Mobile phones and Mipoho's prophecy: The powers and dangers of flying language

Abstract

A B S T R A C TIn this article, I examine the ideologies surrounding the poetic forms of Giriama text messaging in the town of Malindi, Kenya. I argue that young people use rapid code-switching and a global medialect of condensed, abbreviated English as an iconic index of a modern, mobile, self-fashioning, sexy, and irreverent persona, whereas their use of the local vernacular (Kigiriama) tends to reroot them in the gravitas of social obligations and respect relationships. In text messages, then, English and local African tongues are sometimes treated as foils for each other, suggesting that, rather than merely being mimicked, the English medialect is flavored by distinctly local concerns. Indeed, among many Giriama elders, the poetic patterns of text messaging are construed as a special breed of witchery in which hypermobility and linguistic innovation threaten ethnic coherence and even sanity itself. I suggest, however, that the use of Kigiriama in text messaging may point not to the abandonment of ethnicity but to new ways of being Giriama that are simultaneously local and modern.

The Paradox of Mobility in the Kenyan ICT Ecosystem: An Ethnographic Case of How the Youth in Kibera Slum Use and Appropriate the Mobile Phone and the Mobile Internet

“…One study that attempts to interrogate the relationship between culture and technology is an ethnographic study of the mobile phone use by the Giriama in the coastal town of Malindi. McIntosh (2010) explores the use of the local dialect Kigiriama in text messaging. She discovers that the phone has been very useful in facilitating social coordination due to the prevalence of phones amongst those 40 and younger.…”

“…After the interviews, we would sit and chat as we enjoyed some fried flat bread (chapati) and it was in those moments the youth would revisit some of the interview discussions. It was evident the mobile phone had "collapsed distance and time" whilst affording them ease of communication (McIntosh, 2010). However, the youth also indicated that their zone of selfexpression and office could not bypass the "hierarchical nature" of Kenyan society of who you know and where you come from matter very much (Hofstede, 2015).…”

Intergenerational relations and the power of the cell phone: Perspectives on young people’s phone usage in sub-Saharan Africa

“…Across urban and rural South Africa this is seemingly promoted by high levels of phone ownership, adoption of low-cost phone practices such as messaging on WhatsApp or MXit, and an associated usage of youth slang (which has much potential as an age-exclusionary device; see McIntosh, 2010). In Ghana and Malawi, the significantly higher proportion of same-age, extra-family phone interactions among the 16+ age-group in urban (as opposed to rural) areas also looks indicative of this trend.…”

The Language of Social Media

“…That there is a 'primacy of play' in digital communication was argued already more than ten years ago by Brenda Danet in her book Cyberpl@y (2001), and the concept of play has been productive in a range of publications (e.g. Rao, 2008;Chayko, 2009;McIntosh, 2010; an important early study is Baym, 1995). This playfulness is visible in the types of interactions people engage in online -they play games, joke, flirt, or just hang out with one another -as well as in the language and multimodal imagery they use.…”