Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Code-Switching And Advising In Multilingual African Situations: An Analysis Of Radio Phone-In Programmes In Kenya And Cameroon, Billian Khalayi Otundo, Susanne Mühleisen

Journal of the Language Association of Eastern Africa

Radio phone-in programmes are relevant for linguistic analysis in multilingual contexts, like Kenya and Cameroon, because they provide relatively natural data in expert-user and user-user contexts in an often emotional interactive environment. Any topic on relationships is an emotive undertaking in any society given the varied cultural disparities. In radio phone-in programmes, speech activities such as advice-giving and advice-receiving are also performed symmetrically or asymmetrically. In this media format, code-switching is a highly important phenomenon that is an expected and unconscious part of the linguistic behaviour of multilingual speakers. Switches between languages are highly relevant since they provide evidence for …