“No, we jus’ dey gist”: Polylanguaging, Metrolingualism and African Youth Languages

Abstract

The study of African youth languages (AYLs) has seen a few conceptual shifts and portrayals, reflecting their dynamicity, diversity, and fluidities. In these contexts, AYLs have been described as constituted by codeswitching/mixing, and as restrictive practices with links to ingroup or marginalized identities. This paper is oriented towards an emic view of AYLs, of what the speakers perceive themselves as doing, particularly in ecologies where codeswitching remains the dominant norm. I draw on naturalistic samples of Nigerian youth languages to illustrate the nature of codeswitching/mixing, linguistic innovation, and ethno-lingual practices within the frames of polylanguaging and metrolingualism. A metrolingual view of youth languages points to their fluidity and everydayness, rather than treating them as exotic phenomena of ingroupness or adversarial goals, while polylanguaging represents a shift from the sense of language mixing to the complex fashion in which speakers make use of diverse repertoires for communicative intents. I argue that both notions broadly explain the sociolinguistic typicalities of AYL practices – and that they subsume seemingly disparate concepts in youth language theorizing.