In the name of the father-in-law: Pastoralism, patriarchy and the sociolinguistic prehistory of eastern and southern Africa

doi:10.1558/sols.37860

Sociolinguistic Studies, Vol 13, No 2-4 (2019)

In the name of the father-in-law: Pastoralism, patriarchy and the sociolinguistic prehistory of eastern and southern Africa

Luke Fleming, Alice Mitchell, Isabelle Ribot

Issued Date: 20 Feb 2020

Abstract

In a range of eastern and southern African language communities, stretching from Ethiopia to the Cape, married women are enjoined to avoid the names of members of their husband's family as well as (near-)homophones of those names, and to replace tabooed vocabulary with substitute words. Although in-law name avoidance is a global phenomenon, the daughter-in-law speech registers thus constituted are unusual in their linguistic elaboration: they involve avoidance not only of names and true homophones of names but also an array of words whose only relation to tabooed names is phonological similarity. We provide an overview of the distribution and convergent social and linguistic characteristics of these registers and then examine one register more closely, namely, that of Datooga of Tanzania. To tease apart the layers of causality that converge upon this particular sociolinguistic pattern, we consider archaeological, ethnological, sociolinguistic and genetic lines of evidence. We propose that any partial diffusion of in-law avoidance practices has been complemented by a complex of sociocultural factors motivating the emergence of this pattern at different times and places across the African continent. These factors include pastoralism, patrilineal descent ideologies and norms of patrilocal postmarital residence paired with cattle-based bridewealth exchange.

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DOI: 10.1558/sols.37860

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