Linguistic aspects of the forms of address in Nyakyusa

The main contribution of this article revolves around the choice of address forms as a mechanism to express politeness in an institutionalised setting in African context. To achieve this goal, I worked with spoken texts which enabled to unravel three issues. First, maternal forms of address in Nyakyusa reveal a dichotomy of male-female distinction, which adopts the male-oriented terms when the general population is referred to. Terms of masculine status are preferred in addressing the general public. In this case both male and female members of the community are addressed by male-oriented kin terms. Second, since utility of address forms primarily involves selection of kinship terms, their choice is a strategy employed to express politeness in face-to-face conversations. The extensions and incorporation of kinship terms in the forms of address is a testimony that the Nyakyusa people manoeuvres terms to express politeness. Lastly, Nyakyusa people have adjusted their kin system. This is obvious with such terms as usangasi (< Swahili: shangazi ‘father’s sister’), ugwifi (< Swahili: wifi ‘brother’s wife’) and abalongosi (< Swahili: viongozi ‘leaders’). In this regard, findings show that the lexicon for the traditional leadership is slightly disrupted by the introduction of the modern system of government.