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ABSTRACT
Sheng and Engsh, Kenya's two major hybrid urban languages, are the subject of this wide-ranging enquiry into the sociolinguistic realities of contemporary Kenya and their impact on politics, media, literature, and popular culture. While the precise boundaries of 'Kenyan English' and, even more so, 'Kenyan Swahili' are hard to establish, English and Swahili form the matrix languages of Engsh and Sheng, which the author prefers to call hybrid 'codes' rather than languages. While Engsh is mainly spoken by upwardly mobile middle-class youth in Western Nairobi, Sheng is spoken by a much larger proportion of urban youth and has evolved from a stigmatized 'ghetto' code in eastern Nairobi into a prestigious code that symbolizes ideological affinity, in-group identity, coolness, generational rebellion, linguistic innovation, and rejection of tribal identities. Yet both languages have contributed to the expression of new forms of cultural meaning and to the construction of a linguistic third space between the global, represented by Western images and artefacts, and the local, represented by Kenyan/ African symbols and languages. The growing importance of Sheng and Engsh in Kenyan literature and popular culture blurs established boundaries between Swahili and English, creates a space of hybridity in which multiple voices can be heard, and is likely to eventually expand the literary space in East Africa as a whole.
Introduction
KENYA IS A MULTILINGUAL COUNTRY, with English and Kiswahili as official languages enshrined in the Kenyan Constitution (2010). English is the language of academic instruction at all levels, for conducting official business (within the public and private sectors) and legal transactions, and for local, regional, and international dialogue. Both English and Kiswahili are examinable subjects in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) and the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) national examinations. Before the year 2010, when Kenya enacted a new Constitution, English was the official language, while Kiswahili was re- cognized as the country's national language. From an historical perspective, Kiswahili is associated with urbanization, local trade, and blue-collar jobs and is the lingua franca used for inter-ethnic communication by the masses residing in the city of Nairobi. Before 1984, Kiswahili was an optional subject that was taught but not examined as a compulsory subject in the KCPE and KCSE examinations. However, this situation...