
Traversing language barriers: ‘Witoto’ signal drums from Northwest Amazonia
Katarzyna I. Wojtylak (195–216)
Inbrief
More thoughts on creative and secret language practices
Andrea Hollington and Nico Nassenstein (217–223)
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Peer-reviewed open access journal, guest-ed. issue "Critical Youth Language Studies", to be downl... more Peer-reviewed open access journal, guest-ed. issue "Critical Youth Language Studies", to be downloaded at:
https://themouthjournal.com/issue-no-3/
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
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Youth languages have increasingly attracted the attention of scholars and students of various dis... more Youth languages have increasingly attracted the attention of scholars and students of various disciplines. African youth languages are a vibrant phenomenon with manifold characteristics involving a range of different languages. This book is a first comprehensive study of African youth languages and presents fresh insights into various youth languages, providing linguistic as well as sociolinguistic data and analyses.
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This collection of Kivu Swahili texts provides a first insight into the variety of Kiswahili spok... more This collection of Kivu Swahili texts provides a first insight into the variety of Kiswahili spoken mainly in the provinces of North and South Kivu, as well as through parts of Maniema, DR Congo. The regiolectal variety is used by approximately 8–10 million speakers on a daily basis and forms part of a range of varieties of Congo Swahili (‘Western Swahili’) that also includes Kisangani Swahili, Katanga/Lubumbashi Swahili and Bunia Swahili.
This monograph includes both a brief morphological description of Kivu Swahili (‘grammar notes’) and a selection of four socio-cultural and historico-political texts that relate to the region and are personal testimonies of Kivu Swahili speakers. One fictional example of orature (‘adisi’) was chosen and added to the collection. All five texts are analyzed, interlinearized, translated and annotated, providing a basis for more in-depth morphosyntactic analysis, and standing as an example of the vivid orature practices of the Swahili-speaking parts of DR Congo.
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The emergence of complex language practices in multilingual settings of urban Africa and the stud... more The emergence of complex language practices in multilingual settings of urban Africa and the study of speakers’ broad linguistic repertoires have increasingly moved into the academic focus of linguists over the past couple of years. Kisangani Swahili constitutes a fluid urban practice spoken in the convergence area of Lingala and Swahili in the city of Kisangani, but also throughout Tshopo District (Province Orientale, DR Congo) by more than a million people. Swahili as spoken in Kisangani has developed into a variety marked by speakers’ linguistic choices, indexing speakers’ potential underlying knowledge of Lingala and French. While the influence from French has mainly affected Kisangani Swahili at a lexical level, Lingala and to a minor extent also non-Bantu languages such as Zande have significantly contributed to morphosyntactic variation in the variety. The complementary geographical distribution of the two languages, Lingala and Swahili, in different neighborhoods of the same city, has led to fluid phonological, morphological and syntactic pools of choices in today’s Swahili that display speakers’ ideological concepts of self-revelation and orientation.
The present grammar of Kisangani Swahili can be considered the first grammatical description of this urban variety, focusing predominantly on language convergence, metatypy and irregularity in language, analyzed from a variationist sociolinguistic angle, and pursuing an emic approach in the documentation of Swahili. Phenomena such as conscious structural adaptability toward either ‘standardized’ Swahili or Lingala and calquing as strategies of linguistic agency are particularly dealt with in the present sketch, marking speakers’ linguistic identity. Besides the sociolinguistic setting, the phonological inventory and morphosyntactic structure of the language, a pragmatic analysis as well as a selection of texts and a word list conclude the description of this urban Congo Swahili regiolect.
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Journal articles, book chapters by Nico Nassenstein
In TheMouth Special Issue 4 (Fleisch et al.), pp 109-143.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Please contact me to receive a pdf version of the paper. nassenstein@uni-mainz.de
Full reference... more Please contact me to receive a pdf version of the paper. nassenstein@uni-mainz.de
Full reference:
Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia, Axel Fanego Palat, Sabine Littig & Nico Nassenstein. 2021. Jenseits des Referenzrahmens: Erfahrungen afrikanischer Migrant*innen mit sprachlicher Integration im Rhein-Main-Gebiet. In Erfurt, Jürgen & Peter Reimer (eds.), Afrikanische Sprachen in Europa (special issue). Osnabrücker Beiträge zur Sprachtheorie 98: 157-188.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Books, ed. volumes, special issues by Nico Nassenstein
Svenja Völkel, Sambulo Ndlovu & Nico Nassenstein | pp. 145–150
Named entities, naming practices, and their meanings – linguistic types and cultural contexts
Svenja Völkel | pp. 151–175
(Un)packaging the “sweetness” in the naming of farms by resettled Black sugarcane farmers in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe: A study of selected names
Wellington Wasosa & Mickson Mazuruse | pp. 176–190
The dialectics of sport and history: Commemorative naming of selected stadia in the Kingdom of Eswatini
Godwin Makaudze & Vusi Musa Magongo | pp. 191–208
The toponym Bulawayo and ideologies of Ndebele language purism in Zimbabwe
Sambulo Ndlovu | pp. 209–223
The brand names of craft gins in South Africa : An onomastic analysis
Bertie Neethling† | pp. 224–239
A chameleonic evolution of a people’s wishes, identity, and aspirations: An onomastic reading of Highlanders FC names and nicknames
Liketso Dube | pp. 240–254
Performances of transparency
Anne Storch | pp. 255–268
Mobile philosophies: A case of inscriptions on public transport vehicles (kombis) used as entrepreneurial names in Harare, Zimbabwe
Emmanuel Chabata, Zvinashe Mamvura & Pedzisai Mashiri | pp. 269–287
“Venezuela hawaii, chelsea!”: Creative onomastic practice and playful (re)labelling in Langila from the Congo
Nico Nassenstein | pp. 288–305
https://benjamins.com/catalog/ijolc.10.2
Several articles are published open access
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-6538-3/nachtlinguistik/?number=978-3-8376-6538-3
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/media/pdf/b2/a9/52/ts6538_17GgLC3c5pxvMx.pdf
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110726626/html?lang=de
This book provides an overview of approaches to language and culture, and it outlines the broad interdisciplinary field of anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology. It identifies current and future directions of research, including language socialization, language reclamation, speech styles and genres, language ideology, verbal taboo, social indexicality, emotion, time, and many more. Furthermore, it offers areal perspectives on the study of language in cultural contexts (namely Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Europe), and it lays the foundation for future developments within the field. In this way, the book bridges the disciplines of cultural anthropology and linguistics and paves the way for the new book series Anthropological Linguistics.
De Gruyter Mouton
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501514685/html
Please contact me in case you want to receive parts of the book.
Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 4(2021)
Download link:
https://iacpl.net/jopol/issues/journal-of-postcolonial-linguistics-42021/
This volume brings together new and engaged contributions on languages of phantasy, resistance and alienation: work that moves beyond the strategies of inversion and mimesis, and also work that looks at language and thinking about language from a critical perspective. It features contributions on the decentering and de-marginalization of language practices, which, as a form of postcolonial mimesis, portray the Other from the perspective of marginality and subalternity. The Other, who is normally defined in the sense of Fabian (1983), where he/she is not only different, but remote and inferior, and constructed in relation to the Self, has often been denied a voice of his/her own (Spivak 1988). But this Other is constructed by productively filling derogatory, trashy labels with new meaning, so that the resulting Other’s Other can speak back, laugh back, and stain the arena in which the Other was formerly ostracized and discarded.
Papers by Thabo Ditsele, Axel Fanego Palat, Ingo H. Warnke, Suren Zolyan and Judith T. Irvine (and by the editors).
This study focuses on the language around sexuality and discourses about sex, labeled by the authors as metasex, from a broad crosslinguistic perspective. Unlike many existing studies on sexting that predominantly take into account the linguistic practices of teenagers often located in the Global North, this book offers a more holistic approach by discussing Southern concepts of body parts, their conceptualization and mediatization (“dick pics”), the interconnectedness of food and sex and its sensualization (“foodporn”) as well as processes of social cohesion around sex, sociability and conviviality (“bonding”). Based on an anthropological linguistic perspective, the authors analyze metasex practices from Nigeria, DR Congo, Uganda, the Mediterranean, and numerous other contexts. Africanist Agnes Brühwiler’s afterword on sex (talk) in Tanzania rounds off the various fresh insights this study offers.
https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/542424
While most of the more recent influential work on swearing has concentrated on English and other languages from the Global North, looking at forms and functions of swear words, this contribution redirects the necessary focus onto a sociolinguistics of swearing that puts transgressive practices in non-Western languages into the focus. The transdisciplinary volume contains innovative case studies that address swearing and cursing in parts of the world characterized by consequences of colonialism and increasingly debated inequalities. Turning away from more conventional and established methodologies and theoretical approaches, the book envisages to address transgressive linguistic practices, performances and contexts in Africa, Asia, America and Europe –including individuals' creativity, subversive power and agency. Due to its interdisciplinary and non-mainstream focus, this volume is an essential addition to the field of studies.
Special Issue 4, 2020 – Worte, Stimmen, Räume: Eine Einladung. Mit einem Beitrag von Ingo H. Warnke
https://themouthjournal.com/special-issue-no-4/
Swahili Forum 26 (2019)
published 2020
https://afrikanistik.gko.uni-leipzig.de/swafo/index.php/archives/55-2020-06-20-16-44-18.html
International Journal of Language and Culture 6.1 (2019)
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Andrea Hollington, Nico Nassenstein & Anne Storch (eds.)
https://benjamins.com/catalog/ijolc.6.1
[no file to upload]
Introduction
Creativity in language: Secret codes, special styles and linguistic taboo
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and Anne Storch (1–9)
Articles
The idea of a yell: On metapragmatic discourse
Anne Storch (10–28)
Chibende: Linguistic creativity and play in Zimbabwe
Andrea Hollington (29–44)
Manipulation in late life: Secret agency and the unintelligible in the speech of the elderly in Eastern Congo
Nico Nassenstein (45–62)
Secrecy, sacredness and unveiling of the Kalenjin cultural initiation rites
Angelika Mietzner (63–82)
Secret language and resistance to borrowing in Chini
Joseph Brooks (83–94)
Hidden from women’s ears: Gender-based taboos in the Vaupés area
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (95–118)
Gender-switching strategies in the activity of tsinampantsi ‘joking’ among Northern Kampa Arawaks of Peru
Elena Mihas (119–147)
Parrots, peccaries, and people: Imagery and metaphor in Aguaruna (Chicham) magic songs
Simon E. Overall (148–174)
A culture of secrecy: The hidden narratives of the Ayoreo
Luca Ciucci (175–194)
Traversing language barriers: ‘Witoto’ signal drums from Northwest Amazonia
Katarzyna I. Wojtylak (195–216)
Inbrief
More thoughts on creative and secret language practices
Andrea Hollington and Nico Nassenstein (217–223)
https://themouthjournal.com/issue-no-3/
http://lincom-shop.eu/epages/57709feb-b889-4707-b2ce-c666fc88085d.sf/de_DE/?ObjectID=4137246
This monograph includes both a brief morphological description of Kivu Swahili (‘grammar notes’) and a selection of four socio-cultural and historico-political texts that relate to the region and are personal testimonies of Kivu Swahili speakers. One fictional example of orature (‘adisi’) was chosen and added to the collection. All five texts are analyzed, interlinearized, translated and annotated, providing a basis for more in-depth morphosyntactic analysis, and standing as an example of the vivid orature practices of the Swahili-speaking parts of DR Congo.
The present grammar of Kisangani Swahili can be considered the first grammatical description of this urban variety, focusing predominantly on language convergence, metatypy and irregularity in language, analyzed from a variationist sociolinguistic angle, and pursuing an emic approach in the documentation of Swahili. Phenomena such as conscious structural adaptability toward either ‘standardized’ Swahili or Lingala and calquing as strategies of linguistic agency are particularly dealt with in the present sketch, marking speakers’ linguistic identity. Besides the sociolinguistic setting, the phonological inventory and morphosyntactic structure of the language, a pragmatic analysis as well as a selection of texts and a word list conclude the description of this urban Congo Swahili regiolect.
Journal articles, book chapters by Nico Nassenstein
Accessible online at:
https://www.postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/%202600/2497
Full reference:
Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia, Axel Fanego Palat, Sabine Littig & Nico Nassenstein. 2021. Jenseits des Referenzrahmens: Erfahrungen afrikanischer Migrant*innen mit sprachlicher Integration im Rhein-Main-Gebiet. In Erfurt, Jürgen & Peter Reimer (eds.), Afrikanische Sprachen in Europa (special issue). Osnabrücker Beiträge zur Sprachtheorie 98: 157-188.
Svenja Völkel, Sambulo Ndlovu & Nico Nassenstein | pp. 145–150
Named entities, naming practices, and their meanings – linguistic types and cultural contexts
Svenja Völkel | pp. 151–175
(Un)packaging the “sweetness” in the naming of farms by resettled Black sugarcane farmers in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe: A study of selected names
Wellington Wasosa & Mickson Mazuruse | pp. 176–190
The dialectics of sport and history: Commemorative naming of selected stadia in the Kingdom of Eswatini
Godwin Makaudze & Vusi Musa Magongo | pp. 191–208
The toponym Bulawayo and ideologies of Ndebele language purism in Zimbabwe
Sambulo Ndlovu | pp. 209–223
The brand names of craft gins in South Africa : An onomastic analysis
Bertie Neethling† | pp. 224–239
A chameleonic evolution of a people’s wishes, identity, and aspirations: An onomastic reading of Highlanders FC names and nicknames
Liketso Dube | pp. 240–254
Performances of transparency
Anne Storch | pp. 255–268
Mobile philosophies: A case of inscriptions on public transport vehicles (kombis) used as entrepreneurial names in Harare, Zimbabwe
Emmanuel Chabata, Zvinashe Mamvura & Pedzisai Mashiri | pp. 269–287
“Venezuela hawaii, chelsea!”: Creative onomastic practice and playful (re)labelling in Langila from the Congo
Nico Nassenstein | pp. 288–305
https://benjamins.com/catalog/ijolc.10.2
Several articles are published open access
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-6538-3/nachtlinguistik/?number=978-3-8376-6538-3
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/media/pdf/b2/a9/52/ts6538_17GgLC3c5pxvMx.pdf
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110726626/html?lang=de
This book provides an overview of approaches to language and culture, and it outlines the broad interdisciplinary field of anthropological linguistics and linguistic anthropology. It identifies current and future directions of research, including language socialization, language reclamation, speech styles and genres, language ideology, verbal taboo, social indexicality, emotion, time, and many more. Furthermore, it offers areal perspectives on the study of language in cultural contexts (namely Africa, the Americas, Australia and Oceania, Mainland Southeast Asia, and Europe), and it lays the foundation for future developments within the field. In this way, the book bridges the disciplines of cultural anthropology and linguistics and paves the way for the new book series Anthropological Linguistics.
De Gruyter Mouton
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501514685/html
Please contact me in case you want to receive parts of the book.
Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 4(2021)
Download link:
https://iacpl.net/jopol/issues/journal-of-postcolonial-linguistics-42021/
This volume brings together new and engaged contributions on languages of phantasy, resistance and alienation: work that moves beyond the strategies of inversion and mimesis, and also work that looks at language and thinking about language from a critical perspective. It features contributions on the decentering and de-marginalization of language practices, which, as a form of postcolonial mimesis, portray the Other from the perspective of marginality and subalternity. The Other, who is normally defined in the sense of Fabian (1983), where he/she is not only different, but remote and inferior, and constructed in relation to the Self, has often been denied a voice of his/her own (Spivak 1988). But this Other is constructed by productively filling derogatory, trashy labels with new meaning, so that the resulting Other’s Other can speak back, laugh back, and stain the arena in which the Other was formerly ostracized and discarded.
Papers by Thabo Ditsele, Axel Fanego Palat, Ingo H. Warnke, Suren Zolyan and Judith T. Irvine (and by the editors).
This study focuses on the language around sexuality and discourses about sex, labeled by the authors as metasex, from a broad crosslinguistic perspective. Unlike many existing studies on sexting that predominantly take into account the linguistic practices of teenagers often located in the Global North, this book offers a more holistic approach by discussing Southern concepts of body parts, their conceptualization and mediatization (“dick pics”), the interconnectedness of food and sex and its sensualization (“foodporn”) as well as processes of social cohesion around sex, sociability and conviviality (“bonding”). Based on an anthropological linguistic perspective, the authors analyze metasex practices from Nigeria, DR Congo, Uganda, the Mediterranean, and numerous other contexts. Africanist Agnes Brühwiler’s afterword on sex (talk) in Tanzania rounds off the various fresh insights this study offers.
https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/542424
While most of the more recent influential work on swearing has concentrated on English and other languages from the Global North, looking at forms and functions of swear words, this contribution redirects the necessary focus onto a sociolinguistics of swearing that puts transgressive practices in non-Western languages into the focus. The transdisciplinary volume contains innovative case studies that address swearing and cursing in parts of the world characterized by consequences of colonialism and increasingly debated inequalities. Turning away from more conventional and established methodologies and theoretical approaches, the book envisages to address transgressive linguistic practices, performances and contexts in Africa, Asia, America and Europe –including individuals' creativity, subversive power and agency. Due to its interdisciplinary and non-mainstream focus, this volume is an essential addition to the field of studies.
Special Issue 4, 2020 – Worte, Stimmen, Räume: Eine Einladung. Mit einem Beitrag von Ingo H. Warnke
https://themouthjournal.com/special-issue-no-4/
Swahili Forum 26 (2019)
published 2020
https://afrikanistik.gko.uni-leipzig.de/swafo/index.php/archives/55-2020-06-20-16-44-18.html
International Journal of Language and Culture 6.1 (2019)
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Andrea Hollington, Nico Nassenstein & Anne Storch (eds.)
https://benjamins.com/catalog/ijolc.6.1
[no file to upload]
Introduction
Creativity in language: Secret codes, special styles and linguistic taboo
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and Anne Storch (1–9)
Articles
The idea of a yell: On metapragmatic discourse
Anne Storch (10–28)
Chibende: Linguistic creativity and play in Zimbabwe
Andrea Hollington (29–44)
Manipulation in late life: Secret agency and the unintelligible in the speech of the elderly in Eastern Congo
Nico Nassenstein (45–62)
Secrecy, sacredness and unveiling of the Kalenjin cultural initiation rites
Angelika Mietzner (63–82)
Secret language and resistance to borrowing in Chini
Joseph Brooks (83–94)
Hidden from women’s ears: Gender-based taboos in the Vaupés area
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald (95–118)
Gender-switching strategies in the activity of tsinampantsi ‘joking’ among Northern Kampa Arawaks of Peru
Elena Mihas (119–147)
Parrots, peccaries, and people: Imagery and metaphor in Aguaruna (Chicham) magic songs
Simon E. Overall (148–174)
A culture of secrecy: The hidden narratives of the Ayoreo
Luca Ciucci (175–194)
Traversing language barriers: ‘Witoto’ signal drums from Northwest Amazonia
Katarzyna I. Wojtylak (195–216)
Inbrief
More thoughts on creative and secret language practices
Andrea Hollington and Nico Nassenstein (217–223)
https://themouthjournal.com/issue-no-3/
http://lincom-shop.eu/epages/57709feb-b889-4707-b2ce-c666fc88085d.sf/de_DE/?ObjectID=4137246
This monograph includes both a brief morphological description of Kivu Swahili (‘grammar notes’) and a selection of four socio-cultural and historico-political texts that relate to the region and are personal testimonies of Kivu Swahili speakers. One fictional example of orature (‘adisi’) was chosen and added to the collection. All five texts are analyzed, interlinearized, translated and annotated, providing a basis for more in-depth morphosyntactic analysis, and standing as an example of the vivid orature practices of the Swahili-speaking parts of DR Congo.
The present grammar of Kisangani Swahili can be considered the first grammatical description of this urban variety, focusing predominantly on language convergence, metatypy and irregularity in language, analyzed from a variationist sociolinguistic angle, and pursuing an emic approach in the documentation of Swahili. Phenomena such as conscious structural adaptability toward either ‘standardized’ Swahili or Lingala and calquing as strategies of linguistic agency are particularly dealt with in the present sketch, marking speakers’ linguistic identity. Besides the sociolinguistic setting, the phonological inventory and morphosyntactic structure of the language, a pragmatic analysis as well as a selection of texts and a word list conclude the description of this urban Congo Swahili regiolect.
Accessible online at:
https://www.postcolonial.org/index.php/pct/article/view/%202600/2497
Full reference:
Dombrowsky-Hahn, Klaudia, Axel Fanego Palat, Sabine Littig & Nico Nassenstein. 2021. Jenseits des Referenzrahmens: Erfahrungen afrikanischer Migrant*innen mit sprachlicher Integration im Rhein-Main-Gebiet. In Erfurt, Jürgen & Peter Reimer (eds.), Afrikanische Sprachen in Europa (special issue). Osnabrücker Beiträge zur Sprachtheorie 98: 157-188.
This contribution concentrates on a discussion of four conceptual keywords-HELMUT, SUNGLASSES, WATER, LANGUAGE-which we explore as semiotic variations on a ground. This approach to the contradictory everyday realities of the touristic setting in Mallorca is the result of our (self-)critical reflections on how to write about language, migration, encounters, the normal and the liminal in the party tourism spot-and on how to give a (personal) insight into the world of contradictions at the Ballermann. We are considerably grateful to our research colleagues Angelika Mietzner and Janine Traber, with whom we have been working on the complex entanglements of tourism and migration since 2016 in a DFG-funded research project. With "ground" we aim to designate something similar to the Baroque ground, a brief recurring melodic pattern in the bass part of a composition that serves as its principal structural element. At the Ballermann, a site of mass tourism and a party trip destination located on the Spanish island of Mallorca, this recurring melodic pattern is mostly perceived as noise – noise that permeates spaces, bodies and speech alike. Yet, the noisy is not void of meaning; rather, sense is made in complex, messy and twisted ways, by emphasizing the possibility that nothing ever is as what it seems. By turning the gaze to those who live in the noisiness of the Ballermann as migrants, namely people from West Africa who participate in Mallorca’s tourism industry under precarious work conditions, we look at contradictory experiences and expressivities that appear to be essential to the ways in which we can exist in the non-place.
In Dizdar, D. et al. (eds.), Humandifferenzierung.
In R. L. Kramer (ed.), The Expression of Phasal Polarity in African Languages,
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110646290-006
Open access via:
https://themouthjournal.com/migration-language-integration-issue-no-8/
Open access publication, download link:
https://iacpl.net/jopol/issues/journal-of-postcolonial-linguistics-42021/on-being-acholi-in-kampala/
This contribution aims to shed light on the performance of Kampala citizens whose origins lie in Acholiland, Northern Uganda. In quiz nights, ceremonies such as graduation parties, weddings and in bar talk (narratives in local bars), Acholis often construct and perform a specific kind of “Northernness”, pronounced [nɔ:zənəs], when speaking like a Ugandan Northener. This concept can be understood as an ironically employed, colonial-based scheme, which acts to create the Other’s Other; in relation to Central Ugandans and so-called Westerners, i.e. people from Western Uganda. Building on strong accents, warrior images, emblematic t-shirts, Facebook heritage groups, transgressive play and jokes, this contribution looks at an ethnicized urban performance that is very common in contemporary Uganda.
Keywords: Othering, Acholi, coloniality, mimetic performance, alterity
Open access publication, download link:
https://iacpl.net/jopol/issues/journal-of-postcolonial-linguistics-42021/phantasy-resistance-and-alienation-in-language-and-discourse/
While certain ways of speaking or varieties of English – such as American English or British English – evoke associations of modernity, higher education and urbanity in Uganda; others – such as Ugandan English with strong northern or western accents – stand for backwardness, social strata remote from education and ‘village identities’. Yet concepts of backwardness or modernity are not only based on linguistic criteria but also associated with a specific worldview, contributing to complex signs of higher-order indexicality. In contrast, speakers’ practices of enregisterment reveal how fluid and contextual these indices of urbanity and rurality actually are. isisConsidering diverse repertoires of English accents and varieties used in Uganda, I suggest a turn toward a more fluid understanding of contextual practices of English as negotiations of urbanity and rurality, or as ‘indexical play’, instead of hypothesising fixed entities such as ‘Ugandan English’, ‘urban language’, or ‘rural language’.
Keywords: Ugandan English, accents, repertoires, enregisterment, urban vs. rural dichotomies, indexicality
Please contact me to receive a preprint version (pdf).
This paper focuses on Lingala youth language and its recontextualization and use in the media and advertising industry, promoting music(ians), lifestyle products and telecommunication companies. Adoles-cents' linguistic practices are often picked up and diffused by musicians and other public individuals, or at times even appropriated by them. This is exemplified by the innovative expression tokooos, which was used and diffused by the Congolese musician Fally Ipupa. The paper discusses the changing youth language practice Lingala ya Bayankee/Yanké from in-group language (of Congolese street-based adolescents) to a recontextualized commodified register, diffused beyond its community of practice and perceived as a "linguistic fashion".
Since the late 1980s, linguists' analyses of Sheng, the urban youth language from Nairobi, have led to the growth of a considerable body of literature. In contrast, only a few studies are available that cover other youth registers from the Kiswahili-speaking parts of Africa. While most of the available studies either deal with techniques of manipulation or with adolescents' identity constructions, our paper intends to give a comparative overview of specific morphological features of Kiswahili-based youth languages. While certain characteristics of Sheng (Nairobi/Kenya), Lugha ya Mitaani (Dar es Salaam/Tanzania), Kindubile (Lubum-bashi/DR Congo) and Yabacrâne (Goma/DR Congo) largely diverge from East Coast Swahili (hereafter ECS) in regard to their nominal and verbal morphology, they all share specific features. Focusing on (apparent) supra-regional developments and changes in Kiswahili, this preliminary description of some structural features that transcend all four youth language practices aims to provide comparative insights into urban register variation, approaching East African youth languages from a micro-typological perspective.
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in: Andrews, Hazel (ed.) 2020. Tourism and Brexit: Travel, Borders and Identity. Bristol: Channel View.
Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 2/2020: 108-127.
In: Nassenstein, Nico & Anne Storch 2020 Swearing and Cursing, Mouton de Gruyter.
This chapter approaches swearing and cursing practices from a more holistic perspective, and critically questions the narrow view on swearing as demarcated and extracted "swear words". By exploring the many faces of swearing, this contribution aims at opening up new perspectives and intends to challenge the established understanding of "bad language" by presenting examples from different African contexts. The focus lies on labels and naming practices of the Self and the Other, on a bitter form of laughter, as well as on bodily substances that function as dangerous; all circling around swearing/cursing as a form of Otherness, mimetic practice, abject substance, camp and generally, as an expression of power. Introducing to the study of swearing and cursing, this chapter includes speakers' creativity, agency, the fluidity of language(s) and the importance of context and embodiment, aiming to open the floor for the multifaceted and transdisciplinary strands found in the different subsequent chapters.
Swahili Forum 26: 205-239. ed. by Daisuke Shinagawa & Nico Nassenstein
Swahili Forum 26: 1-45. ed. by Daisuke Shinagawa & Nico Nassenstein.
https://www.blickinsbuch.de/viewer/cm/access.php?Zmxhc2g9MSZ2MzE1Nj01MDAzMzQyMDA5JnY3Mzc2PTk3ODM4OTQxNjM4OTEmdGFyZ2V0X2lkPTMmdjkzNjk9ZDR3Z1RibFE0QQ==
https://www.blickinsbuch.de/viewer/cm/access.php?Zmxhc2g9MSZ2MzE1Nj01MDAzMzQyMDA5JnY3Mzc2PTk3ODM4MzE3NjQ4ODQmdGFyZ2V0X2lkPTMmdjkzNjk9SXJ5dFFXd3c3UA==
https://www.blickinsbuch.de/viewer/cm/access.php?Zmxhc2g9MSZ2MzE1Nj01MDAzMzQyMDA5JnY3Mzc2PTk3ODM4OTQxNjI2MDMmdGFyZ2V0X2lkPTMmdjkzNjk9eFJMeE13ZmtrRg==&mxbook=dcdc8d0943611ff7ecae57b85312e7b0
Please visit https://www.degruyter.com/serial/AL-B/html for more information
Linguistics Vanguard 2024,
Special issue on youth language, ed. by Gibson et al.
open access:
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/lingvan-2023-0019/html
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00047.vol
International Journal of Language and Culture 10:2 (2023), pp. 145–150.
open access
International Journal of Language and Culture 2023, published version – open access.
Nassenstein, Nico & Anne Storch. 2022. Nachtlinguistik. Sprachwissenschaftliche Streifzüge, 205-215. Bielefeld: transcript.
Multilingual Margins 2022, 9(1): 101-116
https://ul.qucosa.de/api/qucosa%3A79299/attachment/ATT-0/
The uploaded file are uncorrected pre-publication proofs. Please cite published original version.
Proofs, please only cite published paper.
Uncorrected proofs, paper to appear in Groff et al. (eds.), Global perspectives on youth language practices, De Gruyter Mouton.
Youth languages have been treated as a mostly sociolinguistic phenomenon, while the present chapter turns the focus to pragmatic approaches. The pragmatics of humour often circle around the three theoretical concepts "incongruity", "superiority" (grounded in sociological theory), and "relief" (according to psychoanalytical theory) (Dynel 2013b: vii) with an emphasis on the incongruity approach. Besides the study of jokes, humour has increasingly been investigated in its manifold conversational contexts, or as part of language in interaction across different discourse domains-however, mostly without taking young speakers' language practices into account. This chapter analyses humour in interaction in African youth languages by specifically looking at conversational storytelling in South Africa (focusing on Tsotsitaal/isiTsotsi speakers), and by looking at humorous anecdotes as practice of joint reminiscing in DR Congo (by speakers of Lingala ya Bayankee/ Yanké). The suggested "pragmatic turn" in the study of African youth languages is based on the analysis of structural aspects of conversational humour, its stylisation and transgressive function. The chapter offers an outlook onto the study of humour as a new and relevant field of study not only for African youth's performances and interactions but also as a promising component in more global approaches.
Uncorrected proof, to appear in: Groff et al. Global Perspectives on Youth Language Practices, De Gruyter Mouton.
The analysis of spoken youth language practices used by mostly urban speakers in African cities has been the subject of a growing number of studies in recent years. While the emergence of these fl uid practices dates back to the end of the colonial era on the African continent (i.e. from the 1950s to the 1970s), they have sparked academic interest mostly since the millennium. This has led to numerous seminal papers (the most infl uential one being Kießling and Mous 2004), edited volumes (Nassenstein and Hollington 2015; Mensah 2016; Hurst-Harosh and Kanana 2018) and in-depth studies of specific youth registers (Hurst 2008, for Tsot- sitaal/RSA; Ferrari 2009; Rudd 2008, among others, for Sheng/Kenya; Reuster-Jahn and Kießling 2006, for Lugha ya Mitaani/Tanzania) being published over the last two decades. Adolescents in urban Kinshasa, with 8–12 million inhabitants being the most populated city in Central Africa and the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (henceforth DR Congo), employ a specific register of the Bantu language Lingala, which is characterised by phonological, morphological and semantic deviations from the common variety.
Bangala, or Mɔnɔkɔ na Bangála, is a Bantu language (C.30a) of northeastern DR Congo which emerged in the late 19th century out of a pidgin language (Meeuwis 2019), brought to peripheral areas of the Congo Free State by the Force Publique troops. Closely-related to Lingala (C.30b) and tied to its history, colonial agents and missionaries subsequently used Bangala for their purposes, but rarely implemented corpus planning activities, as was done with Lingala. This, and the intense contact with non-Bantu languages of the area (especially Central Sudanic languages such as Logo, Avukaya and Lugbara, and further languages like Pazande, Kakwa, Arabic and Swahili) led to the development of distinctive phonological and morphosyntactic properties in the language. Bangala reveals a phoneme inventory that resembles other languages in the broader region (e.g., with the occurrence of labiovelars, implosive stops etc.). In Bangala's linguistic predecessor and modern Bangala areal contact-induced change has contributed to a radically reduced noun class system (with 5 singular/plural class pairs, but one general plural marker of NC2) and the simplification of agreement, to a mostly analytical structure, its verbs having only a few synthetic TA affixes. Bangala reveals neither bound subject concords nor object concords but uses absolute (personal) pronouns that precede the verb, and, in the same way as Lingala, free-standing objects that follow the verb. Syntactically, negation functions with a clause-final negator, questions are formed in situ, conditional clauses operate periphrastically, and relative clauses require a relativizer derived from a demonstrative. Today, Bangala is spoken by at least 2 million people, but its prestige is declining in favor of the increasing spread of Lingala. Urban Bangala is grammatically convergent with Lingala, while rural Bangala has retained more salient contact features originating from non-Bantu languages and from its pidginized linguistic predecessor.