language essentialism and social hierarchies among giriama and swahili

Language essentialism and social hierarchies among

Giriama and Swahili

Janet McIntosh

Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University, P.O. Box 549110, Waltham, MA 02454, USA

Received 3 September 2002; received in revised form 6 December 2004; accepted 12 January 2005

Abstract

Scholars have widely recognized essentialist discourse as a potentially pernicious means of

conceptualizing categories of ‘race’ and ethnicity. What has not been so rigorously explored is the

way in which socially differentiated languages may themselves be essentialized to similar ends.

Indeed, the few scholars who have discussed essentialism and language have tended to allude to

rather different patterns. This plurality of approaches indicates that essentialist modes of representa-

tion can inform cultural ideas of language in a variety of complex ways. In this paper, I consider six

different ways in which cultural actors may apply essentialism to languages, and I explore how these

varieties of language essentialism obtain among high status Swahili and subaltern Giriama in the

township of Malindi on the coast of Kenya. I argue that such essentialisms are vital to local ethnic

politics, including Swahili efforts to shore up an ‘‘authentic’’ ethnic identity, while screening out

interlopers, and Giriama efforts to partake of the power and prestige of other ethnic groups. My

broader contention is that fine-grained attention to language essentialisms can help elucidate the

relationship between language ideology and social hierarchies in other contexts.

# 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Language ideology; Essentialism; Ethnicity; Religion; Hierarchy; Swahili; Giriama; Kenya

1. Introduction

Anthropologists who explore the social construction of ethnicity, race, and gender have

drawn heavily on the concept of ‘essentialism,’ usually using it to refer to an ontological

stance in which social groups are treated as naturally distinct categories, each discovered

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rather than invented, each with its own essential identity. Scholars widely recognize

essentialist thinking and essentialist discourse as pernicious means of naturalizing ethnic

difference and ethnically based hierarchies (Hirschfeld, 1996; Stoler, 1997). How, then, has

the concept of essentialism been applied to language ideologies, defined in Irvine’s sense as

‘‘the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their

loading of moral and political interests’’ (Irvine, 1989: 255)?

The answer is: variously. In fact, scholars talking about language essentialism have

tended to focus on rather different things. The linguist Bichakjian (1995), for instance,

defines ‘‘linguistic essentialism’’ as the misguided idea that language has a fixed basic

substance such as a rigid lexical and syntactic structure. Blommaert and Verschueren

(1998), following Windisch (1990), suggest that the term ‘‘essentialism’’ might be used to

characterize the recurrent nationalist idea that language is naturally linked to qualities such

as ‘‘descent, history, culture, [and] religion’’ (359; see also Windisch, 1990: 40). Irvine and

Gal note in their discussion of linguistic differentiation that often, ‘‘the linguistic behaviors

of others are simplified and seen as if deriving from those persons’ essences’’ (Irvine and

Gal, 2000: 39). Each of these approaches, then, stipulates a somewhat different relationship

between language and essentialism. The first focuses on the folk idea that language has a

fixed intrinsic structure, the second on the folk idea that language is naturally yoked to

ethnic qualities, and the third on the folk idea that linguistic behavior emanates from and,

possibly, shares natural human essences.

Of course, we need not choose between such models; instead, we can stipulate that

essentialism can be part of folk ideas of language in a variety of complex ways. In my

own research on the Swahili and Giriama living in Malindi on the coast of Kenya, I have

found that ideas about ethnicity, religion, and language are intertwined through several

different kinds of essentialist assumptions. The coastal area provides a particularly

fruitful area to explore essentialism because of its history as a locale where ethnic

identities, once fairly fluid, have grown increasingly segregated—in ideology and

discourse, if not always in fact—since the colonial era (Eastman, 1994; Willis, 1993).

The ideological differentiation between Swahili and Giriama is particularly acute in the

Malindi area, where ethnic groups living side by side have been pushed into heated

competition for resources such as land, with Swahili generally having the socioeconomic

upper hand. While intermarriage between Swahili and Giriama was historically very

common (indeed, Swahili ways of life emerged as a result of such interactions) and

continues to some degree, today’s contexts of political and economic competition often

prompt the articulation of ideologies of ethnic difference. This ethnic boundary making

has been both reflected and reified in the linguistic domain. Certain language

essentialisms breathe life into the hierarchy and ethnic constructions that currently divide

these groups, while others provide a means by which Giriama attempt to reclaim a

modicum of power and influence.

In this paper, I describe six variations on the theme of language essentialism and their

implications for Swahili and Giriama in the Malindi area of the Kenya coast. My discussion

is intended to contribute to the literature on language ideologies, particularly in contexts of

‘‘linguistic differentiation’’ in which languages and, by implication, social groups are

contrasted with one another (Irvine and Gal, 2000). Bourdieu has famously observed that

such contexts give rise to a ‘‘linguistic marketplace’’ in which languages are constructed as

J. McIntosh / Journal of Pragmatics 37 (2005) 1919–19441920

valued social resources with relative social worth. Yet the notion of linguistic hierarchy,

while common in the literature (see, for instance, Grillo, 1989), is too simple to account for

many language ideologies; often, more specific meanings and valences are imputed to

languages than the concept of ‘value,’ on its own, might suggest (cf. Woolard and

Schieffelin, 1994). Languages are loaded with particular ontological commitments,

including, as Bourdieu himself discussed at length, notions of ‘purity,’ the notion that

languages can isomorphically (iconically) reflect the essences of their speakers (Irvine and

Gal, 2000), and the notion that particular languages embody qualities ranging from

rationality to recidivism. My discussion of language essentialism helps further to tease

apart and clarify the various ontological conditions that speakers can impute to languages.

As I proceed, I demonstrate that several varieties of language essentialism have been

observed—if not designated ‘essentialism’ as such—by scholars working in other areas (I

focus particularly on the literature concerning sub-Saharan Africa). The last three types of

essentialism I discuss have been less commonly observed in the broader literature. More

pointed attention to language essentialisms across cultures ought to reveal not only more

ethnographic examples of the essentialisms I describe, but also more theoretical variations

on this theme.

Not only is language essentialism important to the way people conceptualize language;

it also has implications for the way we think about language-in-use. It is common for

sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropologists to suggest that particular linguistic

practices, including code choice, constitute an ‘index’ of identity, context, social

relations, or interpretive frames (Heller, 1988; Myers-Scotton, 1993). Yet the notion of

‘index’ risks treating language as nothing more than a semiotic pointer to something else,

and obscures the fact that sometimes language is treated as if it were the bearer of special

ontological properties in and of itself. And if language is conceptualized as having powers

and potencies, then it may be construed as changing the very constitution of the people who

speak and use it. The notion of language essentialism thus offers a fresh way of thinking

about the ways in which language is mobilized in social struggles to define ethnic identity,

score ethnic boundaries, and appropriate power and prestige.

2. Essentialism and language

To essentialize something is, in part, to naturalize it; to treat it as being intrinsically or

inevitably what it is. But cognitive psychologists and cognitive anthropologists have

recognized that essentialism can be more complex than this. According to cognitive

psychologists Gelman and Medin (1993), not only are essentialized objects considered

natural; they are also frequently treated as though this nature is ‘underlying’; as though, in

other words, the thing that makes an object a member of a category—some kind of vaguely

defined, often mystified ‘essence’—resides beneath or apart from its surface without being

immediately perceptible. Such judgments lie behind, for instance, the cultural notion that

someone who ‘passes’ as one race, such as white, may ‘actually’ be another, such as black.

In some versions of essentialism, furthermore, the underlying nature of a category, its

essence, is treated as if it were a causal mechanism that is generative and predictive of

various properties (Gelman et al., 1994: 344). Hence, once a particular racial essence is

J. McIntosh / Journal of Pragmatics 37 (2005) 1919–1944 1921

imputed to an individual, a host of assumptions (often bigoted or inaccurate) about his or

her properties tend to follow.

Psychologists and anthropologists have tended to focus on the essentialization of so-

called ‘living kinds’ (such as plant and animal species) and socially demarcated human

kinds (such as race, ethnicity, and gender; see Atran, 1990; Hirschfeld, 1996; Rothbart and

Taylor, 1992; Stoler, 1997). Arguably, one reason essentialism tends to recur in the

conceptualization of human kinds is that it provides an efficient and pernicious means of

naturalizing prejudice and unequal social orders. Yet there may be another reason why

essentialism is so frequently applied to human kinds and other living kinds. Among the

objects that make up the human environment, living kinds are particularly mutable; their

characteristics and behaviors grow and/or change over their lifespans. Essentialism is a

particularly useful strategy for holding constant and categorizing the identity of such

objects as they shift around, since the putative underlying essence of such objects gives

them a deep sameness despite their surface changes (Keil, 1994).

Like living kinds, languages change their spots in rather complex ways. In fact,

although languages are frequently discriminated, labeled, and talked about as if they are

distinct entities, they are not particularly object-like (cf. Fardon and Furniss, 1994). For

the most part, languages manifest themselves to human beings only in fleeting visual or

acoustic instantiations, each of which encompasses only a tiny fragment of that entire

language form’s potential, and each of which sounds or looks different because of the

combinatorial properties of syntax, the expansive properties of a lexicon, the mutability

of phonemes, and the contingencies of pragmatics. The perceptible properties of a

particular language, furthermore, may shift over time as a result of drift or in response to

social changes. The boundaries between one language and another, while they may be

socially insisted upon with urgency, may be quite fluid in practice. And the relationships

between human groups and particular languages can also be mutable, for although

nation-states and other political units tend to be invested in the idea that ethnic groups

and languages map neatly onto each other, the reality is often far more complex (Jackson,

1974; Hymes, 1984; Southall, 1997). Yet language essentialisms continually operate in

the face of this flux, asserting what particular languages are and what their natural

relationships are to human groups.

3. Ethnographic and linguistic background of Giriama and Swahili in Malindi

Muslim Swahili culture in all its variety emerged when waves of immigrants from

Arabia intermarried with indigenous people of the East African coast, including the Bantu

Giriama, who are one of nine related ‘Mijikenda’ cultural groups. Historically, Swahili

have enjoyed a position as urban-based merchants and plantation owners with lucrative

connections to the Arab world. Their socioeconomic status was buoyed by a coastal

sultanate that lasted until the early 20th century and after that, by colonial policies that

granted Swahili more rights and privileges than they gave to coastal non-Muslims (Cooper,

1980). Today, the vast majority of Swahili consider themselves Muslim by definition, and

while many own land and property on the coast, their economic, religious, and kin-based

ties to the Arab world remain important to them.


Meanwhile, in the last few centuries many Giriama have lived by squatting on Swahili

or Arab-owned land, sometimes working on their plantations as slaves or low-wage

laborers. Despite these inequalities, in the 19th century Giriama and Swahili lived in a

fairly fluid symbiotic relationship. Intermarriage was common and non-controversial,

while another route to upward mobility for Giriama was through patron–client relations in

which Giriama clients could convert to Islam and ‘‘become Swahili,’’ often being

assimilated into Swahili families in the process (see Glassman, 1995; Willis, 1993). Ethnic

categories, then, were not terribly rigid or salient; in fact, when pressed to identify

themselves, individuals in Mombasa sometimes adduced a geographic or clan affiliation

rather than an ethnic one (Willis, 1993; see also Eastman, 1994).

In the colonial and post-colonial eras, however, this fluidity has been curtailed, though

not stopped altogether, by political and economic forces that have motivated both groups to

draw sharper lines between themselves. The colonial administration insisted on rigid ethnic

taxonomies and on a system of ethnically based rights and privileges, scoring a boundary

between Swahili and Mijikenda that set the stage for later conflicts (Cooper, 1980). In

recent years, multipartyism in Kenya has grounded itself in what Kenyans call ‘‘tribalism,’’

as politicians encourage an increasingly volatile ethno-territorialism that further sets ethnic

groups against one another. In the Malindi area, the word on everyone’s lips is the

possibility of majimbo, a loosely construed federalism that all sides have defined and

redefined to favor their own ethno-territorial agendas. Giriama and other Mijikenda are

particularly aggrieved by policies and corruption that have disenfranchised them of land on

which many now say they have lived ‘‘since time immemorial.’’1 Swahili, meanwhile, feel

their own entitlement to land in the Malindi area increasingly threatened. In 1997, as

politically motivated ethnic clashes raged in the Mombasa area, some Swahili in Malindi

received notes under their doors from Giriama urging them to ‘‘go back to Arabia.’’ Yet

such gestures have done little to change a coastal hierarchy that amounts to an ethnically

based class system. Today, Giriama continue to scrape by on subsistence agriculture or

petty wage labor, while squatting on lands owned by Arabs, Swahili, upcountry Kenyans,

Asians, or the government. Few possess the fees for formal education, the capital to start a

business, or the land for large-scale farming.

In today’s Malindi, then, there is a tension between the coastal heritage of ethnic fluidity

and the contemporary currents of ideological essentialism and group conflict emergent

from colonial and post-colonial forces. While there are still Giriama who convert from

Christianity or their indigenous religion of ancestor propitiation and spirit mediumship to

Islam and attempt to assimilate into Swahili families, they are relatively few, and their

efforts are not always successful. Indeed, Eastman has noted that despite the ongoing

relational networks between coastal Swahili and their neighbors, Swahili ethnicity has

become increasingly reified in recent years, drawing clearer distinctions between ‘‘insiders

(core Swahili) and outsiders’’ (Eastman, 1994: 85; emphasis hers).


1 The political and economic contests over land in the Malindi area have affected Giriama stories about their

own origins. The popular Giriama narrative in the past, one that endures in certain areas where there is less anxiety

about land ownership, locates Giriama origins in a northern territory called Shungwaya or Singwaya. Yet in

Malindi today it is far more common for Giriama to assert that they have lived exactly where they are, in and

around Malindi town, ‘‘since time immemorial’’—a narrative that portrays other ethnic groups in the area as

interlopers with less entitlement to land ownership.

Such ethnic essentialism is not unanimously shared by all Swahili and Giriama in

Malindi, but it is a widely available discursive and cognitive strategy. When I asked dozens

of Swahili and Giriama whether a Giriama can ‘‘become Swahili,’’ I found that half of my

Swahili informants and three quarters of my Giriama informants replied it was impossible,

usually because of acute differences in ‘‘blood,’’ ‘‘character,’’ or ‘‘culture.’’ For many

Giriama in Malindi, furthermore, these notions of difference are complemented by a

cynicism about Swahili willingness to accept Giriama. As several Giriama men put it to

me, trying to become Swahili is ‘‘a very hard task’’. Indeed, many Swahili in Malindi view

the markers of Giriama culture, including their diet and household arrangements, as more

or less synonymous with physical and spiritual pollution (McIntosh, 2004). Some Swahili

in Malindi refer to would-be Giriama assimilates as ‘‘bush Swahili’’ (Waswahili wasitu), in

contrast with ‘‘real Swahili’’ (Waswahili sawasawa). While Swahili are divided about the

possibility of Giriama assimilation—indeed, on several occasions I heard members of the

same Swahili household debate the issue without resolution—there is no doubt that

essentialist discourse about ethnicity is available among both Swahili and Giriama

communities in Malindi town and its outskirts, where economic inequalities are acute,

ethnoterritorial tensions are at high pitch, and Giriama are particularly familiar with the

sting of potential rejection.2

The hierarchy between urban-based Swahili in Malindi and Giriama who live on the

fringes of town has been both reflected and retrenched in the linguistic domain. Malindi is a

multicultural town through which Arabs, Swahili, Mijikenda, Europeans, Kikuyu, Luo,

Kamba, Maasai, Somali, and other ethnic groups circulate in the course of a day. Of all the

languages heard on the streets and spoken behind closed doors, the four most prominent are

Kiswahili, Kigiriama, Arabic, and English; of these, I focus on Kigiriama, Kiswahili, and

Arabic, which are often pitted against each other in Malindi’s linguistic marketplace, and are

central to Swahili and Giriama’s ongoing struggles to define and protect their ethnic

identities.

Kigiriama, the Giriama language, is considered an atavistic, non-literate tongue by

Swahili and Arabs, upcountry folk, and representatives of the Kenyan state. It has been

neglected by scholars and state agencies, and unlike Kiswahili, Arabic, and English, it is not

offered as a subject of study in state or private schools. While some non-Giriama pick up

elements of the language through proximity, the idea of setting out to learn Kigiriama would

strike most coastal residents as peculiar, if not outlandish. Underscoring this stigma, many

coastal schools forbid the use of Kigiriama in primary school classrooms once students have

begun the study of Kiswahili and English. The opprobrium associated with Kigiriama works

against elderly or unschooled Giriama who speak little to no Kiswahili or English; they are

isolated from employment opportunities, from communication with medical professionals in

town (most of whom come from upcountry), and from interaction with most bureaucrats.

Although they are quite aware that the broader linguistic marketplace is arrayed against

their language, many Giriama themselves associate their tongue with ethnic pride, even

ethnic revivalism. When Giriama politicians give speeches about Giriama rights, for


2 These essentialisms are clearly grounded in local concerns; Giriama who live in hinterland areas under

different political and economic circumstances have different relationships with Swahili, whose socioeconomic

dominance is less present in daily life (Parkin, 1991).

example, they may begin in Kiswahili or English to mark themselves as educated or the

occasion as formal, but tend to switch into Kigiriama to make emotionally laden points

about Giriama rights, triggering a sense of unity and enthusiasm among their audiences.

Yet such currents of pride do not alter the ways in which their tongue is marginalized by

other ethnic groups and by institutions.

While Kigiriama is treated as a tainted language in the wider linguistic marketplace,

Arabic enjoys associations with pious and high status Muslim ethnic groups. Swahili

fetishize Arabic as a connection to the wealthy and sacred Arab lands, as the pan-national

language of the wider Muslim community, and as the language of the Quran, of Allah, and

of all the souls in heaven. Those who have the opportunity and the motivation study the

tongue in madarasa, and some travel to Arabia to master it. In his account of the

development of Swahili civilization, Khalid writes that ‘‘Arabic filled for [ancient Swahili]

the same function which Latin served in medieval Europe, and this is, to a lesser extent, still

its place today’’ (1977: 55). What Khalid does not specify is the dual function served by

Latin then and by Arabic today: each is a sacred language embodying the powers of a world

religion, and each is a language of exclusion, known only by privileged citizens with a

specialized education.

If Kigiriama is marginalized in coastal hegemony and Arabic is elevated to a position of

high prestige, the national language Kiswahili sits in a complex space both between and

orthogonal to these. For non-coastal Kenyans, Kiswahili tends to represent national unity

and, for those who have learned the standard forms in primary and secondary school,

education. For those on the coast, however, Kiswahili is also the first language of the Swahili

people, and is strongly associated with their ethnic heritage and with Islam. While Kiswahili

has many Bantu elements, with syntactic parallels to and cognates in Kigiriama and the other

Mijikenda languages, about 20 to 30% of its lexicon originates in Arabic. The meanings that

Swahili themselves impose upon these facts are a matter of cultural and political contingency

(Khalid, 1977; Mazrui and Shariff, 1994; Mazrui and Mazrui, 1995; Russell, 1981)—some

nationalists have emphasized the Bantu roots of the tongue to underscore its ‘essential’

Africanness, while others have adduced the Arabic components of Kiswahili to support an

Arabocentric model of Swahili identity. Regardless of where the ideological emphasis is

placed, the tongue retains a dual connotation on the coast as both the language of the

relatively wealthy Muslim Swahili people and a language of education and commerce.

The hierarchy between these languages is fairly clear, with Kigiriama at the bottom,

Arabic in a high status position, and Kiswahili situated somewhere between them. Yet the

notion of rank or status does not capture the intricate ontological premises in Swahili and

Giriama language ideologies, or the ways these are deployed in service of boundary

making and resistance. To better grasp these dynamics, I have found it helpful to

distinguish several variations on the theme of language essentialism that inform them.

Where possible, I will exemplify these forms of language essentialism not only with my

own data, but also with the work of other scholars, particularly Africanists, so as to

demonstrate the relevance of language essentialism to the wider study of language

ideologies in contexts of ethnic division and national definition.

Before I proceed, I should say a few words about my methods. Many scholars of

language ideology view it as multiply sited in thought and practice, including conscious

assertions and unconscious habits (cf. Silverstein, 1998; Woolard, 1998). Some of my


analysis, then, extrapolates language ideologies from linguistic practices such as code-

switching in ritual context (see ‘religio-linguistic linking’ below). Yet, as Spitulnik has

noted, ‘‘language ideologies are most readily identifiable in explicit metalinguistic

discourse (i.e. language about language)’’ (Spitulnik, 1998: 163). Accordingly, much of my

data was elicited through metalinguistic questions designed to probe speakers’ intuitions

about languages. I also found myself the recipient of many spontaneous metalinguistic

claims, particularly during discussions of ethnic politics. As Parkin observes, linguistic

ideological remarks tend to become especially acute when groups are asked to compare

themselves to other groups. In this context of comparison, speakers sometimes make

unambiguous ideological claims that dissolve sociolinguistic subtleties of which, in other

contexts, they may be quite aware (Parkin, 1994: 228; see also Fairhead, 1994: 137). Such

absolutism exemplifies the semiotic mechanism Irvine and Gal (2002: 38) term ‘‘erasure’’:

the systematic obliteration of evidence that contradicts a particular ideology. It is, then,

important to bear in mind that the essentialist ideologies I outline below emerge from

particular discursive contexts, rather than being static beliefs unanimously held for all

times by all members of the social groups in question.

4. Varieties of language essentialism

4.1. Language reification

Language reification is a common manifestation of a naturalized construal of language. It

is the notion that languages are inherently discrete, bounded entities, rather than categories

created by cultural and political contingency (see Woolard, 1998: 16; Irvine and Gal, 2000).

Historically, language reification has often been part of the conceptual apparatus of nation

states, initiated when the state unites dialectical variation under one label and/or partitions

merging linguistic forms into distinct categories for the sake of administrative convenience

(see Van Binsbergen, 1994: 144 for a discussion of the reification of the Nkoya language of

Western Zambia). This conceptual maneuver can also be seen in European linguists’ efforts

to map the languages of Africa, India, and other colonies as if they were discrete (Fardon and

Furniss, 1994: 10–13; Irvine and Gal, 2000). Such models of language have often been taken

up as folk concepts through the interactions between governments or institutions and

citizens (Laitin, 1992: 6; see also Ranger, 1989: 127).

Language reification is widespread on the Kenya coast. Politicians, state institutions,

schools, and ordinary Swahili and Giriama label and differentiate languages as if they were

inherently discrete, despite the extensive overlap between Kigiriama and Kiswahili and

between Kiswahili and Arabic. While I do not have clear evidence for the historical origins

of this conceptual pattern, it is isomorphic with the colonial and post-colonial discourses

that attempt to score sharp boundaries between social groups.

4.2. Ethnolinguistic linking

Ethnolinguistic linking is the notion that a particular language is the natural, intrinsic,

and (at least in some cases) inalienable province of a particular ethnicity. When the


relationship between ‘a language’ and ‘a people’ is circumscribed and reified, it results in

what Woolard describes as ‘‘the identification of a language with a people and a consequent

diagnosis of peoplehood by the criterion of language’’ (Woolard, 1998: 16; see also Hymes,

1984). Similarly, Silverstein’s notion of a sociolinguistic ‘‘indexical order’’ refers to

situations in which types of speech statistically associated with a social aggregate are

construed as belonging to a distinctive kind of people (Silverstein, 1996). But while the

notion of indexical order addresses the reification of social categories, it does not directly

capture the ontological depth of some ethnolinguistic ideologies. The phrase

‘ethnolinguistic linking’ is thus intended to encompass situations in which types of

language are used to reify types of people, and situations in which languages and social

groups are seen as so profoundly ontologically bound together that language is seen as part

and parcel of the very substance of its users.

Ethnolinguistic linking was prominent in the discourse of Western European elites as

they partitioned their empires and assumed that language cuts the social world at its natural

joints (Irvine and Gal, 2000; see also Mannheim, 1991; Schlee, 1994: 203). In South

Africa, language was the primary—sometimes, the sole—determinant of ethnic

classification by colonial powers (Benjamin, 1994). Such classifications, of course, tend

to be premised upon linguistic reification. In the northern and eastern Transvaal, for

instance, missionaries lumped several linguistic varieties into the ‘Tsonga language,’ and

having already reified the linguistic category, extrapolated from that to the existence of a

discrete ‘tribe’ (Harries, 1989: 85; see also Harries, 1988) where previously there were

geographically, linguistically, and culturally diffuse peoples. Both ‘a language’ (bounded

and distinct) and ‘a people’ (ontologically wed to that language) may thus be posited in one

conceptual stroke.

Many, though not all, nationalist ideologies of language seem to be variations upon the

theme of ethnolinguistic linking. According to Woolard, such nationalist linguistic

ideologies were ‘‘exported through colonialism’’ and are ‘‘globally hegemonic today’’

(Woolard, 1998: 17; see also Haugen, 1991; Hymes, 1984; Mignolo, 2002). Blommaert

and Verschueren (1998), for instance, have extensively documented the presence of

ethnolinguistic linking in contemporary European nationalisms, while Handler documents

the naturalized links between language and collective national essence among francophone

Quebecois (Handler, 1988). These equations can be so powerful that ‘‘the absence of a

distinct language can cast doubt on the legitimacy of claims to nationhood’’ (Woolard and

Schieffelin, 1994: 60).3

Coulmas has described the tensions that can emerge between the tendency to use

language as a symbol of nationality and the countervailing use of ethnolinguistic

essentialism by dominated groups to make ‘‘political claims based on their linguistic

identity’’ (Coulmas, 1988: 11). Indeed, Woolard and Schieffelin (1994: 60) note that

minority language movements emerge from the same ‘‘one language/one people’’ ideology


3 Some psychologists and anthropologists have found ethnolinguistic linking in even very young Western

children. See Piaget and Weil (1951), Jahoda (1963), and Kuczaj and Harbaugh (1982) for evidence that Western

children aged 6 and older tend to treat language differences as evidence for national or cultural differences. See

Hirschfeld and Gelman (1997) for evidence that young Western children ‘‘expect language differences to map

specifically onto potentially independently reproducing social kinds’’ (Hirschfeld and Gelman, 1997: 227) and

treat language as if it is heritable, regardless of environmental conditions (ibid.: 233).

that informs many nationalist movements. Certainly in many areas of Africa, minority

language groups since the colonial period have staked their identity on what van

Binsbergen terms ‘‘language-centered ethnic strategies’’ (Van Binsbergen, 1994: 161).

Today, many Swahili and Giriama consider languages intrinsic to their associated ethnic

groups; among Giriama, in fact, the terms for ‘tribe’ and ‘language’ are identical: kabila.

Ethnolinguistic linking on the Kenya coast comes to the fore when assertions of patrimony

are of special political urgency (Mazrui and Shariff, 1994: 76). In 1997, for instance, during

a series of politically orchestrated ethnic clashes over coastal lands, one Giriama leader

named Samson administered an oath to thousands of young Giriama men to secure their

allegiance to the cause. While the central purpose of the oath was to assert Giriama’s

ethnically based rights to land, it bases its argument on an essentialist link between

ethnicity and language:

God created people. After that he divided them by different languages. After each

group had been divided by language, each was given a place to live. The Indians were

given the language of Kihindi and placed in India. God ordered them to stay there.

Arabs were given the language of Arabic and placed in Arabia. God ordered them to

stay there. [And so on, through a list of ethnic groups currently living on the coast.

The rest of the oath concerns the individual’s willingness to fight on behalf of his

God-given land.]

The notion of a God-given three-way link between ethnicity, language, and land is not

idiosyncratic to Sampson. I elicited it from several informants when I asked probing

questions about the Giriama language, such as: ‘‘How is Kigiriama related to the Giriama

people?’’ Here is how one Giriama youth answered my query:

Kigiriama belongs to those on Giriama land. Those living on Giriama land are

entitled to speak Kigiriama. You see, God created people and in his kindness he gave

each kind of people a place. For example, Kambas were given Kamba land and

Kikamba as their language. Luos were given Kijaluo as their language and the Luo

land as their dwelling place. And so on.

The reasoning in these narratives is redolent of the European ideology described by

Irvine and Gal, in which European linguists and ethnographers tended to ‘‘discover’’

language boundaries and relationships in non-Western areas and to assume that languages

‘‘[identified] populations and territories that could be suitably treated as political unities’’

(Irvine and Gal, 2000: 50; see also Errington, 2001, and Mignolo, 2002: 229).

It is one thing to suggest that people have God-given languages; it is another to suggest

that such languages are inalienable. Yet like Giriama territory, the Giriama language is

sometimes defended against incursions from outsiders, as if the use of Kigiriama by non-

Giriama were threatening or downright unnatural. Many Giriama were apprehensive when

I began to learn their language, saying, for instance, that ‘‘now she will know all our

secrets!’’ To be sure, this objection has political overtones, framing language as both a kind

of shield and what van Binsbergen calls ‘‘the last refuge of owning and belonging, of

competence and identity’’ (Van Binsbergen, 1994: 171). Yet to some Giriama, it seemed an

ontological peculiarity that someone of my ethnicity should speak their language. Some

expressed a degree of shock upon hearing me pronounce the language. The most extreme


reaction I encountered came from a boy of about 13 who heard me speaking Kigiriama.

He asked aggressively: ‘‘Are you a Giriama or a White person?’’ I replied that I was a

White person, and he responded by placing me in a liminal category: ‘‘Then you are a

witch!’’

Giriama also tend to consider Kiswahili tightly bound to the Swahili people despite the

fact that many Giriama speak that language. One source of evidence for this conceptual

linkage comes from an informal experiment, in which I tape-recorded three young Giriama

men speaking standard Kiswahili, each reciting a mundane narrative about shopping for

vegetables that offered no obvious clues to their ethnicity. When I played this tape to over

30 Giriama subjects and asked them to identify the ethnicity of the speakers, every single

subject assumed that the speakers were Swahili. The yoke between language and ethnicity

is further evident among the small number of Giriama who still attempt to assimilate (with

uncertain success) into Swahili society. To them, abandoning Kigiriama in favor of

Kiswahili is a sine qua non of their transformation. While at one level such efforts

contradict the essentialist rhetoric that suggests Giriama cannot become Swahili, at another

level they uphold the essentialist notion that Swahili ethnicity and the Swahili language are

bound firmly together.

How does ethnolinguistic essentialism factor into Swahili ethnic identity in Malindi?

Swahili identity is famously complex and contested (Mazrui and Shariff, 1994), and in

Malindi it can sometimes seem like a moving target. When I asked Swahili informants

‘‘What is a Swahili?’’ quite a few replied: ‘‘A Swahili person is [defined by] language’’

(Mswahili ni lugha). Yet when I pointed out that the Swahili language is spoken by many,

including Giriama, I found that further criteria for Swahiliness tended to emerge,

including, often, that of ‘‘Arab blood mixed with African blood.’’ These conversations

reveal a central Swahili dilemma: Kiswahili is not easily construed as their inalienable

tongue, since a standard version is used as a lingua franca across East Africa. Yet many

find rhetorical ways of preserving Kiswahili as part of their patrimony, through intricate

distinctions that shift the goalposts of just what constitutes mastery of the language

(Mazrui and Shariff, 1994: 77). These attempts to shore up a boundary are reflected in

the rhetoric of one Swahili friend of mine who confided that ‘‘the problem with

Giriama’’ is that ‘‘despite the fact that Swahili people understand Kigiriama, Giriama

people just don’t know Kiswahili.’’ From this ethnographer’s point of view, the opposite

is closer to the truth in the Malindi area; the majority of Swahili can follow only

fragments of Giriama conversation, while most Giriama find standard Kiswahili more-

or-less transparent to the ear, and speak it conversationally far more often than Swahili

ever speak Kigiriama. His assertion, however, may have been based on a less literal,

more essentialist logic. Giriama may think they know Kiswahili, they may even think

they’re speaking it, but unlike the Swahili, they aren’t speaking ‘real’ Kiswahili. Which

brings me to the third variation on the theme of language essentialism: language

authentication.

4.3. Language authentication

Language authentication is the idea that some instances of a language are relatively

more authentic than others; in other words, that certain linguistic forms or exemplars more


than others are emergent from or saturated with the essence that gives the language its true

identity. It often entails the assumption that languages have intrinsically authentic and/or

proper forms—an idea that is sometimes couched in terms of ‘purity.’ Language

authentication resonates with the version of linguistic essentialism identified by Bichakjian

(as described in Section 1), but it is not identical. Bichakjian’s essentialism asserts

structural rigidity in the composition of a language, whereas language authentication

makes politicized assertions about what kinds of speech are bona fide, original, pure, or

otherwise acceptable tokens of an essentialized type.4

Standardization, the institutional regimentation of prescriptive grammars for ‘correct’

speech, is the most widely discussed form of language authentication in the literature. As

Bourdieu and others have recognized, such regimented languages are often ‘‘bound up with

the state,’’ codified and fixed by grammarians and teachers, and contrasted with ‘‘slang,’’

‘‘common,’’ and sometimes ‘‘foreign’’ speech forms (Bourdieu, 1991: 45, 49; see also

Handler, 1988: 162–175; Urciuoli, 1995: 534; Woolard and Schieffelin, 1994: 64; and

Rajagopalan, 2002 for examples of Brazilian national anxiety about incursions of ‘foreign’

elements into Portuguese). In the early decades of colonialism and beyond, missionaries

were often the ones to choose ‘‘what the ‘proper’ form of the [African] language would be’’

as they translated oral languages into congealed written forms (Vail, 1989: 11; see also

Fabian, 1991; Ranger, 1989). Colonial advisors in Africa and India made recommendations

about language standardization to facilitate administration and teaching, sometimes

reifying the notion of ‘‘pure,’’ original language forms in contrast to the ‘‘broken’’ or

‘‘corrupt’’ ones spoken on the ground (Cohn, 1985; Peires, 1979; Spencer, 1971). In the

post-colonial era, state-sponsored standardization endures; in South Africa, for instance,

the state-controlled Language Boards and the South African Broadcasting Corporation

have attempted to keep African languages ‘‘pure’’ in publications and broadcasts,

‘‘set[ting] conservative standards which are not in keeping with the evolution of language

in the new urban cultures’’ (Maake, 1994: 117).

Institutionally sponsored standardization is not the only form of language authentica-

tion, for authentication can also be invoked in low status ethnic groups’ efforts to defend

their indigenous (ethno)linguistic boundaries from what they consider inferior or

contaminated versions of the language (Urciuoli, 1995: 535). Often, this process is a

response to some kind of wider threat; as Van Binsbergen points out, the process of defining

the essence of a language by local and minority groups ‘‘is . . . intensified in a context of

political and economic incorporation [by the nation state]—the very cradle also of

ethnicity’’ (Van Binsbergen, 1994: 169). In Zambia and Botswana, for instance, certain

disenfranchised groups define their languages in opposition to others by marking certain

forms as their own and others as ‘‘alien’’ (Van Binsbergen, 1994: 168). Ever since the Krio

language became a lingua franca in Sierra Leone, native Krio speakers have opined that

‘‘theirs is the ‘pure’ language while the [version spoken as a second language] is a


4 Van Binsbergen describes this phenomenon of lexical and syntactic purism as ‘‘reification or objectification’’

(1994: 168). However, it is worth prescinding what I call language reification—the basic conceptual move of

treating languages as if they are discrete objects—from what I call language authentication, which can include the

notion of purity. In principal, the reification of a language does not necessarily entail an ideology of purity, though

it may.

bastardized form’’ (Fyle, 1994: 51). Examples abound outside of Africa as well; in Central

Mexico, for instance, some men enact their nostalgia for a bygone era by deeming Spanish

rude and disrespectful while holding up ‘‘correct, unmixed Mexicano’’ as a language

linked to a more sacred way of life and to ‘‘ ‘respectful’ sociality’’ (Hill, 1998: 71). In many

post-colonial contexts, debates about language authenticity are braided together with

debates about post-colonial identity. In Haiti, the concern about which forms of Haitian

Creole are ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ are at some level about ‘‘[w]ho is the ‘real’ Haitian’’

(Schieffelin and Doucet, 1998: 301).

Language authentication is a live part of Giriama ideology, even though Giriama

language has never been officially standardized and the few printed grammars and

dictionaries have barely circulated beyond the missionary headquarters in which most of

them have been produced. Yet because Giriama feel their culture under severe threat by the

incursions of Islam, Christianity, and Westernization, their models of ‘authentic’ culture

are sometimes bound up with rhetorical invocations of ‘authentic’ Kigiriama. Giriama in

Malindi associate their ‘original’ culture, and correspondingly, their ‘original’ language,

with two distant loci: the past, and hinterland Giriama settlements, both presumed to be less

influenced by outsiders (see Parkin, 1991). Of the Kigiriama spoken a long time ago

(kapindi) or inland, Giriama say not that it is ‘‘correct,’’ but rather that it is ‘‘originary,’’ and

includes an obscure lexicon largely unknown to urban Giriama youth. In Malindi, some

Giriama explain that the way the elders and the inlanders speak sometimes ‘‘defeats’’ them

because it is so different. In one metalinguistic exchange, my young Giriama research

assistant Katana asked his elder about the existence of ‘‘original Kigiriama,’’ and the

following dialogue ensued:

Elder: Of course we have original Kigiriama in our land. You young today are lost,

lost completely! You don’t know that the Giriama have an origin, a home! A thing to

be proud of!

Katana: What is original Kigiriama?

Elder: The practices of our grandfathers which we inherited; don’t you under-

stand?. . .Kigiriama belongs to the people who were given it by God, and those are the

Giriama. . .You youth—after you acquire a little education you turn your backs on the

old people. You like to speak the book languages rather than the land language.

Katana: What are the book languages?

Elder: English and Kiswahili.

In this emotional discussion, we see familiar signs of ethnolinguistic linking by the

elderly man (the Giriama people were ‘‘given [their language] by God’’), and the

association of ‘‘original Kigiriama’’ with a way of life that is being abandoned by literate

urban youth. He also sets up a structural contrast between ‘‘land’’ (an emblem of Giriama

patrimony), which is twinned with Kigiriama, versus ‘‘books’’ (an emblem of both secular

Western education and Quranic education), which are twinned with the languages of

Others (English and Kiswahili). The latter are associated with development, Islamization,


capitalism, and any number of shifts that here are ideologically modeled as a betrayal of

Giriama authenticity.

Swahili are even more concerned than Giriama with language authentication, since their

tongue is so widely spoken by non-Swahili people. In their case, authentication has

sometimes taken the form of standardization. Colonial officials deemed Zanzibari and

Tanzanian Kiswahili the ‘standard’ bearers for the language, and much post-colonial

rhetoric has continued to reify the notion that there are more and less accurate versions of

the tongue. The Kenya Swahili Council (Baraza la Kiswahili Kenya), an NGO formed in

Mombasa in the 1970s, was staffed largely by Swahili scholars with the intention of

keeping the Kenyan national language ‘‘straight’’ by correcting the errors of the masses and

weeding out ‘‘distortions.’’ As Mazrui and Shariff suggest,

[the] purist sentiments of the Swahili scholars are perhaps subconscious efforts to

redefine the linguistic boundaries of Swahili identity . . . They are in a sense saying

that a person does not become Swahili merely by speaking just any variety of the

language. (Mazrui and Shariff, 1994: 77)

Indeed, on the ground in Malindi, it is not unusual to hear Swahili deride what they

consider the sloppy and crude versions of Kiswahili spoken by other peoples. They may, for

instance, scorn Mijikenda and upcountry groups for using verb roots without the

appropriate tense markers, or for lacking precision as they navigate the numerous

Kiswahili noun classes and their associated prefixes and infixes.

Yet the forms of language authentication among Swahili people are varied and

contested. In Malindi, there are several contenders for ‘authentic’ Kiswahili. Some

Swahili uphold the ‘standard’ and grammatically exact versions spoken in Zanzibar

and Tanzania as the most legitimate. Others espouse non-standard dialects such as

Kiamu, Kimvita, or Kibajuni, with distinctive pronunciation and lexicon that are not taught

in schools. These generally mark the speaker as having ancestry in long-established

Swahili communities such as Mombasa, Lamu, or the Bajuni areas north of Lamu (cf.

Bakari et al., 1985; Eastman, 1994; Parkin, 1994: 243; Russell, 1981). Beckerleg, for

instance, reports that the Bajuni community in Watamu (a neighboring community to

Malindi) ‘‘promotes a dialect impenetrable to speakers of standard Swahili’’; ‘‘outsiders

have inadequate knowledge of [it] . . . and are inevitably marginalized’’ (Beckerleg, 1994

107). However, the complexity of this exclusionary process is evident from the fact that

Giriama working in the community have nevertheless learned to speak Kibajuni with

proficiency.

Finally, some Swahili in Malindi locate the essence of Kiswahili in a register of

obscure speech known as Kiswahili ndani (literally ‘‘inner or internal Swahili’’),

considered a repository of ‘‘authentic’’ (asili) Swahili traditions and values. Largely

unintelligible to outsiders (Russell, 1981), Kiswahili ndani includes aphorisms ( jina or

methali), slang terms, archaisms, obscure metaphors, and riddles (mafumbo). Since the

nineteenth century, command of Kiswahili ndani has sometimes been ideologically

framed as an important factor in constructing an Mswahili sana (literally, ‘‘a very

Swahili Swahili’’): a cultural sophisticate and expert in local language and culture

(Pouwels, 1987: 73). Certainly the register is largely unattainable to Giriama at the

margins of Swahili culture.


4.4. Religio-linguistic linking

This category is a cousin to ethnolinguistic linking, except that here, a natural link is

stipulated between a religion and a language rather than (or in addition to) an ethnicity and

a language. The literature on language ideology does not contain nearly as many

descriptions of religio-linguistic linking as it does references to ethnolinguistic linking.

Documented instances include the yoking of Arabic to Islam in some Muslim communities

(Suleiman, 1994), and the association of Hebrew with strictly sacred contexts by certain

ultraorthodox Jewish communities (Glinart and Shilhav, 1991).

Religio-linguistic linking is particularly salient to Swahili versions of Islam. As they

frown upon the ‘‘misuse’’ of Kiswahili by other ethnicities, many Swahili also take fervent

measures to align themselves with a language they believe infused with power, prestige,

and sacred value: Arabic. Since the 19th century, the Swahili emphasis on achieving

proximity to God through proficiency in religious Arabic texts has mounted. According to

Pouwels (1987), the influx of scholars from the Hadramawt under Busaidi rule in the 19th

century brought the Islamic written tradition new social standing, and literacy in Arabic

began to grow. In the last few decades, there has been another renaissance, with increasing

numbers of Swahili attending theological universities and mosque colleges in the Middle

East (Parkin, 1994: 231; see also Kresse, 2003). Since the late 1980s, rural and urban

madarasa have proliferated, and more and more students are able to recite and interpret

the Quran—always in the original Arabic. These trends have complemented the Swahili

tendency to impute sacred qualities to Arabic (cf. Parkin, 1994: 234–239). By now, Arabic

is so steeped in religious contexts that Swahili and Giriama alike consider Arabic and

Islam inextricable from each other. When I asked one Swahili whether prayers need to be

said in any particular language, he responded: ‘‘Yes; prayers should be said only in

Kiislam [the language of Islam],’’ meaning Arabic. The tongue is also sometimes referred

to as ‘‘Kiallah’’; the language of Allah. One young Giriama man told me that he had once

taken an interest in Islam, until he realized it was ‘‘only for those who have the Arab

language.’’ Since few Giriama have any in-depth knowledge of Arabic, the yoke between

language and religion is occasionally used to justify the claim that Giriama do not make

good Muslims.

Religio-linguistic linking among Giriama takes several forms. One is the claim that the

Giriama language has special metaphysical force. Some Giriama, for instance, say that if

they curse God in English or Kiswahili, there will be no consequences, but if they do so in

Kigiriama, ‘‘such words can result in death.’’ Another Giriama man told me that ‘‘A

Swahili can curse his mother so easily, but for a Giriama, to do so could be followed by her

death.’’ When I asked why, he replied: ‘‘Because the Swahili language doesn’t carry

strength.’’ One individual accounted for the power of the Giriama language by contrasting

its gravity to that of Kiswahili: ‘‘Kiswahili is spoken in a joking manner, but Kigiriama is

always serious.’’ Other informants say that Kigiriama has ‘‘weight’’ (uzito); a kind of force

that gives it ontological power. Strikingly, in other contexts such as the divination rituals

described below, Giriama treat Arabic as if it has potencies beyond those of Kigiriama.

Nonetheless, the above formulations assert a modicum of Giriama pride in the face of

cultural domination. Such claims also treat languages not as interchangeable codes, but as

potent phenomena that can invoke and even embody different metaphysical powers.


This religio-linguistic linking figures into an intriguing form of linguistic relativism.

When I asked one man whether Kigiriama is more suitable than other languages for

discussing certain topics, he replied:

If a Giriama boy were to have sex with his mother, the Giriama will talk of vitio. It’s a

special ritual, and if it doesn’t take place, someone in the family might suffer death or

a permanent disease.5 But in English such things aren’t mentioned, nor are they in

Kiswahili. It is also said in Kigiriama that if sisters sleep with the same man, it might

lead to death. But in English these things aren’t mentioned; I don’t think in the

English language making love with two sisters has any side effects, or in Kiswahili,

but among the Giriama it results in side effects. So indeed there are some issues that

need to be discussed in Kigiriama and not mentioned in Kiswahili or English.

A second respondent offers a similar formulation:

Certain things have words and meaning in Kigiriama and are not found in Kiswahili,

such as mavingane.6 This sickness [which is caused by sexual misconduct] will start

with diarrhea or vomiting and will result in death. If the Swahili do the same, nothing

happens.

Several things are worth noticing in the claims of these informants. Both men refer to

illnesses caused by socio-sexually inappropriate behavior; these illnesses constitute a

somatic and metaphysical policing system in Giriama social arrangements. Both men also

conflate languages with ethnic groups (ethnolinguistic linking), implying that Kigiriama

describes forces that are real but only relevant only to the Giriama people, while English

describes what is relevant for English/white people, and so on. And both men appear to

read the presence of metaphysically caused illness in an ethnic group off the lexicon of the

language associated with that ethnic group. In fact, the absence of terminological

equivalents to vitio and mavingane in English and Kiswahili do not lead the speakers to

question the reality or efficacy of these illnesses and their causes, but instead to relativize

these illnesses to Giriama. Arguably, these terms are treated not as human inventions, but

instead as ethnically based accoutrements to an intrinsic (and also ethnically based)

metaphysical phenomenon.

Not surprisingly, those rituals considered quintessentially Giriama are carried out in

Kigiriama. These include the act of appeasing the ancestors (kuhasa) and the divination

and healing rites that invoke Giriama forces such as the Giriama god Mulungu, the

ancestors, and the Mijikenda spirits. Giriama also regard Arabic and, in religious contexts,

Kiswahili, as being intrinsically linked to the powers of Islam. This linguistic ideology is


5 In fact, the term vitio traditionally refers not to a ritual, but rather to the illness caused by incest or otherwise

inappropriate sexual behavior. The symptoms include vomiting and diarrhea, and can lead to death. As this

informant suggest, the illness can be treated through purificatory ritual.6 Mavingane is a variation on the theme of vitio; it is illness caused by improper sexual mixing, especially

incestuous mixing. A number of my informants in Malindi identified mavingane as an illness caused by the

proximity of a man’s male relative, or even the clothing or property of that male relative, to the place where that

man has sex. As Parkin discusses, however, many Giriama treat vitio and mavingane as overlapping concepts, both

suggesting illness caused by incest or adultury, with vitio tending to have graver connotations (Parkin, 1991: 137–

146).

implicit in the ritual practice of some Giriama healers in the Malindi area who deliberately

divide their healing rituals into portions that appeal respectively to what they call ‘‘the

Giriama side’’ (in other words, the metaphysical forces associated with Giriama ethnicity)

and ‘‘the Muslim side.’’ Such rituals involve code shifts, in which the language used

depends on the religious powers appealed to; Kigiriama is used to appeal to the Giriama

God and Giriama ancestors, while at other moments in the same ritual, Kiswahili and

highly attenuated versions of Arabic may be used to invoke the Muslim God and powers of

Islam.

A particularly vivid example of this mapping of language onto cosmology can be

found in a ritual designed by a Giriama healer named Kahindi, designed to help a young

woman, Sidi, who had been cursed. Since no one was sure whether she had been

afflicted through Giriama or Swahili agency, Kahindi conducted two kinds of ritual in

quick succession. The first drew on obvious Giriama symbolism, particularly a series of

seven, parallel powder-drawn lines on the ground called mihambo mifungahe which Sidi

was to scuff with her feet to reverse any curses. Speaking entirely in Kigiriama, Kahindi

opened the ritual by invoking ‘‘Ancestors in the earth below, Mulungu in the skies

above’’ (Koma tsi, Mulungu tzulu), then moved to a lengthy description of the ‘‘bad

omens’’ (nongo mbii) that Sidi had been cursed with. Kahindi then engaged in a lengthy

call-response exchange with Sidi’s friends and family as he enjoined the bad omens to

fly away.

All the kinds of witchcraft here in the world [she is] trapped with- I have said I want

them to be purged; let them be purged . . . The bad omen of the snake, if the snake is

seen let it be killed instantly; it needs to be cleansed [etc.] (Matsai gosini garigo

haha duniani arigo gomezwa nago nidzaamba kumala kusafishika- nagasafishike

. . .Nongo mbii ya nyoka, nyoka akionewa ni kwalagwa kare kumala kuera naiere).

When the Giriama portion of the ritual ended, Kahindi quietly switched the scene

by producing a white cloth to symbolize Muslim purity, a gold-tone ring to invoke the

wealth associated with Islam, a shiny vase with sticks of incense, and a leather-bound

Quran. At last he spoke again, opening with an Arabic greeting: ‘‘In the name of God’’

(Bismillahi rahaman rahimu) before shifting into Kiswahili. The lengthy plea that followed

stood in sharp contrast to his appeals in the first portion of the ritual. While Kahindi had

spoken with assertive agency when addressing the Giriama powers (‘‘I have said I want

them to be purged’’), his phrasing in the second portion of the ritual was utterly self-

abnegating:

We have admitted that we are unclean people, we’re people who are not worthy to

face your direction . . . we accept that we are under your feet, oh Lord (Tumekubali ya

kwamba sisi ni watu wachafu, ni watu ambao hatufai kuelekeza sura zetu mbele zake

. . . tumekubali tuko chini miguuni mwako ewe Mola wetu).

Kahindi went on to assure the Lord that ‘‘this book and these prayers are stronger than

. . . any kind of sacrifice in this world’’ and that if he wants anything, he must ‘‘pray to God,

to Allah, the ruler.’’

Kahindi’s linguistic and symbolic shifts from one portion of the ritual to the next suggest

not a syncretistic blending of Islam and indigenous Giriama belief systems, but instead two


different appeals to two altogether different sources of supernatural power. Each locus of

power, furthermore, is linked to a particular language, a conceptual association made vivid

by Kahindi’s switch from the Giriama native tongue to the Swahili native tongue as he

appeals to different deities. These code-shifting practices sustain a model of the world in

which religions and languages are bound together (McIntosh, in preparation). They also

sustain the notion, among Giriama, that Islam is the province of an Other ethnicity. Unlike a

Western model in which religion is often considered an overlay of beliefs and rituals upon

one’s preexisting cultural identity, Giriama consider Islam to be Other, a real supernatural

force, but one that can be appropriated only through tongues at a conceptual remove from

‘Giriamaness.’ Such linguistic practices simultaneously appropriate power and hold the

same power at a distance.

4.5. Linguistic transfer

It is commonplace among sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists to observe that

language is often treated as an index of—evidence for—non-linguistic differences in

status, morality, and other social and behavioral qualities of its speakers (Bourdieu, 1991;

Irvine and Gal, 2000; see also Woolard, 1989 for powerful examples of this phenomenon in

Catalonia). But the notion of ‘‘linguistic transfer’’ as I intend it captures a deeper, more

ontologically profound conceptual maneuver, one not obviously captured by the semiotic

category of indexicality. Sometimes, language is not merely treated as evidence for group-

specific traits; it is construed as consubstantial with these group-specific traits. In other

words, in cases of linguistic transfer, languages don’t merely point to or index a social

group’s essence; they may be conceptualized as if they share and contain it. This means that

a language may be thought to contain the congealed power, purity, impurity, stigma, modes

of thought, and so on of its associated social group (and/or religion, as is sometimes the

case on the coast). It also means that even when a language is removed from its putatively

natural socioreligious context and used by someone who is not a member of that social

group or religion, it may be thought to drag with it an essential trace of that original social

group or religion. The ‘transfer’ I allude to, then, takes two possible forms: first, there is the

folk notion that a group’s properties are embodied in (have transferred onto) its language,

and second, there is the folk notion that the original group’s properties can transfer from the

language onto new set of speakers.

A version of linguistic transfer may lie behind the phenomenon Irvine and Gal term

‘‘iconization,’’ in which ‘‘[l]inguistic features that index social groups or activities appear

to be iconic representations of them, as if a linguistic feature somehow depicted or

displayed a social group’s inherent nature or essence’’ (Irvine and Gal, 2000: 37). For

example, a group that speaks slowly might be thought to be intrinsically slow-witted; the

slowness in the language and the ostensible slowness of the speakers’ intelligence are

isomorphic, and—possibly—treated as if they are ontologically intertwined. Linguistic

transfer may also be enlisted in the vaguely Whorfian language ideologies that presume

languages carry with them entire modes of thought (Handler, 1988: 60). Such reasoning

was prevalent in colonial contexts; in Benin, for instance, French colonials felt that local

tongues were ‘‘inappropriate for rational argument, for intellectual rigor, and for science’’

(Akanni Igue and N’Oueni, 1994: 57). Meanwhile, the ‘‘advance of Arabic’’ in French


colonial Africa ‘‘was seen as a proxy for Islam, fanaticism, and rebellion’’ (Laitin, 1992:

84). In a post-colonial setting, the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o has stipulated that

colonial languages confer a colonial mentality on their speakers, thereby alienating the

colonized from their authentic identity (Ngugi, 1986: 16; see Blommaert, 1994: 220–221

for related discourse in post-colonial Tanzania). Spitulnik has found that in post-colonial

Zambia, radio news delivered in English is longer and more detailed than that delivered in

Zambian languages because of a dominant discourse that assumes the intrinsic (rather than

pragmatic) unsuitability of Zambian languages to more ‘‘sophisticated,’’ ‘‘intellectual,’’ or

‘‘scientific’’ topics (Spitulnik, 1998). Such observations resonate with Bourdieu’s

discussion of Condillac’s theory of language reform during the French revolution:

‘‘[T]o reform language, to purge it of the uses linked to the old society and impose it in its

purified form, was to impose a thought that would itself be purged and purified’’ (Bourdieu,

1991: 47). In all of these examples, it seems that languages are not merely treated as indices

of or pointers to particular traits, but as part and parcel of them.

In contemporary Malindi, versions of linguistic transfer are common among Swahili

and Giriama as they negotiate the hierarchy between them. For instance, to many Swahili,

Giriama people and lifeways are more or less polluting and so, too, is Kigiriama. In Malindi

Swahili virtually never speak Kigiriama, and when Swahili and Giriama pass one another

on the village paths and roads, Swahili nearly always greet and are greeted in Kiswahili or

even in Arabic. Swahili themselves describe this behavior as a result of their ‘‘lack of

interest’’ in the Giriama tongue, but in less guarded moments admit that speaking

Kigiriama carries the risk of reconstituting them as kaffir—pagan.7 Similarly, David Parkin

has found that Kigiriama and other Mijikenda languages are ‘‘shunned as contaminating’’

(1994: 243) by Swahili in one area he studied:

Not only is [Ki]Swahili the only acceptable language of communication, but also

[Swahili people] will not normally respond to any of the non-Muslim Mijikenda

dialects, despite the fact that in a few cases at least they must have a passive

knowledge of them. They explain this by claiming that to speak and respond to such

non-Muslim dialects is to lay oneself open to the contaminating practices associated

with the non-Muslim speakers, namely their production and drinking of alcohol,

their heavy reliance on non-Koranic divination and therapy, their lengthy funerals

involving dance and drink, and the fact that their diets may include pork and other

foodstuff forbidden to Muslims. To speak and know a non-Muslim language is to

become consubstantial with the character and practices of its speakers. (Parkin, 1994:

242)

On the coast of Kenya, this ideology helps legitimate Swahili avoidance practices that

reinforce the sense of boundary between Swahili and Giriama.

Linguistic transfer may also be at work in Swahili attitudes toward Arabic. Pouwels

contends that for coastal Muslims, the Quran and Arabic count as ‘‘extensions of God

himself, taken Neoplatonically’’ (Pouwels, 1987: 88). Indeed, my Swahili interlocutors

repeatedly insisted that Arabic has supernatural communicative power, reaching Allah


7 Relatedly, Schlee notes that Muslim Somali tend to regard the Boran and Oromo languages spoken by their

non-Islamic neighbors as anti-Islamic or even the ‘‘language of the Devil’’ (Schlee, 1994: 196).

‘‘like a smoke signal’’ where another, more earthly tongue would fall short; that, unlike any

ordinary language, it cannot be translated but only interpreted; and that it automatically

confers ‘‘weight’’ (uzito) on anything expressed in it. These suggestions go beyond mere

associations between Arabic and religious forces, for they imply that the language itself is

intrinsically potent, infused with sacred gravitas and blessing. (In this case, of course, the

transfer is from a locus of sacred power onto the language.) This sacred gravitas,

furthermore, can transfer onto the speaker. According to my informants, to know Arabic is

not only to self-identify as Muslim, but also to partake of Islam itself by bringing humans

and the divine into proximity (see also Parkin, 1994: 239–240). Fluency in Arabic is so

closely associated with piety that one self-appointed guardian of Swahili culture, Sheriff

Nassir, bemoans the fact that those who study Arabic in Arabia and return to East Africa are

considered authorities on Islam on the basis of their language abilities alone (Nassir,

Ramadan lectures, Mombasa, 1998).

Finally, linguistic transfer may undergird the divination rituals upon which Giriama

rely in their efforts to understand and control their increasingly difficult social

circumstances. Their divination practices draw on the assistance of spirits from other

ethnic backgrounds, including Arab and Swahili spirits, Maasai spirits, Somali spirits,

and others. Arab spirits are by far the most common divinatory spirits in the Malindi area

where I worked; they announce their arrival by speaking a version of ‘‘Arabic’’ through

the mouth of the diviner, which the diviner then translates. I was repeatedly struck by

the fact that the rhetoric surrounding these divination sessions tends to emphasize not

the presence of a spirit per se but instead the language channeled by the diviner

(McIntosh, 2002a, 2002b). The medium of Arabic itself is treated as epistemologically

privileged relative to the medium of Kigiriama, and perhaps its essential qualities are

expected to confer the diviner with a modicum of potency of her own through a transfer

effect.

4.6. Essentialist language categorization

The final variation on the theme of linguistic essentialism is perhaps the most unusual.

In essentialist language categorization, a linguistic exemplar is designated as belonging

to a particular language by virtue of an imputed essence, rather than by virtue of the

exemplar’s surface qualities such as its sound or written appearance. Hence, language

samples that are perceptually unusual and even incomprehensible may be categorized as

belonging to a coherent language. This way of conceptualizing languages has parallels to

the racialist pattern of categorization I mention earlier, in which a person who ‘passes’ as

one race may be considered another race at some deeper level. Essentialist language

categorization, similarly, presumes that the thing that makes a language what it is (and,

by extension, that makes a linguistic exemplar an instance of a particular language) is not

its perceptibly evident properties such as sound or structure, but rather some more

elusive invisible quality—an essence, however ill-defined—that confers it with identity.

Notice that this application of essentialism to language is quite different from, almost the

inverse of, the type of linguistic authentication described by Bichakjian in which the

essence of a language is defined in terms of very particular, perceptible linguistic forms

and structures.


Essentialist language categorization is unusual and probably only obtains in

extraordinary or supernatural contexts.8 I encountered essentialist language categoriza-

tion in Kenya as part of the Giriama rituals in which diviners call on ethnic spirits to assist

them in telling fortunes. The spirits’ versions of Arabic (and the other, less common

divinatory languages such as Kisomali, Kikamba, and so on) are highly attenuated, to the

extent that they barely if at all resemble the standard. Yet, in a language recognition task I

describe elsewhere (McIntosh, 2002b), I found that about half of the Giriama in my

sample of 43 were able to recognize auditory samples of standard Arabic and other

languages such as Kisomali and Kikuyu. Diviners in the state of possession, then,

routinely use versions of language that may strike some Giriama listeners as different

from the standard, but if clients sense any discrepancy between the spirit’s tongue and

standard Arabic (or whatever language they are meant to be hearing), they are apparently

willing to override it.

Indeed, when I spoke to Giriama lay people about the diviners in their communities,

many enjoyed impressing me by telling me that ‘‘When that diviner is doing uganga

[divination] she speaks perfect Arabic, and she never even studied Arabic!’’ Even when

Giriama are directly confronted with or patently aware of discrepancies between standard

versions of a language and the spirit’s version of it, many remain adamant that the

languages are the same at some level. Informants would acknowledge that the spirit

language sounds different from ordinary language, and in the next breath insist that the

spirit language nevertheless constitutes a legitimate, even a perfect or original exemplar of

that language. When one Giriama man, for instance, designated a spirit language sample as

Arabic and I pressed his response further (‘‘Is it exactly Arabic?’’), he articulated the

paradox like this: ‘‘Some words are like Arabic, and some words are not.’’ Then he drew

himself up emphatically to add: ‘‘But it IS Arabic! The original Arabic!’’ (McIntosh,

2002a).

In such claims, essentialist language categorization merges with a kind of language

authentication, for not only are these attenuated exemplars categorized as Arabic, but they

are also variously identified as ‘‘perfect,’’ ‘‘clean,’’ ‘‘original,’’ or ‘‘true’’ Arabic.

Apparently in the context of divination, spirit languages are thought to embody some

essential kernel of a language’s identity, though the factor that qualifies that kernel as

essential varies—some informants cite the spirit language’s purity, others its exactitude,

others its ancient status, and so on. These ideologies support the Giriama idea that through

ritualistic congress with the spirits, they can tap into the epistemological potency of other

ethnicities and ethnoreligious powers, particularly Islam, and through linguistic transfer,

partake of their associated properties. Meanwhile, essentialist language categorization lets

them circumnavigate the fact that most of them have not had the opportunity to learn the

spirits’ languages.


8 It is possible that the contrast between a perceptible surface and a deep essence may be conceived differently

or conceived not at all in some cultures. It seems likely that some cultures more than others are invested in

distinctions between what is perceptible and what lies beneath the perceptible; indeed, the very question of what

counts as perceptible seems subject to cross-cultural variation (one can imagine, for instance, a culture that posits

that the spirit within an ancestral reliquary is perceptually evident rather than invisible in the Western sense). It is

an open empirical question as to whether this type of essentialism and the others I describe are available to all

cultures or only some.

5. Conclusion

Social hierarchies on the Kenya coast are inextricable from linguistic ideologies. These

are based not merely upon a system of ranking, but also upon essentialist modes of

discourse and practice that reify languages, bind them conceptually to social groups, and

impute them with the ontological properties of their associated ethnicities and religions.

These ideological maneuvers are foundational to the ongoing ethnic boundary work and

the ritual lives of Swahili and Giriama in Malindi. Among Swahili, linguistic essentialisms

are mobilized to score a boundary around Swahili ethnolinguistic identity, while bringing

Swahili closer to Islam through the mystification of Arabic. Still other essentialisms inform

the Swahili treatment of Kigiriama—and, by extension Giriama lifeways—as polluting or

undesirable. Giriama, meanwhile, traffic in a cluster of linguistic essentialisms in their own

efforts to carve out their identities and to garner a modicum of power. They braid linguistic

essentialisms into their ethnoterritorial visions, making ontological assertions about the

natural link between languages and peoples that are enlisted in their claims of entitlement

to land. They protect their language from interlopers by defending it as their God-given

patrimony. Meanwhile, in ritual contexts where they might just recoup some of the control

they have lost on the ground, Giriama draw on other essentialisms to poach the congealed

power in Arabic (and, sometimes, other languages), while allowing highly attenuated

versions of those languages to count as ‘perfect,’ essential exemplars.

While some Giriama essentialisms are clear efforts to shore up their sense of collective

identity and influence, others seem to partake in the very hierarchy against which Giriama

rail. Indeed, some language essentialisms I have described are an example of what

Bourdieu (1991) terms ‘‘symbolic power’’; a kind of power that is non-coercive and is not

recognized as socially constructed, but instead is treated as legitimate even by those who

are subjugated by it. Bourdieu emphasizes that symbolic power relies upon a foundation of

shared premises. I suggest that language essentialism in Malindi provides one such

foundation, in the widely circulating thread of essentialist discourse among Swahili and

Giriama that treats ethnolinguistic identity and religio-linguistic links as if it they were

ontologically essential rather than socially constructed. These assumptions can render

social hierarchy all the more pernicious, for although Giriama draw upon essentialisms in

their ritual lives to appropriate ethnoreligious potencies, these potencies are nevertheless

construed as intrinsically distant. Kiswahili is an Other language, yoked naturally to

another ethnicity, while Arabic and Kiswahili are more intrinsically linked to the desirable

potency of Islam than is Kigiriama. Such a model of the social universe risks portraying

Giriama as if they are frozen in an intrinsically subordinate position.

I have two theoretical points to make in closing. First, it is worth reiterating that the

study of language essentialisms should affect our understanding of the indexicality of

language. The notion of ‘index’ suggests a divide between the indexical signifier and the

separate signified to which that index points. But many of the language essentialisms I

discuss emphasize that from an insider’s point of view, a code does not necessarily merely

‘stand for’ something separate from it (such as ethnic identity or religious allegiance);

instead, the code may be seen as substantially bound up with such nominally non-linguistic

elements. Second, this inextricability of languages from other ontological qualities gives

linguistic codes transformative properties. Indeed, our understanding of the ‘performative’


dimensions of language could be expanded to take account of language essentialism.

Ordinary understandings of performativity focus on the semantic content or implicatures

that, under the right felicity conditions, bring states of affairs into being (Austin, 1960). Yet

cultural insiders sometimes regard code choice itself as transferring qualities onto

speakers, suggesting that the medium can be as transformative as the message. Greater

attention to such dynamics of language essentialism may therefore not only expand the

framework I have offered, but also offer some new approaches to our understanding of

linguistic pragmatics.

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JanetMcIntosh is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. After earning a B.A. from Harvard

University in anthropology and a second B.A. from Oxford University in philosophy and psychology, she

undertook graduate training at the University of Michigan, earning her M.A. in 1996 and her PhD in 2002. Her

ethnographic fieldwork takes place on the coast of Kenya among the Swahili and Giriama peoples. Dr. McIntosh’s

publications and conference presentations have addressed the politics of Islam and African traditionalism, ritual

and ritual language, language ideologies, and psychological anthropology.


language essentialism and social hierarchies among giriama and swahili

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