4. The emergence of Langila in Kinshasa (DR Congo)

Nassenstein, Nico

doi:10.1515/9781614518525-006

Cited by 7 publications

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“…The creative modification of the glottonym Lingala → Langila in order to "invent" a new language already points to the playful and creative nature of this linguistic practice, and to the fact that modifying and adapting known onomastic references and changing their semantic content serves as a major principle in lexical creation. In initial studies on Langila, this linguistic practice has mostly been described as "youth language" or "youth language practice" (Nassenstein 2015) or as "slang register" (Sene Mongaba 2015: 444), as initially, after its emergence around 2003, it was predominantly used by young dancers, choreographers, university students, and better-off adolescents in the capital, Kinshasa. Speakers would predominantly use it not only for its playfulness and as a sign of outspoken creativity (allowing them to form new words based on the phonological and semiotic principles of the language), but also because of its concealing character, qualifying as a secret language (see for instance Storch 2011 on a pan-African perspective).…”

Section: The Emergence Of a New Communicative Style In Central Africa...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The overall principle of how Langila speakers operate with and manipulate language by "replacing existing linguistic material" may be labelled in different ways. While Wilson (n.d.) calls the main phonological strategy "alliterate substitution", I have used "onomastic substitution" in earlier works (Nassenstein 2015), while Ndlovu (2022b) prefers the label "partial homophony" in his innovative work on S'ncamtho, cited below, clarifying the underlying principle of linguistic modification in the Ndebele-based speech style (which resembles the processes found in Langila):…”

Section: The Phonological and Lexical Principles Of Langilamentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Venezuela hawaii, chelsea!”

Nassenstein

2023

IJoLC

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This contribution focuses on Langila, a language practice or “speech style” that emerged in the first decade after the millenium in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa, characterized by lexical creativity and specific phonological manipulative strategies. I analyze Langila speakers’ use of global place names, fashionable brands, and names of institutions, and to some extent specific (manipulated) personal names as pseudo-onomastic references from an anthropological-linguistic perspective, understanding “games with names” (Storch 2019) as a cultural practice that contributes to the novelty factor in specific ways of speaking in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa and in social media. It is crucial for the discussion of “labelling” and “branding” practices in contexts of cultural importance in African languages to consider why and how speakers use, manipulate, and recontextualize semiotic links to names of artefacts, places, and people – and how this changes the onomastic value of these named, unnamed, and renamed concepts in ludic interaction. The paper thus circles around two main research questions: How are “labels” (anthroponyms, toponyms) semantically and in terms of their referential and indexical use changed to creative lifestyle emblems and become part of the everyday lexicon? How are contexts of cultural importance named and (re)labelled by a speaker, drawing from “manipulated” repertoires that involve (partially homophonic) anthroponymic or toponymic references actually intended to mislead or to confuse the hearer? This contribution investigates the role of onomastic references that are used to denote and label central concepts in Langila.

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Section: The Emergence Of a New Communicative Style In Central Africa...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Phonological and Lexical Principles Of Langilamentioning

confidence: 99%

“Venezuela hawaii, chelsea!”

Nassenstein

2023

IJoLC

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“…In Africa, accounts describe young males as dominant or primary speakers (Slabbert 1994), (Slabbert and Meyers-Scotton 1996), (Kiessling and Mous 2004), (Mesthrie and Hurst 2013), (Brookes 2014), Nassenstein (2014) among others. Kiessling and Mous (2004) classify them as antilanguages, which express an opposition to the larger society.…”

Section: Literature On (Urban) Youth Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Escaping the Margins of Society: New Media and Youth Language Practices across the Rural Urban Divide in Kenya

Erastus,

Orwenjo,

Gathigia

2022

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In Kenya, among the youth, traditionally there were established language practice differences where youth in the rural areas would speak the domicile mother tongue while the urban youth re-designed their identity by creating and communicating in 'Sheng'. This is no longer the case as the rural-urban language divide is linguistically flattening due to increased use of digital media, urbanization of rural spaces and globalization. This paper describes new digital media language trends among Kenyan urban youth and explains how globalization and digital media have become the unifying factor between rural and urban youth language practices. The paper contends that the narrowing of the urban-rural dichotomy in language use seems to have created semi-homogenous language practices among the youth in both rural and urban areas. This has been made possible by affordable internet which gives the rural youth access to urban culture and global trends. The paper also describes how urbanization of rural towns and rural-urban-urban-rural migration has created pathways that carry urban language practices to previously rural areas and created a form of African modernity and urbanity in these spaces.

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“…The fact that it is also the dominant language among Congolese diasporas in the global North contributes to its worldly reputation, as it is constantly fed by new vocabularies emerging from metropole cities such as Paris, London and Brussels. Lingala is not only heavily interspersed with French (adding a hint of colonially infused 'sophistication'), but it is also continually changing through linguistic innovations from Langila and Yanké, the languages of the capital's youth, artists and street gangs (see Nassenstein 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“How will God hear us?”: Sonic and linguistic difference among Kinshasa’s Églises des Noirs

Luyckfasseel

2023

Africa

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This article studies how anti-Christian, ‘traditionally African’ organizations, locally known as Églises des Noirs, navigate religious competition in the Congolese capital through sonic and linguistic strategies. It focuses on the understudied Mpadist community, a ‘dissident’ branch of the better known Kimbanguist church. Mpadists mobilize diverging appreciations and meanings of sound and language to set themselves apart from the dominant Lingalaphone Pentecostal loudness of the city. In doing so, they pursue a delicate balance between Kongo traditionalism, the source of their spiritual legitimacy, rooted in colonial prophetic movements, and tactics of ‘modern’ community making in order to remain competitive within Kinshasa’s prolific religious setting. The article argues that ideologies of sound and language should be analysed within the same nexus, for they operate and are operationalized in similar ways. It therefore proposes to expand the sociolinguistic notion of indexicality to incorporate elements of the volume and modalities of sound making. The article also shows that sonic and linguistic ideologies are bound by context. In Kinshasa’s ‘low-fi’ soundscape, the indexical values of the languages Kikongo and Lingala, and of unamplified and amplified sound production, share similar features, yet they are evaluated differently in rural ‘hi-fi’ sonic environments.

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4. The emergence of Langila in Kinshasa (DR Congo)

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

“Venezuela hawaii, chelsea!”

“Venezuela hawaii, chelsea!”

Escaping the Margins of Society: New Media and Youth Language Practices across the Rural Urban Divide in Kenya

“How will God hear us?”: Sonic and linguistic difference among Kinshasa’s Églises des Noirs

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