Youth language and registers

Abstract This chapter gives an overview of features and social purposes of various registers present in the Bantu language family — varieties of Bantu languages that are differentiated because of their particular communicative purpose and context of use. Examples include: respect and avoidance languages, genderlects, secret languages, ritual, praise and initiation languages, which feature in the repertoires of Bantu-language speakers. In addition, the languages used by young people for purposes of peer and identity negotiation, such as ludlings and ‘stylects’, including Bantu-based African youth languages such as Sheng from Kenya and Tsotsitaal from South Africa, have been defined as stylized registers in a number of publications. The chapter firstly considers the social (identity) purposes of such registers, and secondly outlines some of their linguistic features, notably borrowing, coinages, metaphor, and semantic shift.