We Call It “Our Language”: A Children's Swahili Pidgin Transforms Social and Symbolic Order on a Remote Hillside in Up‐Country Kenya

Abstract

This study describes a rare Swahili pidgin created by two five‐year‐old boys, one American and one African. The discussion examines the linguistic and social factors affecting the “origins, maintenance, change and loss” ( Hymes 1971 ) of their language and the place it created for their friendship. This place, constructed by and through language, both held and projected their new identities, interrupting the harsh hegemony of colonial racism and inequality that surrounded them. [Swahili pidgin, communicative competence, child language identity and ideology, language origins and invention]

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