Afryka

No. 50 (2019): Afryka
Artykuły

The Socio-Cultural Context of Greetings in Swahili

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  • Beata Wójtowicz
Beata Wójtowicz
Katedra Języków i Kultur Afryki, Wydział Orientalistyczny, Uniwersytet Warszawski, Krakowskie Przedmieście 26/28, 00-927 Warszawa, Polska
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32690/AFR50.5

Published 2019-10-01

Keywords

  • greetings,
  • forms of address,
  • socio-cultural competence,
  • Swahili,
  • lingua franca

Abstract

Today most linguists agree that language and culture are tightly connected. It is also argued that in order to communicate successfully, we need to achieve a level of socio-cultural competence along with an ability to use the grammar and the lexicon of a particular language. There are many kinds of cultural norms and values that one has to obey, as there may be fundamental communication and discourse differences between one language and another. This paper is primarily concerned with some issues of discourse strategies and pragmatics of African languages. While the study focuses on greeting practices among the Swahili, it also investigates how learners acquire the pragmatics of Swahili greetings in a foreign language context, and how Swahili, as a language of wider communication, is influenced by cultural norms and values of its speakers, for whom Swahili is not a primary language.

PDF (Język Polski)

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