Research Focus

Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, Computer-mediated communication, Translation, Interpretation, Stylistics, Kiswahili linguistics

Selected Publications

• Marjie, Sarah 2021. Evaluating the concept and value of language policies in some African Countries. Kiswahili, 84 (1): 20-38.
• Marjie, Sarah 2021. Patterns of language use in Kiswahili-based Kenyan mass media. In Mechieka, Martha M. and Evans Gesura Mecha (eds.), Kenyan English Domains of Use, Forms and Users’ Attitude. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 113-132.
• Marjie, Sarah and Felix Kwame Sosoo 2021. The communicative function of yaani on Tanzanian WhatsApp platforms. Ghana Journal of Linguistics, 10 (1): 305- 328.
• Marjie, Sarah 2020. Preserving Swahili language and culture through Kanga and Bajaji writings.  In Yao, Jean-Arsène, Victorien Lavou Zoungbou and Luis Mancha San Esteban (eds.), Africas, Americas and the Caribbean: Crossed Collective Representations (19th-21th Centuries). Humanidades: Universidad de Alcala, 187-196.
• Dzahene-Quarshie, Josephine and Sarah Marjie. 2020. Negotiating language use in specific domains among East African migrant students and workers in Ghana. Swahili Forum 27: 57-81.
• Magugu, Vincent, Robert Oduori and Sarah Marjie. 2016. Website localization in Kiswahili and development. In Hadija, Jalila (ed.), Translation Theories:  Interpretation and Terminology Development. Dar es Salaam: Daud Publishers, 130-148.
• Marjie, Sarah, Robert Oduori and Vincent Magugu. 2016. Localizing concepts through translation: Language options on mobile phones. In Hadija, Jalila (ed.), Translation Theories: Interpretation and Terminology Development: Dar es Salaam: Daud Publishers, 168-183.
• Marjie, Sarah 2015. A linguistic survey of types of names among the Babukusu of Kenya. Global Journal of Human-Social Science: Linguistics & Education. 15 (3): 35-42.
• Marjie, Sarah 2013. Borrowings in texts: A case of Tanzanian newspapers. Journal of New Media and Mass Communication 16: 1-9. https://iiste.org/Journals/index.php/NMMC/article/view/7089
• Duah, Reginald and Sarah Marjie. 2013. Code-switching in written communication: Factors and motivations. In Lauer, Helen, Nana Aba Amfo and Joana Boampong (eds), The One in a Many. Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers, 97-12.

Summary of research topic in the CL&CK project

Insidious paternalism and the establishment of heritage: A contrapuntal analysis of colonial correspondences of the British Southern Cameroons.

Across different geographical spaces, colonial correspondences have often served as valuable data sources from which we may identify and evaluate social, cultural, perhaps, economic, and even political events of the past. These sources also allow us to reflect on what such events reveal about the past as well as what they may suggest about the present, from a postcolonial standpoint. Focusing on a selection of letters written during the British colonization of the Southern Cameroons, this paper explores the incidence of an insidious form of paternalism revealed through discourses of contention present in the language of the letters. Through a contrapuntal analysis (allowing for the viability of varied cultural perspectives), this paper will try to show how the cited paternalistic attitudes unveil simmering tensions regarding the right to power (whether earned, deserved, assigned, inherited, or arrogated) and assertions to legitimacy, all determined primarily by an effort to establish true cultural heritage.