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Ugandan English
Its sociolinguistics, structure and uses in a globalising post-protectorate
Ugandan English is a variety that has scarcely been noticed in past research. This timely volume brings together African and European scholars in a first-ever collection of articles that offer comprehensive discussions of the historical and present-day sociolinguistics of English in Uganda and fine-grained analyses of the structural characteristics of and attitudes to this hitherto largely unknown variety. Using rich archive, corpus, and interview data as well as ethnographic and observational methods, the various contributions paint a comprehensive picture of Ugandan English as distinct from other East African Englishes and as characterized by nativisation despite a still strong exonormative orientation, reflecting the modern nation’s status as a post-protectorate under the influence of globalisation. Apart from advancing our understanding of Ugandan English itself, the individual chapters contribute to theoretical debates on language contact and variation as regards the influence of substrate languages, founder populations, language ideologies and socio-economic factors.
[Varieties of English Around the World, G59] 2016. vi, 280 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 4 October 2016
Published online on 4 October 2016
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Ugandan English - challenges to, and food for, current theoriesBebwa Isingoma and Christiane Meierkord | pp. 1–16
- Part I - The context
- Towards assessing the space of English in Uganda’s linguistic ecology: Facts and issuesSaudah Namyalo, Bebwa Isingoma and Christiane Meierkord | pp. 19–50
- A social history of English(es) in UgandaChristiane Meierkord | pp. 51–72
- Part II - Functions of English in multilingual Uganda today
- The sociolinguistic situation of English in Uganda: A case of language attitudes and beliefsJudith Nakayiza | pp. 75–94
- Tensions between English medium and mother tongue education in rural Ugandan primary schools: An ethnographic investigationMedadi Ssentanda | pp. 95–118
- Part III - Features of Ugandan English
- Diphthongs in Ugandan English: Evidence for and against variety status and Interactions across EnglishesChristiane Meierkord | pp. 121–148
- Lexical borrowings and calques in Ugandan EnglishBebwa Isingoma | pp. 149–172
- The use of the progressive in Ugandan EnglishJude Ssempuuma, Bebwa Isingoma and Christiane Meierkord | pp. 173–200
- The use of ditransitive constructions in Ugandan EnglishBebwa Isingoma | pp. 201–226
- Speech acts in Ugandan English social letters: Investigating the influence of sociocultural contextChristiane Meierkord | pp. 227–248
- Part IV - Ugandan English and beyond
- Indian English in Uganda: The historical sociolinguistics of a migrant communityClaudia Rathore-Nigsch and Daniel Schreier | pp. 251–274
- Index | pp. 275–280
“On a completely different note, as a speaker of an indigenised variety of English myself, this volume offers a glimpse of light at the end of the tunnel in relation to their standardisation and acceptance in international academic and scholarly circles. By not editing out (using the almighty native speaker standards) some of the acrolectal UgE stylistic features of some of the contributions in this volume, the editors have given a "voice to UgE not only through describing it, but also by using it" (p. 12). This is highly commendable and moves the World Englishes paradigm miles ahead.”
Eric. A. Anchimbe, University of Bayreuth, in English World-Wide 39:1, pag. 117-121
“The volume by Meierkord, Isingoma and Namyalo is an essential publication and an important step in the sociolinguistic analysis of East African varieties of English. It brings together a number of dedicated researchers who, on the basis of empirical evidence, approach UgE from various quantitative and qualitative perspectives. While not eliding the usual limitations that any first attempt at mapping a variety of English in just a single volume naturally faces, the publication's many accomplishments enable multiple future strands of research on UgE, placing a variety of English on the map of World Englishes that has not seen any representation as comprehensive as this before.”
Arne Peters, University of Potsdam, in Anglistik 29(1), pp. 185-188
“The volume by Meierkord, Isingoma and Namyalo is an essential publication and an important step in the sociolinguistic analysis of East African varieties of English. It brings together a number of dedicated researchers who, on the basis of empirical evidence, approach UgE from various quantitative and qualitative perspectives. While not eliding the usual limitations that any first attempt at mapping a variety of English in just a single volume naturally faces, the publication's many accomplishments enable multiple future strands of research on UgE, placing a variety of English on the map of World Englishes that has not seen any representation as comprehensive as this before.”
Arne Peters, University of Potsdam, in Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 29(1): 185-168, 2018
Cited by (14)
Cited by 14 other publications
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Isingoma, Bebwa
Mohr, Susanne
2025. The Zanzibari tourist space as a multilingual language ecology. In World Englishes in their Local Multilingual Ecologies [Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity, 9], ► pp. 231 ff.
van Rooy, Bertus
Peters, Pam & Tobias Bernaisch
Clément, Richard & Bonny Norton
Schmied, Josef
2021. Review of Buregeya (2019): Kenyan English. English World-Wide. A Journal of Varieties of English 42:3 ► pp. 350 ff.
Schmied, Josef
Isingoma, Bebwa & Christiane Meierkord
2019. Capturing the lexicon of Ugandan English. In Corpus Linguistics and African Englishes [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 88], ► pp. 293 ff.
Isingoma, Bebwa & Christiane Meierkord
Stranger-Johannessen, Espen & Bonny Norton
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.