This book showcases current research on language in new media, the performing arts and music in Africa, emphasising the role that youth play in language change and development. The authors demonstrate how the efforts of young people to throw off old colonial languages and create new local ones has become a site of language creativity. Analysing the language of ¿new mediä, including social media, print media and new media technologies, and of creative arts such as performance poetry, hip-hop and rap, they use empirical research from such diverse countries as Cameroon, Nigeria, Kenya, the Ivory Coast and South Africa. This original edited collection will appeal to students and scholars of African sociolinguistics, particularly in the light of the rapidly changing globalized context in which we live.

Builds on a rapidly growing literature on African Urban Youth Languages to show that performing arts, creative arts and media are sites of sociolinguistic development

Chapter 1. Introduction.- Section I. Social and Advertising Media.- Chapter 2. Functions of urban and Youth language in the new media: The Case of Sheng in Kenya; Fridah Kanana Erastus and Hildah Kebeya.- Chapter 3. View on the Updating of Nouchi Lexicon and Expressions; Akissi Béatrice Boutin and Jean-Claude Dodo.- Chapter 4. Social media as an extension of, and negotiation space for, a community of practice: a comparison of Nouchi and Tsotsitaal; Roland Raoul Kouassi and Ellen Hurst.- Chapter 5. The Use of Addressing Terms in Social Media: The Case of Cameroonian Youth Practices; Augustin E. Ebongue.- Chapter 6. The Impact of Youth Language on Linguistic Landscapes in Kenya and Tanzania; Leonard Muaka.- Chapter 7. Creative Use of Urban Youth Language in Advertisements: A Case of Mixing Codes; Edinah Gesare Mose and Orpha Bonareri Ombati.- Section 2. Music, Performance Poetry and Video.- Chapter 8. Plurality, translingual splinters and music-modality in Nigerian youth languages;Lasisi Adeiza Isiaka.- Chapter 9. Contestant Hybridities African urban youth language in Nigerian music and social media; Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju.- Chapter 10. Linguistic (and non-linguistic) Influences on Urban Performance Poetry in South African Contemporary Youth Culture; Unathi Nopece.- Chapter 11. Slangs in Yoruba Home Videos: A Morpho-Pragmatic Analysis; Asiru Hameed Tunde.