Language, Globalization and the Making of a Tanzanian Beauty Queen

Sabrina Billings is an Assistant Professor of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Arkansas, USA. Her research explores the interconnections of language with gender, education, globalization, and opportunity, especially in urban East Africa.

• Introduction1. Language Ideologies, Linguistic Registers, and the Sociolinguistic Landscape of Swahili and English in Tanzania2. ‘From the Geneva of Africa’: Beauty Pageants, National Cultural and Tanzanian Femininity3. ‘I am Very Good at Explaining Myself, Especially in English’: The Packaging of Privilege in the Making of Tanzanian Beauty Queens4. ‘Education is the Key of Life’: Contestants as Schoolgirls in Pursuit of an Escape5. ‘Which is your favorite colour?’: Race and Ethnicity in a Color-Blind Tanzania6. Kutafuta Maisha: ‘Looking for a Life’ from the Edge of the Globe

Sophisticated social theory and the tools of linguistic anthropology join together in this book, a fascinating study of beauty contests in Tanzania that reveals their complex and anxious importance to Tanzanian society. This exploration of the role that language plays in negotiations over the meaning of cosmopolitanism and the morality of gender is linguistic ethnography at its best.