Articles

Ethno-Regional Ideologies and Linguistic Manipulation in the Creation of the Youth Language Leb Pa Bulu

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Abstract

Leb pa Bulu, the Acholi-based youth language practice that has emerged in northern Uganda over the past decade, is today spoken by various groups of youths in both urban and rural areas. Despite the fact that speakers creatively manipulate language on a phonological, morphological and semantic level, Leb pa Bulu deviates significantly from other Ugandan youth language practices in terms of their role as social driving forces of linguistic differentiation. The linguistic practice is neither “street-related” nor geared toward a criminal image, as found among numerous other communities using a distinct youth language. Moreover, groups of youths in which Leb pa Bulu is employed resemble a loosely woven landscape of networks rather than an exclusive ‘community of [shared] practice(s)’ (CoP) with strongly inclusive in-group knowledge. This mainly has to do with Leb pa Bulu’s social function, serving as more of an ethno-regional tool of differentiation from the Bantu-speaking southern parts of the country in the quest for ideological distinctiveness than as an intra-community ‘anti-language’ with inherent ‘resistance identities’. The present paper is the first preliminary description of this variety of Acholi, taking historico-political, ideological and linguistic parameters into account.

Keywords: Youth language practices, Acholi/Lwo, manipulations, language ideology, distinctiveness, ethno-regional identity

How to Cite:

Rüsch, M. & Nassenstein, N., (2016) “Ethno-Regional Ideologies and Linguistic Manipulation in the Creation of the Youth Language Leb Pa Bulu”, Critical Multilingualism Studies 4(2), 174-208.