With the demographic explosion of young people in major African cities, we are witnessing the emergence of youth languages and new speech forms. In search of well-being, these young people, plagued by poverty, social injustice, unemployment and idleness, invent linguistic codes that allow them to find themselves. The linguistic and sociolinguistic description of these youth languages is the object of this volume. The contributions inform on the statutes and functions of the youth languages of Africa, their forms and structures, their representations, and envisage perspectives and prospective didactics.

An up-to-date, theoretically informed study of male, in-group, street-aligned, youth language practice in various urban centres in Africa.

Most journal articles, edited volumes and monographs on youth language practices deal with one specific variety, one geographical setting, or with one specific continent. This volume bridges these different studies, and it approaches youth language from a much broader angle. A global framework and a diversity of methodologies enable a wider perspective that gives room to comparisons of youth’s manipulations and linguistic agency, transnational communicative practices and language contact scenarios. The research presented addresses structural features of everyday talk and text, youth identity issues related to specific purposes and contexts, and sociocultural emphases on ideologies and belonging. Combining insights into sociolinguistic and structural features of youth language, the volume includes case studies from Asia (Indonesia), Australia and Oceania (Arnhem Land, New Ireland), South America (the Amazon, Chile, Argentina), Europe (Germany, Spain) and Africa (Uganda, Nigeria, DR Congo, Central African Republic, South Africa). It expands on existing publications and offers a more comparative and "global" approach, without a division of youth’s strategies in terms of geographical space or language family. This collection, including a conceptual introduction, is of interest to scholars from several linguistic subfields working in different regional contexts as well as sociologists and anthropologists working in the field of adolescence and youth studies.

This volume offers a new perspective on sociolinguistics in Africa. Eschewing the traditional approach which looks at the interaction between European and African languages in the wake of colonialism, this book turns its focus to the social dynamics of African languages and African societies. Divided into two sections, the book offers insight into the crucial topics such as: language vitality and endangerment, the birth of ‘new languages’, a sociolinguistics of the city, language contact and language politics. It spans the continent from Algeria to South Africa, Guinea-Bissau to Kenya and addresses the following broad themes: Language variation, contact and changeThe dynamics of urban, rural and youth languagesPolicy and practice This book provides an alternative to the Eurocentric view of sociolinguistic dynamics in Africa, and will make an ideal read or supplemental textbook for scholars and students in the field/disciplines of African languages and linguistics, and those interested in southern theory or ‘sociolinguistics in the margins’.

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.

This book showcases current research on language in new media, the performing arts and music in Africa, emphasising the role that youth play in language change and development. The authors demonstrate how the efforts of young people to throw off old colonial languages and create new local ones has become a site of language creativity. Analysing the language of ‘new media’, including social media, print media and new media technologies, and of creative arts such as performance poetry, hip-hop and rap, they use empirical research from such diverse countries as Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, the Ivory Coast and South Africa. This original edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of African sociolinguistics, particularly in the light of the rapidly changing globalized context in which we live.

This groundbreaking collection re-orders the elitist and colonial elements of language studies by drawing together the multiple perspectives of Black language researchers.