Kinyarwanda Language Change: A Prescriptivism Perspective of Selected Settings

Abstract

With the advancement of technology, language change has gained a stronghold among the 21st century linguistic studies. Language change is generally fueled by diverse factors. Generation by generation, pronunciations evolve, new words are borrowed, others are invented, the meaning of old words drifts, and morphology develops or decays. In this study, the researchers explore factors pertaining to Kinyarwanda language change in the post-1994 Genocide period, with particular focus on lexicosemantic features. The study is framed in prescriptivism, which holds that there are correct and wrong ways of using language. Both written and spoken data was collected from various public places and social media sources, where Kinyarwanda is widely used on different occasions. Contextual data analysis was carried out, taking into consideration the general use of standard Kinyarwanda. Findings highlight that Kinyarwanda is negatively affected by historical, technological, and social factors that impede the respect of the prescribed rules of the standard Kinyarwanda language. The study recommends that efforts be made to cope with the identified critical factors so as to preserve Kinyarwanda, which is not only means of communication, reflection of people’s culture and identity but also an official and academic language in the Rwandan context and even beyond it.