Languages of National Politics in Kenya and Tanzania

• In Event: Identity Politics: Ethnicity and Beyond

Abstract

How do politicians’ use of different languages affect voter perceptions and political outcomes in multilingual polities? Political actors and institutions have adopted various strategies to operate in societies speaking multiple languages, a common condition of politics in many sub-Saharan African states and across much of the world. Neighboring Kenya and Tanzania are both highly ethnolinguistically diverse countries with more than 40 and 120 officially acknowledged ethnolinguistic groups, respectively, and politicians and voters have varying levels of access to English, their national language of Kiswahili, and locally predominant languages such as Dholuo and Igikuria. Building on qualitative field research on the differing state language policies of Kenya and Tanzania and their influence on Kenyans’ and Tanzanians’ understandings of and identification with their nations, I will present the results and analysis of a cross-border, multilingual survey experiment examining Kenyan and Tanzanian voters’ responses to political speeches across different, politically relevant languages. The 1,200 respondents in this survey experiment, adapted from an earlier study in Thailand (Ricks 2020) and fielded in January and February 2023, will hear a brief political audio message, assigned at random to be in either Kiswahili or their first language, and then provide their views on the speaker’s qualifications for political office. The survey’s design enables the close analysis of systematic variation in average effects by language treatment and across nationality and mother tongue. This study’s findings will inform our understanding of how politicians’ choice of language(s) affects multilingual voters’ perceptions, including uses of languages rarely observable in actual public political campaigning. A more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the politics of language within and between these two neighboring states will allow for a fuller comparison with multilingual politics in other societies.

Author

• Andrew Marshall, Baylor University