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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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A Linguistic Analysis of SMS Language amongst Kenyan Urban Youths
| Panel |
58. Language in African cities
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| Paper ID | 45 |
| Author(s) |
Barasa, Sandra
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The introduction of new communication technologies into the African community has changed the way members of these communities live, communicate and interact.
Traditional communication media have been overhauled to beat the time and spatial constraints of yesteryears.
Of these communication technologies, the present paper would like to dwell its focus on the mobile phone (cell phone). According to EPROMS 2006 statistics, cell phone usage in Africa is growing almost twice as fast as any other region and jumped from 63 million users in 2004 to 152 million in 2006. Currently Kenya has the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world.
Communication via the mobile phone takes the form of speech (oral) or written (text). Our main concern will be the latter since text provides tangible evidence of the language being adapted to suit the medium.
The urban Kenyan youths have embraced the mobile phone technology and as they use it more and more, they are adapting the language through short text messages (SMS) to suit the mobile phone technology and thus communicate effectively and more cheaply. It is the interest of this paper to provide a linguistic analysis of SMS language as used by the Kenyan urban youth.
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