David Parkin is an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford, UK, where he was a Professor of social anthropology. His research focuses on the coordination of multimodal communication.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part 1: Communication as Transaction and Becoming

1. From Multilingual Classification to Translingual Ontology: A Turning Point

2. Emergent and Stabilised Multilingualism: Polyethnic Peer Groups in Urban Kenya

3. Language Choice in Two Kampala Housing Estates

4. Language Switching in Nairobi

5. The Creativity of Abuse

6. Exchanging Words

Part 2: Political and Formulaic Communication

7. Political Language

8. Language, Government and the Play on Purity and Impurity: Arabic, Swahili and the Vernaculars in Kenya

9. Being and Selfhood among Intermediary Swahili

10. Controlling the U-turn of Knowledge

11. The Politics of Naming Among the Giriama

Part 3: The Materiality of Language and Communication

12. Unpacking Anthropology

13. Revisiting: Keywords, Transforming Phrases, and Cultural Concepts

14. Loud Ethics and Quiet Morality among Muslim Healers in Eastern Africa

15. Reason, Emotion, and the Embodiment of Power

16. The Power of Incompleteness: Innuendo in Swahili Women's Dress

17. Simultaneity and Sequencing in the Oracular Speech of Kenyan Diviners

References
Index