Attitude towards Kiswahili in Urban Kenya

Abstract

The present paper Attitudes Towards Kiswahili in Urban Kenya aims at observing, identifying, classifying and analyzing language attitudes regarding Kiswahili in urban Kenya in order to show how they impact on Kenya’s language policy generally and on language planning in particular. Data for this paper was collected by means of library research, field visits, interviews, observations and discussions. This work, being field based, used tape recorders also and the information recorded was transcribed and analysed focusing on specific items of the interview schedule. This work purposively selected its sample and was conducted with the participation of 100 respondents. Using the sociological theoretical framework and the social psychological theory, the paper has found out that the majority of urban Kenyans have positive attitudes towards Kiswahili mainly for integrative reasons and not for instrumental reasons.