36.3766, Reviews: Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa: Rajend Mesthrie; Ellen Hurst-Harosh; Heather Brookes (eds.) (20250417)

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Subject: 36.3766, Reviews: Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa: Rajend Mesthrie; Ellen Hurst-Harosh; Heather Brookes (eds.) (20250417)

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Date: 08-Dec-2025
From: IBTISSEM SMARI [Smariibtissem.si at gmail.com]
Subject: Rajend Mesthrie; Ellen Hurst-Harosh; Heather Brookes (eds.) (20250417)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-1612

Title: Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa
Series Title: Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact
Publication Year: 20250417

Publisher: Cambridge University Press
           http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics
Book URL:
https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/languages-linguistics/sociolinguistics/youth-language-practices-and-urban-language-contact-africa?format=PB&isbn=9781316622056#about-the-authors

Editor(s): Rajend Mesthrie; Ellen Hurst-Harosh; Heather Brookes

Reviewer: IBTISSEM SMARI

SUMMARY
Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa, edited
by Rajend Mesthrie, Ellen Hurst-Harosh, and Heather Brookes, is an
edited volume in the Cambridge Approaches to Language Contact series
that examines contemporary youth language varieties across several
African urban centers. The book brings together eight chapters
authored by prominent scholars in African sociolinguistics, focusing
on the linguistic creativity, contact phenomena, enregisterment
processes, and socio-cultural significance of youth linguistic
varieties such as Tsotsitaal, isiXhosa urban varieties, Camfranglais,
Sheng, Engsh, and Nouchi.
The editors position the volume as a major contribution to an emerging
research tradition that seeks to document youth linguistic innovation
from African perspectives and in African contexts, challenging the
deficit models and ahistorical framings often applied to “urban youth
languages.” The Preface emphasizes the need for situated,
ethnographically informed work that captures linguistic dynamism
rather than treating youth varieties as marginal, pathological, or
purely “anti-languages.”
Chapter 1, Language Contact and Structure in Urban IsiXhosa and
Associated Youth Languages by Silvester Ron Simango, describes urban
isiXhosa as the product of longstanding multilingual contact in South
African cities. Simango highlights how close contact among isiXhosa
speakers and other language groups leads to widespread code-switching,
lexical innovations, and the emergence of hybrid youth registers.
Chapter 2, ‘Not Deep, but Still IsiXhosa’: Young People’s Urban
IsiXhosa and Its Relation to Tsotsitaal by Tessa Dowling, examines new
urban forms of isiXhosa and their relationship to the well-known youth
register Tsotsitaal. Dowling contrasts “deep” isiXhosa with playful,
creative innovations found in youth speech and argues that “non-deep”
isiXhosa serves as an identity resource for urban youth navigating
social and linguistic hierarchies.
Chapter 3, Rethinking Youth Language Practices in South Africa: An
Interactional Sociocultural Perspective by Heather Brookes, offers a
theoretical intervention grounded in interactional sociolinguistics.
Brookes critiques macro-level categorizations of youth languages and
instead foregrounds style, indexicality, stance, and enregisterment.
She argues that youth varieties should be understood as contextually
emergent practices linked to identity work, not as fixed codes.
Chapter 4, Tsotsitaals, Urban Vernaculars and Contact Linguistics by
Rajend Mesthrie, traces the origins, development, and linguistic
features of Tsotsitaal varieties in South Africa. Mesthrie presents
Tsotsitaal as part of a broader family of performative male youth
registers, differentiating among local variants such as Iscamtho and
Kasitaal. He situates Tsotsitaal within sociolinguistic processes of
creativity, secrecy, criminal subculture affiliations, and style-based
social positioning.
Chapter 5, Grammatical Hybridity in Camfranglais? by Roland Kiessling,
analyzes Camfranglais (CFA), a hybrid youth variety in Cameroon shaped
by French, Cameroonian languages, and Cameroonian Pidgin English.
Kiessling explores CFA’s lexicon, morphosyntax, and sociolinguistic
profile, arguing that it exemplifies both resistance identity and
creative linguistic recombination.
Chapter 6, Sheng and Engsh in Kenya’s Public Spaces and Media by
Maarten Mous and Sandra Barasa, examines the spread and
diversification of Sheng, its expansion into different Nairobi
neighborhoods, and the emergence of Engsh (English-Sheng). Using media
and public-space data, the authors show how Sheng’s fluidity and
hybrid structure enable multiple indexical meanings across class, age,
gender, and locality.
Chapter 7, Exploring Hybridity in Ivorian French and Nouchi by Akissi
Béatrice Boutin, focuses on Nouchi in Côte d’Ivoire. Boutin describes
Nouchi as a highly hybrid variety shaped by French, Ivorian languages,
and creative recombination. She traces its development from youth
urban slang to a widely recognized emblem of contemporary Ivorian
identity, including its mediatization and enregisterment.
Chapter 8, Authenticity and the Object of Analysis: Methods of Youth
Language Data Collection by Ellen Hurst-Harosh and Eyo Offiong Mensah,
offers a methodological reflection on collecting youth language data.
The authors compare naturalistic vs. elicited data, explore the role
of performance and authenticity, and provide guidance for future
research in African urban contexts.
Taken together, the eight chapters form a coherent exploration of
youth linguistic innovation, style, contact, and social meaning within
African urban centers.
EVALUATION
This edited volume is a significant contribution to current
scholarship on youth language practices, sociolinguistic creativity,
and African urban multilingualism. Its value lies in its African-based
analytical frameworks, the ethnographic richness of its chapters, and
the editors’ commitment to challenging long-standing ideologies that
portray African youth languages as marginal or “deviant.” The book
successfully achieves its stated aim of situating youth linguistic
practices within broader processes of language change, identity
formation, and socio-political dynamics across African contexts.
One of the book’s major strengths is its coherence despite covering a
wide geographical range (South Africa, Cameroon, Kenya, Côte
d’Ivoire). The chapters are well integrated through shared themes:
creativity, hybridity, enregisterment, performativity, and language
contact. The editors’ introduction and the methodological reflection
in Chapter 8 reinforce this coherence by framing youth languages not
as discrete codes but as stylistic, indexical, and socially embedded
practices.
Another strength is the volume’s emphasis on linguistic agency. Rather
than pathologizing youth linguistic creativity, the volume foregrounds
youth as innovators who strategically deploy linguistic resources to
negotiate identity, status, masculinity, class mobility, or
resistance. For example, Kiessling’s analysis of Camfranglais
highlights its role as an emblem of modern Cameroonian urban identity,
while Boutin’s study of Nouchi demonstrates how creative hybridization
becomes part of national symbolism. These chapters offer nuanced
accounts of how young people repurpose linguistic material for social
meaning-making.
The book also makes an important theoretical contribution by bringing
African data into dialogue with global work on style, stance, and
enregisterment (e.g., Agha 2007; Eckert 2012; Bucholtz & Hall 2005).
Brookes’s chapter is particularly impactful in showing how
indexicality-based approaches can illuminate African youth practices
without reducing them to monolithic categories such as “urban
vernacular” or “slang.” This approach could be fruitfully applied in
future studies of youth language in other multilingual regions outside
Africa.
Some challenges and limitations should also be noted. First, although
the volume provides rich descriptive data, several chapters could have
further integrated structural linguistic analysis (particularly in
phonology and syntax), which would broaden its usefulness for readers
in core linguistic subfields. Sheng and Nouchi, for instance, are
described in detail but with limited exemplification of grammatical
processes compared to Kiessling’s more thorough treatment of
Camfranglais.
Second, while the volume offers important reflections on methodology
in Chapter 8, some empirical chapters would have benefited from more
explicit methodological transparency. Youth language research poses
challenges—especially regarding authenticity and observer’s
paradox—and readers would benefit from more detail on recording
practices, sampling strategies, and community access in some studies.
Finally, the volume identifies youth languages as highly dynamic and
evolving, but it only hints at longitudinal perspectives rather than
developing them systematically. Sheng, Nouchi, and Tsotsitaal in
particular would benefit from follow-up studies examining their
trajectories over multiple decades—something the editors explicitly
encourage as a direction for future research.
Despite these limitations, the book will be particularly valuable for:
scholars of sociolinguistics, language contact, and African
linguistics
researchers interested in style, identity, and enregisterment
graduate students seeking foundational readings on African youth
languages
educators or practitioners working in multilingual African urban
settings
linguists interested in comparative youth language practices beyond
Africa
Overall, Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa
stands out as a theoretically grounded, empirically rich, and
methodologically reflective contribution. It expands the global
literature on youth linguistics while advocating for African-centered
perspectives. The volume should become a key reference in
sociolinguistic and language-contact scholarship.
REFERENCES
Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bucholtz, Mary & Kira Hall. 2005. "Identity and Interaction: A
Sociocultural Linguistic Approach." Discourse Studies 7(4-5): 585–614.
Eckert, Penelope. 2012. "Three Waves of Variation Study." Annual
Review of Anthropology 41: 87–100.
Halliday, M. A. K. 1976. "Anti-Languages." American Anthropologist
78(3): 570–584.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Ibtissem Smari is a researcher in applied linguistics specializing in
multilingualism, identity, and language policy. She earned a PhD in
Linguistics from the University of Pannonia and has held roles as a
university research assistant and teacher of English. Her current
research focuses on youth identities in multilingual contexts,
multimodal linguistic ethnography, and language contact phenomena.



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