The geopolitics of Lingala

Lingala, of which the origins can be traced to a series of subsequent pidginization and creolization processes in the northeast of the DRC during the earliest stages of Belgian colonization (Meeuwis Reference Meeuwis2006, Reference Meeuwis2009, Reference Meeuwis2010, Reference Meeuwis, Michaelis, Maurer, Haspelmath and Huber2013), is today the native language of approximately fifteen million speakers, while another ten million use it as a lingua franca. The colonial era laid the basis for its institution and spread as one of the Congo's four languages of wider regional distribution (Meeuwis Reference Meeuwis2006, Reference Meeuwis2010). These four “national languages,” as they are routinely called, top the country's 220 or so vernacular ethnic languages, each having a distinct area of distribution. Thus, Lingala covers the west and the north, while Kiswahili is used in the east, Kikongo in the southwest, and Ciluba in the center. They are used as interethnic lingua francas within their respective areas, and for many inhabitants of the urban centers in these areas it is also the native language.

From the early years of colonization until today, Lingala occupied a privileged position vis-á-vis the other three. It was soon adopted as the language of instruction and internal communication by the armed forces throughout the entire territory of the colony. A few years after Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) was founded in 1881, it became the new city's primary means of communication. Leopoldville acquired the status of capital in the 1920s, and it soon became the colony's political apex and its foremost center of sociocultural innovation. As a consequence, Lingala also emerged as the language of modern Congolese music, which originated in the capital in the 1940s and 1950s and quickly grew to immense popularity in all parts of the country and beyond (Stewart Reference Stewart2004).

Independence, obtained in June 1960, further strengthened the position of Lingala. During the reign of President Mobutu Sese Seko (1965–1997), the political and administrative apparatus of the country (in 1971 renamed Zaire) was subjected to strong centralization, all powers and facilities being concentrated in the capital Kinshasa. Together with the fact that Mobutu hailed from the Lingala-speaking north, this greatly expedited the nationwide adoption of Lingala as Zaire's “semi-official” language, that is, the code preferred by the elite around Mobutu and the single party MPR (Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution) for internal, subformal political communication and for addressing the masses in political speeches and rallies. Administrators and MPR representatives were stationed throughout the country, while a system of nationwide mutations obliged state personnel of all ranks to relocate to another area than their region of origin. As a consequence, Lingala gradually came to encroach upon the territories of Kiswahili, Kikongo, and Ciluba (Ngalasso Reference Ngalasso1986; Sesep Reference Sesep1986; Boguo Reference Boguo1988; Mutombo Reference Mutombo, Symoens and Vanderlinden1991; Goyvaerts Reference Goyvaerts1995). This is especially noticeable in towns and cities, where Lingala can now be heard in addition to the lingua franca customarily used in the area.Footnote ¹

The assumption of power by Laurent-Desiré Kabila, after his AFDL rebel forces (Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo) expelled Mobutu in May 1997, partially reshuffled the country's power-balance in an eastward direction. Kabila's coup relied heavily on Congolese expats who had taken shelter against Mobutu's dictatorship in English- and Kiswahili-speaking neighboring countries like Tanzania and Uganda. The AFDL uprising had also received strong military backing from Uganda and the new Rwandan regime that came to power after the 1994 genocide. Until today, the new regime draws most of its popular support from the east of the country. This became dramatically clear in the 2006 presidential elections, when Joseph Kabila, who assumed power after the assassination of his father in January 2001, was successfully re-elected thanks to the massive support he received in the eastern provinces. Kinshasa inhabitants are as a rule far more critical of the new regime and of Kabila's political leadership. This dormant sociopolitical divide between east and west has always been a latent factor in Congolese politics, but received a new impetus during the second Congolese war (1998–2003), when the North and South Kivu provinces were to a large extent economically, politically, and administratively cut off from the capital Kinshasa. The peace agreement of 2003, and the territorial reintegration that followed, did not succeed in eradicating it from the minds of the people. The outcomes of the 2006 and 2011 presidential elections, for example, still closely mirrored the existing east-west territorial partition. In 2006 Kabila won the second round with 58% of the vote, but the west and the northwest (including the capital Kinshasa) supported the wealthy businessman and former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba. In 2011, the capital and the northwest voted for the veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi.Footnote ²

Faced with such drastic shifts in regional alliances and with the concomitant restructuring of the country's internal power-balance, which entailed a more prominent role for the DRC's Kiswahili-speaking eastern provinces and its Kiswahili-speaking eastern neighboring countries, Lingala nevertheless managed to secure its key position. Kiswahili now appears on the banknotes of the new Congolese franc (together with English)Footnote ³ and the elite around President Kabila adopted it as a supplementary language of semi-official political communication in addition to Lingala (Bokamba Reference Bokamba, Vigouroux and Mufwene2008, Reference Bokamba and McLaughlin2009), but an attempt by the new regime to introduce Kiswahili in the armed forces was abruptly curtailed as the second Congolese war that broke out in 1998 led to a rupture between the Kabila regime and his former Anglo- and Kiswahiliphone allies. As a result, Lingala remains the exclusive language of command within the military.

The political divide between the east and the rest of the country is frequently explicated in linguistic terms, both by external observers and actors on the ground. Bemba, who ran against Kabila in 2006, was a Lingala-speaker with a powerbase in the Lingala-speaking northwest. His campaign slogan, 100% Congolais! ‘100% Congolese!,’ overtly challenged Kabila's citizenship and autochthony. Tshisekedi, Kabila's challenger in the 2011 elections, is a Ciluba-speaker and draws most of his support from the two Kasai provinces in the central part of the DRC. Even so, the Lingala refrain Ya Tshitshi, zongisa ye na Rwanda! ‘Brother Tshisekedi, send him [i.e. Kabila] back to Rwanda!’ quickly caught on among the inhabitants of the capital, the western, the northwestern, and central parts of the DRC alike, and could also be heard in those regions where Lingala is not the prime lingua franca. One of the allegations against president Kabila that circulate on the street is precisely his presumed inability to express himself fluently in Lingala. All of this is indicative of the fact that for the inhabitants of the capital, Lingala has over the past decade acquired an entirely new set of additional indexical meanings. In addition to signaling their identity as residents of the capital, or Kinois (as it has always done and still does), it also came to stand for “being a true Congolese.” The changing sociopolitical context thus transformed Lingala into an emblem of the country's national-territorial sovereignty, which must constantly be defended against external threats, be it Rwandan and Ugandan military aggression or the usurpation of power by the “foreigner” Kabila. The analysis below curiously shows that many Kiswahili-speakers from the border town of Goma have come to appropriate Lingala for comparable purposes—even if the contextual circumstances under which they do so are remarkably different, which palpably demonstrates the local and volatile character of the indexicalities that are involved.

Goma and the North Kivu province

The cross-border language Kiswahili

Kiswahili, the lingua franca spoken throughout the eastern part of the DRC, predominates in most cross-border interactions. This Bantu language, historically associated with the network of urban trade centers (“stone towns”) that emerged along the East African coast from the ninth century onwards (Nurse & Hinnebusch Reference Nurse and Hinnebusch1993; Spear Reference Spear2000), made its first roads inwards in the nineteenth century, in the tracks of Zanzibari traders seeking to extend their trade empire to the center of the African continent. In 1876, on his expedition from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic coast, Henry Morton Stanley noticed that knowledge of Kiswahili had already caught on among some of the inhabitants of Nyangwe, a town on the Lualaba River (approximately 200 miles west of Lake Tanganyika) that traded with the Zanzibaris. As Stanley continued his journey up the Lualaba (which discharges into the Congo), he simultaneously opened up new trade opportunities for the Zanzibaris, who in the next ten years expanded their mercantile network in western and northwestern directions. Kiswahili's current spread as a lingua franca is a by-product of these Zanzibari trade efforts. In the late 1880s, agents of the Free State returned to the area and launched a number of military campaigns to eradicate Zanzibari competition. As the Free State agents and their troops, who were recruited in the northwestern parts of the Congo, used a proto-form of Lingala for communicating with the local populations they encountered, these “Anti-Arab campaigns” also curtailed the further spread of Kiswahili and laid down the current Lingala-Kiswahili border (see Meeuwis Reference Meeuwis2006 for details). After the Belgian government took over the Congo in 1908, Lingala was more and more associated with the military, state power, and the capital Leopoldville, while Kiswahili became the language of the country's eastern economic epicenters, in particular the fertile Kivu and the mining province Katanga. Kiswahili's precolonial and colonial history is thus responsible for its dual status as both a Congolese langue nationale and a cross-border language that unites populations of different countries. This is of great significance to the account below, as it explains why Kiswahili, in spite of its long-standing historical embedding in the area and its importance to people's everyday lives, is judged inadequate as a vehicle for expressing Congolité.

Lingala as an index of Congolité

In October 2008, the local chefs du quartier of the Birere neighborhood, located on Congolese territory but next to the border, conducted a number of “surveys” to identify so-called infiltrés, non-Congolese without a valid residence permit. The surveys were organized in close collaboration with local authorities and supported by at least part of the township population. They took place in a context of great tensions, as the city was under threat of attack by the insurgent army general Laurent Nkunda's CNDP rebel troops and the entire Birere township was buzzing with rumors about Rwandan secret agents allegedly sighted trying to enter the neutral zone, presumably smuggling in weapons or conveying secret orders to the rebellion. For as long as these surveys lasted, many Rwandese and Rwandophone Congolese, some of whom had been working and residing in Birere for years, suddenly found it safer to spend the night on the other side of the border in Gisenyi. One Rwandan trader who runs a boutique in Birere together with his female Congolese cousin recounted how he, too, had decided to rent a room in Gisenyi, for just a few days until the situation would return to normal. Initially his Congolese cousin agreed, as she felt uncomfortable about the presence of her Rwandan cousin in her shop and feared it would attract troubles. After a few days, however, other traders and friends managed to convince him to stay in Goma, arguing that going into hiding in Rwanda would only fuel other inhabitants' suspicions that he indeed belonged to the other side. Instead of taking cover, so the advice went, he should show himself a true “child of Birere” and publicly demonstrate his belonging to Congolese soil by “imposing himself” (cf. infra). To this end, his friends taught him a number of tricks to avoid troubles. To begin with, he should not let himself be intimidated by police officers but instead “talk nicely” to them (in Lingala, solola bien) by using those few words of Lingala that they learnt him. He should try the same while talking with clients in the shop and with fellow traders, first exchanging basic greetings in Lingala before switching to Kiswahili. Although his name (and, according to many, also his physical appearance) still gave away his Rwandan background, through integrating a few Lingala expressions into his Kiswahili conversations he managed to convince his neighbors that his “place” is on the Congolese side of the border. It also enabled him to conduct interactions with local authorities, clients and other traders in an atmosphere of trust and confidence.

This anecdote illustrates how in these specific circumstances, in which close cross-border interaction is mingled with distrust and sometimes even direct aggression against persons associated with the other side, a rudimentary knowledge of Lingala can serve as an asset for assuring a local livelihood, and may occasionally even be vital for one's personal safety. For Goma residents, being able to speak a few words of Lingala indicates that you are connected to the interior of the DRC, or at least that your connections extend beyond the borderland. As such, it affirms that you are an autochthonous Congolese, eliminating any uncertainties that might have arisen concerning your Congolité.

The incident reported here is by no means an isolated one. Rwandophone traders operating in the city often encourage each other to learn a few words of Lingala to facilitate business with fellow traders and with clients from another ethnic background, but also to distinguish themselves from Rwandese “from across the border.” A basic knowledge of Lingala is also essential for negotiating with soldiers, police officers, and other state representatives (e.g. tax collectors). Like elsewhere in the DRC, Goma's civilian population is constantly harassed by police officers and soldiers who did not receive their pay, and this under all kinds of pretexts. For a civilian confronted with such extortion, it is preferable (and often financially beneficial) to be able to produce a few words in Lingala in order to create a less tense atmosphere that leaves room for negotiation. For Rwandophone Congolese (who are frequently accused of having obtained Congolese citizenship in a fraudulent way, cf. Jackson Reference Jackson2006), demonstrating a basic competence in Lingala may additionally be helpful for reinforcing their status as lawful possessors of Congolese citizenship: in case police officers are in doubt about your true nationality, producing a sentence or two in Lingala may help to convince them. On the whole, the risk of being halted by police or members of the military is considerably greater for city residents suspected of being Rwandan nationals, as controlling the validity of residence permits represents an additional opportunity for generating extra income. In fact, in the first months of 2012 the same Rwandan trader from the opening incident recounted how he had recently been arrested by the police at night while he was driving a car with a Rwandan license plate.

1. (2) J'ai sorti tout mon Lingala. Je ne sais pas où je l'ai trouvé, j'étais étonné de moi même, de mon vocabulaire, mais à la fin ils m'ont laissé partir.

   ‘I pulled out all my Lingala, I don't know where I got it, I was amazed about myself, about my vocabulary, but in the end they let me go.’

The little Lingala that his Congolese friends had taught him once more proved itself highly useful.

To the extent that Lingala tends to be perceived as a certificate for passing as a true, autochthonous Congolese, the community indexed in the act of speaking it very much coincides with what Silverstein (Reference Silverstein1998:407) identified as a language community. Language communities consist of reflexively self-aware groups of speakers that are held together by their joint normative orientation to the referential use of a particular language (that is, a language with a capital L). As such, these communities depend very much on situated practice for their actualization, as this is the primary site where participants demonstrate such normative orientations and thereby “perform” the community they are part of. Because these performances contain a major subjective element, language communities are not to be confounded with the objectively identifiable recurrent interactional patterns that sociolinguists traditionally refer to as the essence of a speech community (e.g. Hymes Reference Hymes, Gumperz and Hymes1972, see also Gumperz' (Reference Gumperz1971) notion of linguistic community), that is, sets of “perduring, presupposable regularities of discursive interaction in a group or population” (Silverstein Reference Silverstein1998:407). The case at hand provides compelling evidence that these two analytically independent levels of community formation may intersect in intricate and unpredictable ways, as Lingala is used for demarcating new symbolic boundaries (the language community) in a context of intense cross-border interaction conducted mainly in Kiswahili (the speech or linguistic community).

If it is indeed the case that Lingala constitutes the central “object of worship” of such an emergent language community (as the central diacritic for excluding others), the usage of this language for demonstrating one's Congolité exploits the gray area between indexicality and iconicity. In the instances discussed thus far, speaking Lingala does not merely “signal” an associated context but constitutes an integral part of the community being performed in the act of speaking it. Hence, to the extent that the public use of the language equals performing the community indexically associated with it, that usage constitutes an indexical icon of the community in question (cf. the discussion in Silverstein Reference Silverstein2003a:222ff; see also D'hondt Reference D'hondt2010). This intertwining of indexicality and iconicity is nicely illustrated by the fact that designating someone as a compatriot must always be done in the very language that epitomizes belonging to native soil. Informants are adamant that there exists no Kiswahili equivalent for the Lingala noun phrase mwana mboka (lit. ‘child of the village/region of origin/country,’ hence ‘compatriot,’ ‘fellow citizen’). Thus, a Kiswahili-speaking Goma resident who wants to categorize another person as a fellow countryman has no alternative but to do so in Lingala, as in example (3), coined by an informant.

1. (3) Huyu nimwana mbokabwana!

   ‘This is a fellow countryman, mister!’Footnote ¹²

In actual fact, there is a Kiswahili lexeme that roughly expresses the same lexical content as mwana mboka, namely mwananchi ‘citizen’ (lit. ‘child of the country’ and ‘child of the soil’).Footnote ¹³ Resorting to a Kiswahili lexeme for declaring someone a fellow countryman would ultimately be self-defeating, however. Assertions of co-citizenship require the speaker to demonstrate his own Congolité, and therefore they must be done in Lingala and not in a language also spoken on the other side of the border. Only Lingala can fulfill the role of expressing Congolité.

This overt incongruity between, on the one hand, the emblematic value of Lingala and, on the other, the fact that most Goma residents have only a limited proficiency in Lingala and do not frequently use it in their everyday lives might initially seem startling. Upon closer inspection, however, it is by no means unique or exceptional. Similar disparities between use and value are a persistent feature of many of the heritage language communities found in the US (Italian-American, Irish-American, etc.), for instance. Much more remarkable, from a comparative perspective, is the absence of any traces of a Humboldtian language-thought isomorphism mediating the link between language and community. As Silverstein (Reference Silverstein2003b) points out, heritage language communities are typically erected around the emblematic value of a lost or endangered minority language that ancestors spoke in times immemorial and therefore encapsulates, in a metaphysical fashion, the collectivity's true identity. In Goma this is clearly not the case, as the language that acquired emblematic value as delineator of the Congolese community is traditionally regarded exogenous to the area where the bearers of that community reside. In view of this observation, the “ecological niche” in which this Lingala language community thrives and the sociohistorically specific language ideologies facilitating its emergence deserve closer scrutiny.

When looking at the political economy of symbolic and linguistic resources in which the practice of identifying oneself as member of an imagined community of Lingala speakers comes to make sense for Goma inhabitants, we stumble upon a second paradox: People living in a commercial urban environment where cross-border interaction flourishes and physical state boundaries appear to have almost entirely dissolved feel compelled to erect a new symbolic boundary, even if they have to do so by resorting to an (at least partially) exogenous language associated with a capital about which they have mixed feelings (cf. infra) and with the bureaucratic apparatus of a failed state from which they can expect little support (cf. infra). The felt need for such a differentiation must be understood in the context of the ambiguous character of the city's eastward mercantile orientation. Since the outbreak of violence of the mid 1990s, Goma residents find themselves in the uncomfortable position of being both economically dependent on their Rwandan neighbor (as it controls the entry to the East-African trading chain) and subjected to its military dominance. In terms of language choice, Lingala is the most appropriate candidate for the required differentiation, as Kiswahili lacks the discriminatory capacity that such boundary-marking requires. In spite of the fact that Kiswahili is one of the DRC's four national languages, it is also fluently spoken by many Rwandese, particularly those living close to the border. Its potential for distinction is further compromised by the fact that many Rwandan Tutsi exiles who returned to Rwanda after the 1994 FPR takeover, including many of the political and military leaders heading the new regime, received military training in Kiswahili in Uganda and Tanzania.

Importantly, the fact that Lingala's indexical value came to acquire an iconic quality is not solely due to its role as shibboleth for establishing one's autochthonous pedigree. It also reflects the fact that Goma residents' indexing of their Congolité takes place on disputed territory, in a shady border area from which the Congolese state has virtually retreated and where it no longer has an impact on everyday life. At this point, the emergence of Lingala as an indexical icon is reminiscent of Johnstone, Andrus, & Danielson's (Reference Johnstone, Andrus and Danielson2006) account of the way in which stereotype-like “third-order” interpretations of regional linguistic forms are recruited for the reflexive, self-conscious performance of a specifically “local” identity. Paradoxically, this takes place against the background of a general “destabilization” of locality set in motion by processes of globalization like migration and the commodification of information. As is clear from our account, the processes leading to such a destabilization assume a different shape in the periphery of the world system than in the postindustrialized West.

The link between language and the community it epitomizes furthermore appears to be mediated by a set of “pragmatic” attitudes stressing the metonymical quality of Lingala in ways that are similar to what Meeuwis (Reference Meeuwis1997, Reference Meeuwis, Knapp and Meierkord2002) found among Kiswahili-speaking Congolese in Belgium in the 1990s, who repeatedly emphasized that Lingala is the language of the capital Kinshasa and thus metonymically stands for the entire DRC. Lingala, so it is argued, fundamentally “belongs” to the DRC, even if it is nowadays also spoken elsewhere, as this is the country where it historically originated.

1. (4) Comme ça ça englobe tout le monde hein. Ça englobe donc les neuf régions du Zaïre. … le lingala c'est la langue de la capitale. Donc quand on parle lingala on ne sait pas distinguer lui il est du Bas-Zaïre, lui il est de l'Equateur, celui est du Kasaï, non! On voit tout simplement un Zaïrois, un Kinois.

   ‘That way [i.e. speaking Lingala] everyone is included. It includes the nine regions of Zaire. … Lingala is the language of the capital. So when one speaks Lingala, you can't distinguish this one is from the Lower-Zaire, this one is from the Equateur region, this is from the Kasai region, no! You simply see a Zairian, a person from Kinshasa.’

2. (5) Si par exemple, j'entends quelqu'un parler le lingala, un Noir, je vais dire directement ah! oyo aza Zaïrois. Il peut être Congolais hein! A Brazzaville on parle aussi le lingala. Mais je dirais d'abord, c'est un Zaïrois.

   ‘If for example I hear someone speak Lingala, a Black person, I'll immediately say ‘ah! this one is a Zairian.’ Mind you he might well be from Congo-Brazzaville! In Brazzaville, too, people speak Lingala. But I'll first of all say, he's a Zairian.'

The language ideology at work here holds that nation-states have in essence only one language (even if this is contradicted by actual multilingualism on the ground) and that each language of the world is the exclusive property of only one nation-state.

Importantly, these patterns of identification should not be interpreted as indicating a rapprochement between the eastern and western part of the country. Regardless of the fact that Goma residents on certain occasions indeed make use of Lingala for distinguishing themselves from their Rwandan neighbors, a significant part of the population of the capital Kinshasa regards their Kiswahili-speaking compatriots from the eastern provinces as too much influenced by Rwandese and Ugandans, and, therefore, as not really Congolese. On certain occasions (such as in the campaigns leading up to the 2006 and 2011 presidential elections, in which inhabitants of Kinshasa consecutively rallied behind Bemba and Tshisekedi against Kabila, cf. supra), Kinshasa residents embraced Lingala as an icon of autochthony that specifically excluded Kiswahili speakers. Such distrust and suspicions are mutual. In Goma as well, people repeatedly emphasize the cultural differences between Kinois and Kivutiens. In spite of their symbolic appropriation of Lingala, Goma residents generally hold outspokenly caricatural views of their capital and its inhabitants. On the one hand, Kinshasa is regarded as a place that radiates ambiance ‘atmosphere,’ and its residents are regarded as “modern,” “at ease,” and “cool” (cf. infra). It is considered worth visiting for pleasure (jocularly referred to as une formation à la vie ‘a school of life’ for acquainting oneself with all sorts of vices and secret pleasures not locally available), but not for business (for which Kampala and Nairobi offer much better opportunities). On the other hand, Goma residents also consider people from Kinshasa to be “lazy” and “not trustworthy,” particularly when doing business with them. The prevailing sentiment is that if Goma depended on the capital for survival, the town “would have died of hunger by now.” Another frequently heard expression is given in (6).

1. (6) A Goma les gens se réveillent tôt pour gagner de l'argent, à Kinshasa les gens dorment tard pour gaspiller l'argent

   ‘In Goma people wake up early to make money, In Kinshasa people sleep in to waste money’

These mutual suspicions between Kinois and Gomatraciens illustrate that indexicalities like the ones discussed here are utterly specific to the contexts in which they arise. Despite the superficial similarities between the way inhabitants of Goma appropriate Lingala and the indexical values Kinshasa residents assign to it, these indexicalities thus remain highly local and reflect very particular circumstances and trajectories, a palpable demonstration of the context-embedded and volatile character of indexical meaning.

Lingala as a tool for mobilizing respect and authority

Since its foundation in the 1880s, Lingala has been the uncontested language of internal communication and command of the Congolese army (see Meeuwis Reference Meeuwis2006). This is the case not only in the northwest of the DRC, where Lingala is the regular interethnic lingua franca across the contextual spectrum, but also in those regions where the populations otherwise use Kikongo, Ciluba, and Kiswahili for interethnic communication. The resulting association between Lingala and the military came up explicitly in many of the answers to the questionnaire, when respondents listed the contexts in which they use Lingala. Here as well, however, this explicitly articulated first-order association is in turn creatively exploited for accomplishing other social tasks. These include conveying authority and commanding respect, and at a more “behavioral” level, the assuming of a “firm” or “tough” stance through which the two previous tasks are accomplished. Together, this complex of associations is locally referred to by means of the Congolese-French gloss s'imposer ‘to impose oneself,’ but without the pejorative connotation it has in standard French.

Thus, city residents who are not part of the military will nevertheless also make use of Lingala for putting up an image of toughness and authority. Consider the following exchange between a female customer and an armed guard in front of a bank office.

1. (7)

   Customer: Banque inafanya leo?

   ‘The bank is working today?’

   Guard: Te, ekangi lelo. Zonga lobi!

   ‘No, it is closed today. Come back tomorrow!’

Both are natives to the region and fluent in Kiswahili, but the guard nevertheless responds in Lingala to index the forcefulness associated with, and required by, the job he carries out. In this case, the guard's symbolic authority is not solely the outcome of his linguistic choices but is also backed by other associations with the military in terms of attire, attributes, and job content (uniform, machine gun, the fact that he is guarding a bank). In other contexts, such additional indexes of a nonlinguistic nature are absent. This is the case, for instance, with beggars and street children (in Kinshasa called bashegue but locally known as maybobo), who will typically formulate their initial plea for money in Kiswahili but shift to Lingala for intimidating passers-by who fail to respond to their call for financial support:

1. (8) Eeh bwana bwana!Toza bapetits na yo:::! Bapetits na yo nzala, sala biso bien! Tikela biso mwa système, esala mwa façon!

   ‘Hey mister, mister! We're your children! Your children are hungry, do something good for us! Leave us something that is beneficial, something from which we benefit!’

Categorizing the recipient of the appeal as a “parent” who bears responsibility for his “children” (regardless of the actual age difference between producer and recipient of the utterance) projects a set of mutual rights and obligations calling for an exchange of money, and the switch to Lingala adds a compelling character to the query. As one informant put it, such “requests” would simply “not work” in French (which would indicate “that you have been to school – hah hah”) or Kiswahili (“a language of the family”), and certainly not in Kinyarwanda (“[do it] in Kinyarwanda, you're dead!”—clearly meant in a metaphorical way). Lingala is also an indispensible ingredient of the “sign equipment” of the many informal self-defense groups that operate in the city, locally referred to as anti-gang, alongside their bandanas and primitive weaponry (machetes, clubs). Initially, anti-gang members were recruited on a small scale from among the maybobo by market vendors in order to prevent petty crime by other maybobo and démob (demobilized soldiers). However, this soon developed into a full-fledged form of urban vigilantism, strongly supported by city authorities, that imposes its own concepts of security and justice, organizing nocturnal patrols and putting up roadblocks to identify people entering or leaving a particular neighborhood. The matrix of the slang these anti-gang members use is undeniably Kiswahili, but through inserting a limited number of Lingala items they manage to project the image of intimidation and roughness that forms an essential part of their group identity. The little Lingala they dispose of is thus of high symbolic value.

This creative appropriation of Lingala as a tool for commanding authority and respect is already at work within the military itself. Many soldiers quartered in North Kivu themselves grew up in areas where Kiswahili is spoken as lingua franca, but will nevertheless resort to Lingala when addressing a civilian in the capacity of member of the military (e.g. when extorting money from them). They will do so, moreover, in Lingala-only discourse, whereas maybobo and anti-gang members mostly rely on isolated Lingala insertions in a Kiswahili matrix. From a reverse angle, civilians who address a traffic policeman or member of the military in Lingala do so not merely “out of habit” (a first-order regularity) but because it is considered respectful, presumably creates goodwill, and is therefore considered conducive to a beneficial atmosphere (a second-order creative appropriation). Here we stumble upon an additional reason why presumed Kinyarwanda speakers, both Rwandan citizens and Rwandophone Congolese, are more frequently singled out for extortion. Rwandese citizens usually do not know any Lingala at all, and Rwandophone Congolese are easily singled out on the basis of their “incorrect” pronunciation.Footnote ¹⁴ The fact that both groups lack the Lingala language skills necessary for “talking nicely” exposes them as foreigners, limits their interactional maneuvering space, and renders them more easily intimated by soldiers' linguistic practices (and thus more prone to give in to their demands). This represents a first clear case of the intertwining of different indexicalities, as the indexing of toughness (which is itself not exclusive to the Kivu) here locally coalesces with the iconic type of community-performative indexicality discussed in the previous section.

Still further remote from the first-order association with the military is the use of Lingala for “metaphorical” intimidation in more relaxed contexts, such as mockery among friends. Recipients of a story or assessment, for example, may resort to one of the Lingala expressions listed below for demonstrating disagreement (9a–e) or for performing another type of disaffiliative response (10a–c).

1. (9)

   1. a. Makambo ozoloba, lokuta!  ‘What you're saying is not true!’

   2. b. Lokuta na yo!       ‘What you're saying is not true!’

   3. c. Lokuta mabe!       ‘That's not true!’

   4. d. Tika, tika, tika!       ‘Drop it now!’ (an expression of disbelief)

   5. e. Kosakana te, mon cher!   ‘Don't talk rubbish, my friend!’

2. (10)

   1. a. Keba na yo, (masta)!     ‘Be careful, you!’

   2. b. Nakofacher mabe!      ‘I'm really gonna get angry!’

   3. c. Nakobeta yo!        ‘I'm gonna hit you!’

It is significant that (9a–e) comprise metapragmatic framing devices, which greatly facilitates their circulation across contexts (cf. Spitulnik Reference Spitulnik1996:167) and in turn explains why these utterances may also be employed by speakers who are otherwise not fluent in Lingala. The fact that these forms are used explicitly “to frame and orchestrate communication” (Reference Spitulnik1996:167) greatly enhances their detachability and their potential for decontextualization, as it renders them both formally and functionally more “transparent” (see also Silverstein Reference Silverstein, Auer and Di Luzio1992). Their “generic applicability to virtually any kind of dyadic exchange” (167) additionally explains why they can easily be transferred to other contexts.

Lingala may be associated with military dominance and extortion, but for many Kivu residents Kinyarwanda epitomizes the culture of brutality and violence from which the Kivu suffered so badly during the last two decades (as the Rwandese are said to have imported the brute use of force throughout the successive Congolese wars). Of course, acts of extortion and violence by members of the military or the police are not a novel phenomenon, and already during the Mobutu period regular soldiers used to ransack the civilian population to supplement their meager income. At that time, however, soldiers almost “kindly” ordered urban inhabitants ‘to give with good spirit’ (in Lingala, pesa na esprit ya bien). This changed as a consequence of the conflict, which multiplied the number of parties involved in such pillage and drastically increased the level of violence associated with it. This is wryly reflected in the new twist Goma residents added to the above-mentioned saying. Extortion by soldiers and militia members is nowadays no longer a matter of “giving with good spirit,” but of ‘giving your life with good spirit’ (pesa vie na esprit ya bien).

Lingala as indexing urban sophistication and modernity

Soon after Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) acquired the status of capital, it became the colony's foremost center of sociocultural innovation, radiating an atmosphere of coolness, sophistication, ambiance and pleasure. It managed to retain that status until today. Goma residents facetiously refer to Kinshasa as Outre-mer ‘overseas territory,’ which underscores its at once far away and mysteriously attractive character. These qualities also reflect on the language spoken in the capital. Lingala thus not only indexes a connection to Kinshasa as a geographical locality, but also invokes urban identity and a local version of modernity based on city-based style and consumption patterns (referred to as being à la mode or bien griffé).Footnote ¹⁵ Here as well, we are dealing with a second-order indexicality that creatively exploits the first-order association with a geographical locality for accomplishing derived conversational tasks. Thus, Kiswahili-speakers may resort to Lingala for framing a story and marking it as “remarkable,” “beyond the ordinary” and hence “worth telling,” as in (11a–e) below. Here as well, the fact that the instances listed are all metapragmatic framing devices facilitates their circulation and adoption by speakers not otherwise fluent in Lingala.

1. (11)

   1. a. Nayebisa yo likambo moko ya somo penza!  ‘I need to tell you something really awesome!’

   2. b. Moto, oyebi nini!        ‘Hey man, listen up!’

   3. c. Moto, eloko yango somo trop!  ‘Hey man, that thing is really very awesome!’

   4. d. Oyebi nini!           ‘Hey, you know what!?’

   5. e. Moto, tuna ngai nini!       ‘Hey man, let me tell you something!’

Speakers who lack the capacity to “spice up” their Kiswahili conversation with such Lingala insertions are regarded as a yuma ‘country bumpkin.’ At mass rallies held in Goma, locally popular politicians will often insert a little Lingala in their Kiswahili speeches to entice and incite their followers (and at the same time emphasize their Congolité; see above). According to one of our informants, many Kivu residents initially found Kabila's speeches excessively dull precisely because they lacked these tiny bits of Lingala. Recently, however, the president's Lingala skills improved considerably.

Of crucial importance for understanding this third complex of indexical associations is Kinshasa's pivotal role in the Congolese entertainment industry. As mentioned above, Congolese music originated in the capital, is still for the overwhelming majority produced there and almost exclusively sung in Lingala, but is nevertheless immensely popular throughout the country (and also beyond). The city of Goma, too, is integrated into this Lingala-based cultural market of which Kinshasa constitutes the epicenter. In Goma's clubs and bars one also quite easily comes across examples of other musical styles not available in the capital and sung in other languages than Lingala (prime examples are Ugandan ragga and Tanzanian bongo fleva, the popularity of which reflects the city's mercantile eastward orientation), but the live events that attract most attention are those by Kinshasa-based stars such as Koffi Olomidé, Fally Ipupa, Werrason, Papa Wemba, and JB Mpiana.

The fact that Goma residents, in endorsing this third type of indexicality, orient to a Bourdieuan cultural market as the relevant centering institution for authoritatively assigning meaning to linguistic varieties is remarkable in view of the frequently voiced criticisms that Bourdieu's field theory, in its unmodified form, is inadequate for understanding the (re)production of “legitimate language” in large parts of the African continent. Thus, according to authors like Swigart (Reference Swigart2001) and Stroud (Reference Stroud2002), the standard notion of “linguistic market” is of little analytical value because states like Senegal (Swigart Reference Swigart2001) and Mozambique (Stroud Reference Stroud2002) have no integrated labor market (where linguistic capital can be “exchanged” for job opportunities) and because regulatory institutions where the “value” of legitimate linguistic varieties is inculcated (schools, academies) are absent. This also holds for the DRC, but here the pressure exerted by the unified cultural market proves strong enough for imbuing Lingala with prestige and legitimacy.

An additional element that contributes to Lingala's association with modernity is Kinshasa's position as the Congo's principal gateway to Europe and the symbolic center of its connection to the outside world. People fluent in Lingala are generally perceived as bien branchés, as possessing connections that extend not only to the country's interior but also beyond, to Brussels, Paris, and to other centers of the Congolese diaspora (Meeuwis Reference Meeuwis1997, Reference Meeuwis, Knapp and Meierkord2002; Vigouroux Reference Vigouroux2008). Kiswahili is definitely less attractive in this respect, in spite of the language's cross-border status. A Kiswahili-speaker's network, even if he or she is well-connected, will typically not extend beyond Nairobi, Dar es Salaam or, at best, Dubai.

Again, there is a strong tendency for this third type of indexicality to mutually reinforce Lingala's boundary-marking function. Clubs and bars in Goma that do not play Congolese Lingala-sung music, for example, are automatically identified as chez les Rwandais. Similar patterns can be observed in many other aspects of urban culture. The way in which youngsters integrate Lingala in their slang for expressing their being à la mode, for example, also functions as a strategy for excluding Rwandophones. This is the case among university students, where the already mentioned “G7” (the aggregate of the various “autochthonous” local ethnic groups) make a habit of publicly displaying their Congolité through frequently incorporating Lingala lexemes in their Kiswahili discourse.