Finding "Kisisi": Serendipity, Surprise, and the Accidental Study of Child Language Invention

Headshot of Gilmore
April 25, 2019
2:30PM - 4:00PM
311 Denney Hall

Date Range
2019-04-25 14:30:00 2019-04-25 16:00:00 Finding "Kisisi": Serendipity, Surprise, and the Accidental Study of Child Language Invention Dr. Perry Gilmore(College of Education at University of Arizona) Part historic ethnography, part linguistic case study, and part a mother’s memoir, this serendipitous and accidental study documents a rare case of child language invention that demonstrates the striking linguistic and sociolinguistic competencies of young children. In 1975, on a remote hillside in postcolonial Up-Country Kenya, two five year-old-boys, one American and one Samburu, met and became inseparable friends for a period of 15 months. The children’s controversial friendship was created through and marked by their invention of Kisisi, an original Swahili pidgin that was understood and shared by just the two of them.The boys’ unique language created a place for their friendship that transcended the existing language ideologies, marked colonial borders, and harsh inequities of economics, race and culture that engulfed all aspects of their daily lives. Though these events took place more than 40 years ago, their agentive language practices have significant implications for the study of the global linguistic encounters prevalent in our increasingly diverse and unequal world.Perry Gilmore, Ph.D., an educational and linguistic anthropologist, is Professor of Language, Reading and Culture (LRC), and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) faculty at the University of Arizona. She is also professor emerita and affiliate faculty of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Gilmore is the past President of the Council on Anthropology and Education (CAE) and the recipient of the CAE prestigious George and Louise Spindler Award for lifetime achievement in Anthropology and Education.This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Video Ethnography and Discourse Analysis, the Humanities Institute, the Global Arts & Humanities Discovery Themes, and the Departments of Teaching and Learning, Linguistics, Anthropology, and English. The event is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. If you require assistance at this event, message Cassie at patterson.493@osu.edu.  311 Denney Hall America/New_York public

Dr. Perry Gilmore
(College of Education at University of Arizona) 


Part historic ethnography, part linguistic case study, and part a mother’s memoir, this serendipitous and accidental study documents a rare case of child language invention that demonstrates the striking linguistic and sociolinguistic competencies of young children. In 1975, on a remote hillside in postcolonial Up-Country Kenya, two five year-old-boys, one American and one Samburu, met and became inseparable friends for a period of 15 months. The children’s controversial friendship was created through and marked by their invention of Kisisi, an original Swahili pidgin that was understood and shared by just the two of them.

The boys’ unique language created a place for their friendship that transcended the existing language ideologies, marked colonial borders, and harsh inequities of economics, race and culture that engulfed all aspects of their daily lives. Though these events took place more than 40 years ago, their agentive language practices have significant implications for the study of the global linguistic encounters prevalent in our increasingly diverse and unequal world.

Perry Gilmore, Ph.D., an educational and linguistic anthropologist, is Professor of Language, Reading and Culture (LRC), and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) faculty at the University of Arizona. She is also professor emerita and affiliate faculty of the Alaska Native Language Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Gilmore is the past President of the Council on Anthropology and Education (CAE) and the recipient of the CAE prestigious George and Louise Spindler Award for lifetime achievement in Anthropology and Education.

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Video Ethnography and Discourse Analysis, the Humanities Institute, the Global Arts & Humanities Discovery Themes, and the Departments of Teaching and Learning, Linguistics, Anthropology, and English. The event is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. If you require assistance at this event, message Cassie at patterson.493@osu.edu.