The impact of comedian journalist language used in broadcast media on the development of proper English/Kiswahili languages among university students, perspectives from Kisii University College students

Abstract

Comedy is not a science, its art, therefore there are no rules and it can be very subjective. What one person finds funny another might cringe at it; one thing worth noting is that when analyzing comedy and what is funny, it is almost like it is only visible out of the corner of one’s eye. Having the same news reported with a different tone is something many people are starting to prefer because these new forms of media offer personal and subjective viewpoints. The comedy language include Code switching in the use of complete sentences, phrases and borrowed words from the languages in interaction Kiswahili/English and mother tongue. In Kenya classrooms are considered bilingual in the sense that Kiswahili and English are the only languages used among students from different ethnic backgrounds but, In essence, these classrooms are multilingual in nature with students being fairly proficient in at least three languages: Kiswahili, English and an indigenous or ethnic language, however, Kiswahili and English are the languages mostly used by both teachers and students within the classroom set up. The code switching is considered grammatical irrespective of the direction the switches take. Language is frequently switched with the functions being emphasis, clarification, getting and holding or signaling attention, interruption among others. The study adopted a combination of descriptive survey design and naturalistic design. The survey design was chosen for its appeal for generalization, Naturalistic design was used to facilitate the collection of first hand data to supplement survey design. The study targeted 3000 respondents both the students and lectures. Thus, 10% of the respondents were chosen for the study hence 300 respondents. Data was analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative techniques. These findings were consistent with the results of other studies of influence of comedian language and proper English/Kiswahili language development.

Keywords; comedian, language discourse, indigenous