Baptismal Essentialisms

Abstract

This article examines code-shifting among Giriama in Malindi, Kenya, to explore the performative construction of language ideology and to enhance standard notions of code-shifting as a means of projecting the self. In select Giriama speech acts, code choice helps to reify essentialist ideologies that posit intrinsic connections between certain languages, ethnicities, and religions. Codes are also used to invoke the potency and perspective associated with particular cosmologies. Evidence is drawn from code choices in a Giriama healing and divination ritual and code-switching in a spontaneous oration.

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