Speaking beauties: Language use and linguistic ideologies in Tanzanian beauty pageants.

摘要

This project explores language, discourse, and linguistic ideology in the context of Tanzanian beauty pageants through analysis of the speech of contestants, judges, performers, and MCs, of interviews with these participants, and of media coverage of the events. In Tanzania, where Swahili serves as a lingua franca and a symbol of national unity, but where over 120 local ethnic languages are spoken and English is embraced as an elite world language, beauty pageants offer a site where ideologies about language emerge. In these events, contestants' language use is a focus of explicit attention and critique, while at the same time, the regimentation of linguistic registers across pageant segments offers implicit evidence of valuations of these registers. Findings highlight the fact that, through various semiotic processes, local ethnic languages are virtually invisible in these public contexts and that, despite discourses to the contrary, usage of English, rather than of Swahili, is preferred by beauty contestants as well as by other participants occupying positions of authority. Yet, analysis also demonstrates that what counts locally as 'speaking a language' is deeply emergent and rooted in context, thereby challenging more traditional notions of multilingualism and codeswitching which tend to view language as monolithic and self-evident. The conclusions of this project articulate the real-life consequences of linguistic ideologies, showing for example that they play an important role in processes of language shift, by limiting the perceived utility of local ethnic languages to private contexts or artistic performances. Furthermore, these culturally held ideas about language, coupled with the steeply pyramidal structure of education in Tanzania, severely restrict access to prestige registers, and this dimension of inequality has profound effects on the success of would-be beauty queens, as well as in the lives urban Tanzanians more broadly.