Contact Languages Counteracting Language Planning Policies: A New Lingua Franca in the Oromia Region (Ethiopia)

In the current situation of civil and ethnic war in Ethiopia, language planning policies (LPP) are a crucial issue. This study highlights an emergent linguistic phenomenon within a situation of contact linguistic practices in the Oromia region of Ethiopia, bordering with Kenya. The analysis covers dramatic years of conflicts and tensions in the area where an international community of Rastafarians have introduced Jamaican speech-forms (JSF) and influenced local linguistic practices. The survey addresses the process of language acquisition and choice of Jamaican speech forms and its decisive role in the identity formation of young males in the area of Shashamane. The selected data, from transcriptions and video-recording covering a span of five years, show how the minority community has impacted on the local hegemonic multilingual and multicultural community. Furthermore, the study offers an innovative perspective on the dynamics of linguistic contact and the predominant role of prestige formation in linguistic choice dynamics, but also in cultural approach and social behaviors. The specificity of the linguistic context features a most complex situation of code switching and code mixing, used as an adjusting technique in conversation empowering ‘youth speech’. Jamaican speech forms, used as lingua franca, represent an unpredictable phenomenon seemingly counteracting central national hegemony (Addis Ababa) through linguistic practices, exo-normative behaviors and trans-cultural affiliations (religious, social, educational) that are also ‘centrifugal’ from major varieties of world English (VEAW).