Language, Globalization and the Making of a Tanzanian Beauty Queen

Sabrina Billings

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English

Multilingual Matters
29 November 2013

Pageants, parades, festivals; Sociolinguistics; Globalization

Series: Encounters

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.

By: Sabrina Billings
Imprint: Multilingual Matters
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Volume: 2
Dimensions: Height: 210mm, Width: 148mm, Spine: 13mm
Weight: 310g
ISBN: 9781783090747
ISBN 10: 178309074X
Series: Encounters
Pages: 232
Publication Date: 29 November 2013
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

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.

Reviews for Language, Globalization and the Making of a Tanzanian Beauty Queen

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' book speaks beautifully to young Tanzanian women's aspirations for cosmopolitan ascent through the global beauty pageant pyramid, contrasting their specifically gendered lot in national sociolinguistic hierarchies. Beauty pageants thus provide the lens through which we can clearly see the enabling and constraining effects of local varieties of English, of Swahili, and of Tanzania's numerous ethnic languages. Michael Silverstein, University of Chicago, USA This elegant ethnography makes vivid the role of speech as a measure of beauty in multiethnic Tanzania. Through a lucid discussion of the ways in which aspiring beauty queens are evaluated in national imaginaries, Sabrina Billings shows how speech behaviors are read as emblems of the gender, race, and ethnicity of women aspiring to become national icons of Tanzanian womanhood. Asif Agha, University of Pennsylvania, USA