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.

• AcknowledgementsIntroductionPart 1: Communication as Transaction and Becoming 1. From Multilingual Classification to Translingual Ontology: A Turning Point2. Emergent and Stabilised Multilingualism: Polyethnic Peer Groups in Urban Kenya3. Language Choice in Two Kampala Housing Estates 4. Language Switching in Nairobi5. The Creativity of Abuse6. Exchanging WordsPart 2: Political and Formulaic Communication7. Political Language8. Language, Government and the Play on Purity and Impurity: Arabic, Swahili and the Vernaculars in Kenya9. Being and Selfhood among Intermediary Swahili10. Controlling the U-turn of Knowledge11. The Politics of Naming Among the GiriamaPart 3: The Materiality of Language and Communication12. Unpacking Anthropology13. Revisiting: Keywords, Transforming Phrases, and Cultural Concepts14. Loud Ethics and Quiet Morality among Muslim Healers in Eastern Africa15. Reason, Emotion, and the Embodiment of Power16. The Power of Incompleteness: Innuendo in Swahili Women’s Dress17. Simultaneity and Sequencing in the Oracular Speech of Kenyan DivinersReferencesIndex

This important book brings acute observation to central sociolinguistic themes like multilingualism, linguistic change, standardisation, power and creativity, and situates them with great subtlety and depth in the political, cultural and historical processes in which they play a part. More than that, it provides vivid insight into key developments in social scientific thought over the last five decades, and richly illustrates the power and scope for a social anthropology of language.