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Article published In: Creativity in Language
Edited by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Andrea Hollington, Nico Nassenstein and Anne Storch
[International Journal of Language and Culture 6:1] 2019
► pp. 45–62

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Manipulation in late life

Secret agency and the unintelligible in the speech of the elderly in Eastern Congo

 | Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Published online: 1 February 2019
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.00015.nas
Abstract
While youth language constitutes a well-researched field of study, the linguistic manipulations of old people remain understudied. In an innovative approach, the present paper therefore looks at confusing and allegedly unintelligible narratives and conscious linguistic manipulations, silliness and concealing strategies in language as employed by elderly speakers of Kinyabwisha, Kinande, Kihunde and Kiswahili in Eastern DR Congo. A secret cursing register among Banyabwisha, often accompanied by practices of spitting, is analyzed; I also discuss elderly speakers’ confusing stories narrated to younger people, the use of secret modal particles that are restricted to people of old age, and finally I discuss the strategic inclusion of silliness in old speakers’ utterances. All these are analyzed in a theoretical framework of the secret agency and power in language use that mark the agency and wittiness of the elderly in Eastern Congo. With this first overview of elderly speakers’ language manipulations I aim to show that linguistic manipulation is not necessarily age-related, and that concealment strategies in language can occur as agentive and powerful means of social differentiation in later life as well. This preliminary introduction furthermore suggests a strong focus on silliness in linguistic analysis (as also found in Kuipers, Joel C. 2007. Comments on ritual unintelligibility. Text Talk, 27, 4, 559–566. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; . 2015. Metababble. Voices from Around the World 31. [[URL]] (accessed 20 February 2018)., . 2017. Typology of secret languages and linguistic taboos. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & R. M. W. Dixon (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Language Typology, (pp. 287–321). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar).
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction: On confusing stories, old stammerers and silly, unintelligible language
  • 2.Secrecy in the speech of the elderly in Eastern DR Congo
    • 2.1Excessive cursing, transgression and spitting
    • 2.2Confusing data: “Lost stories” and the rejection of statements
    • 2.3Secret modal particles
    • 2.4Silliness in speech
  • 3.Outlook
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
References (32)
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