Microvariation and youth language practices in Africa is a research project funded by German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The project examines the morphosyntax of youth language practices in East, Central and Southern Africa.
Youth languages are widely thought of as sites of innovation and change. This project contributes to our understanding of youth languages by focusing on African youth language practices. We investigate young people’s linguistic creativity with special focus on morphosyntactic variation. This means we look at the ways in which speakers put together words and grammatical markers in innovative ways. In this project we focus on youth languages in the Bantu speaking area of Africa, in particular South Africa, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Dr Congo and Kenya.
Crucial to the project is the involvement of and close collaboration with our partners