Abstract:
This study aims at unraveling roles played by Kenyan languages in business
communication in Kenya’s town of Eldoret despite the fact that the languages face
discrimination by existing language policy. It also sets out to investigate factors that
affect language choice between business interlocutors in the town. Kenya has two
official languages, English and Kiswahili, which are the only languages of wider
communication. The language policy only defines the role of the two languages in
communication and education. This means that the remaining languages which are
not languages of wider communication do not have clearly defined roles by the
existing language policies. This paper sets out to investigate any roles played by
these languages in the urban environment of Eldoret town in Kenya. Ten businesses
were purposefully sampled within the central business district of Eldoret town.
Conversations between traders and their customers recorded and analyzed. The
results indicated that many languages that had no roles as languages of wider
communication played an essential role in business communication.
