Who speaks Chibrazi, the urban contact vernacular of Malawi?

Abstract

Chibrazi, the urban contact vernacular of Malawi, is a mixed or hybrid variety that caricatures language contact and contact induced language change in the country. With time, the variety has evolved into an instrument of wider communication and developed in structure. Questions about the variety abound partly because the variety has not received much scholarly attention. One such question is: Who speaks this variety? This article provides some answers to this question as obtained from a case study that was conducted as part of a study that the author is conducting at the University of Pretoria, which is formulated as a descriptive analysis of the variety. The data was obtained through a questionnaire, follow-up interviews and observation. While the data that was obtained through the questionnaire was analysed statistically, the data from the interviews and observation was analysed thematically following the questions in the questionnaire.