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Through micro-analysis of language use, this book chronicles young women's pathways to becoming a Tanzanian beauty queen, offering an original perspective on the intersection of language with globalization, nationalism, and inequality in urban East Africa. This compelling linguistic ethnography considers the real-life effects, both on- and off-stage, of language policy, education, and gender dynamics for the women competing in the pageants. While highlighting many contestants' struggles for escape from poverty and patriarchy, the book also emphasizes their creative strategies – linguistic and otherwise – for bettering their lives and shows how people living in a global economic periphery take part in, and sometimes feel left out of, the wider world.
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.
— Niko Besnier, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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.
Introduction
1. Language Ideologies, Linguistic Registers, and the Sociolinguistic Landscape of Swahili and English in Tanzania
2. ‘From the Geneva of Africa’: Beauty Pageants, National Cultural and Tanzanian Femininity
3. ‘I am Very Good at Explaining Myself, Especially in English’: The Packaging of Privilege in the Making of Tanzanian Beauty Queens
4. ‘Education is the Key of Life’: Contestants as Schoolgirls in Pursuit of an Escape
5. ‘Which is your favorite colour?’: Race and Ethnicity in a Color-Blind Tanzania
6. Kutafuta Maisha: ‘Looking for a Life’ from the Edge of the Globe