Key language lessons for businesses in speeches at Kajwang’s burial ceremony

Opinion and Analysis

Former Prime minister Raila Odinga speaks during inter-denomination prayers for the late Homa Bay Senator Otieno Kajwang’ Uhuru Park in Nairobi on Tuesday last week. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE 

By WALLACE KANTAI

In Summary

• Choice of language by speakers highlights hurdles firms face in targeting audiences.

The burial last Friday of Homa Bay Senator Otieno Kajwang was a fascinating exercise. It wasn’t so much about the sheer crush of humanity that had been evident since the public lying-in-state at Uhuru Park, and through to Kisumu.

It wasn’t even the wilting heat in Mbita or the sad sideshow of the politician’s second family. It wasn’t even particularly about the political nature of the speeches – this was to be expected at the send-off for a man who made his reputation at public rallies.

No, the fascination was with the choice of language that the different speakers chose to communicate in as they, in turn, paid their respects to the departed man, fired up the crowd, and scored political points.

Many of the earlier speakers spoke in Dholuo, seeking to connect with a crowd that was, after all, deep in the late Kajwang’s ‘shags’.

As the speakers began becoming more national in nature, and as their seniority increased, so did the English and Kiswahili quotient of their scripts, although all of them still felt it necessary to throw in the one or two Dholuo phrases in their vocabulary.

Raila Odinga’s speech was the most interesting. He began in English, before switching to rapid-fire Dholuo, inflected with idioms and folksy pithiness.

The issue here is not so much about linguistics or the political utility of language. Where last week’s ceremony intersects with the pages of the Business Daily is the way in which the mode of engagement shifts when one is trying to reach an audience.

The speakers in Mbita were communicating largely with a local crowd (with a few national dignitaries thrown in).

Dholuo would have been adequate on most occasions, with perhaps a shift to Kiswahili for the few who needed to follow the conversation otherwise. The key here, though, was that the crowd was not just the one from close by.

The ceremony was televised nationwide, and thus the dynamic changed instantly. The speakers were not just reaching with their words from the podium to the audience in proximity of the loudspeakers – they were also reaching across the ether to millions (they hoped) watching keenly.

It’s a dynamic that companies in multi-cultural societies such as ours have to navigate on a daily basis.

They have customers who, presumably, have a working knowledge of our two official languages – English and Kiswahili – and so one would assume that it would be rather straightforward to communicate with these customers.

For a long time, it was. Simply throw together an advert in English for the upper segment of your clientele, and in Kiswahili for everyone else.

If you happened to have operations in the smaller towns and cities, you would adapt your communication to reflect the dominant language in the area.

Now, it is not so simple. The assumption that English is for the sophisticates, Kiswahili for the masses, and ‘mother tongue’ for the unreconstructed natives, has been turned on its head, at least when it comes to customer communications.