Linguistic Variation, Cultural Influence and Identity Building in Ethiopian Trade Center Towns: the Case of Maichew
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Date
2016-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
There are societies where their community reflects a language as well as culture of two or more
societies. These kinds of situations are more found in places that are mostly used as trade centers.
Practically, trade centers are areas where various people come from different places to exchange
goods and services, however, trade centers are also center to people’s exchange of various social,
political, and linguistic features. Thus, owing to social factors such like intermarriage, people
may start to permanently live in the towns. As a result, as the new arrivals start to share their
various cultural practices, linguistic elements and attitudes with the original community, there
may appear a language and culture that reflects the influence of others. Therefore, the intention
of the researcher was to show, in trade center towns like Maichew, how the presence of various
ethnic groups contributed to the language and culture of the community and to look into the
attributes of identity that are used by the community members to define their individual and
group identity. The researcher incorporated participants using a convenience sampling and used
a qualitative method to delve the core features the language undergoes as to vary from the
standard Tigrigna, probe the cultural practices of the community which are peculiar and
reengineered for the purpose of harmonization and inquire the attributes of identity and their
level of importance to define individuals and group. Furthermore, a quantitative method is used
to look into the distribution of ethnic groups in the community. As a result, as the language
maintains phonetic feature variation, undergoes a phonological process for variation purpose,
shows a lexical and structural variation from the standard Tigrigna, the culture of the community
harmonizes cultural practices that can be traced to the Agaw, Amhara, Oromo, Tigray:
particularly the Agame and Afar ethnic groups. The study also found out that the community
members use several attributes to define their individual identity considering the importance of
attributes but use the language which is different from the standard Tigrigna as means of their
group identity. Generally, the study confirms that identity is an ongoing process in which the
attributes used to construct are determined by those values and elements society regards most
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Keywords
Case of maichew, Building, Cultural influence, Ethiopian