English in Kenya or Kenyan English?

Is Kenyan English a new postcolonial variety of English developing in a multilingual environment of permanent language contact? Analysis of lexical, morphological and syntactic features in the International Corpus of English for East Africa (ICE-EA) is accompanied by a sociolinguistic perspective and summarized employing Schneider's Dynamic Model.

The book aims to recognize or reject English in Kenya as a new, emancipated variety of English developing in a multilingual environment of permanent language contact. It discusses in detail the sociolinguistic situation in contemporary Kenya based on Labov's extra-linguistic parameters and the results of a customized survey carried out by the author in Kenya. Furthermore, it identifies and describes characteristic stylistic, lexical, morphological and syntactic features of English in Kenya on the basis of the International Corpus of English (ICE). The theoretical framework employs Schneider's Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes and an effort is made to put the amount of variation found in the ICE into a wider context of other varieties of English around the world.

Autorentext

Natalia Budohoska is a graduate of the Institute of English Studies at the University of Warsaw. Her areas of academic research include sociolinguistics and varieties of English. She has published several papers on English in Kenya and is continuing research on varieties of English around the world.

Inhalt

Contents: History and status of English in Kenya Language contact and its consequences Multilingual Kenya and sociolinguistic parameters International Corpus of English Formality of English in Kenya Kiswahili borrowings Characteristic morphological and syntactic features Postcolonial varieties of English.