A sociolinguistic investigation into the presence of restricted linguistic codes in gendered polygynous interactions in colonial Africa

Abstract

Previous research on polygynous marriages in Africa has tended to investigate the role of patriarchy in African polygynous marriages  from a literary perspective of works written in an international language like English or French. This article aims to take a slightly different  perspective by using a sociolinguistic investigation of the presence of Basil Bernstein’s restricted linguistic codes in gendered  polygynous interactions in an African language of one colonial Africa country, Northern Rhodesia, today’s Zambia. The research focuses  on a chapter dealing with polygyny in a Zambian writer, Stephen Mpashi’s Cibemba language book Bakutemwe [To be Loved], as a unit  of analysis. A qualitative methodological approach of conversation analysis was deployed to analyse the data, from a sociolinguistic slant.  The findings show that within the African patriarchy polygynous system, it is possible for a female in an assumed powerless role to  appropriate power to herself through her linguistic prowess.