Language use on Tanzanian Facebook: Linguistic features and trends

Abstract

This paper examines linguistic features and language use trends in Tanzanian Facebook discourse. As in many African countries, social media has become an integral part of everyday communication in Tanzania, particularly among young people, making it important to understand its linguistic characteristics. The study employed an online survey and analysed 50 Facebook posts drawn from different users’ accounts. The findings reveal that Tanzanian Facebook discourse is characterised by graphological features, including images and emojis, and orthographic features such as creative punctuation, vowel deletion, and number-letter substitutions, reflecting brevity and informality. The study also identified translanguaging practices, including slang, code-switching, language shifts, and vowel lengthening, which express linguistic creativity, identity, and social belonging. In addition, translation practices facilitate communication across linguistic boundaries and promote cross-cultural interaction in multilingual online environments. These findings demonstrate the dynamic relationship between language, digital communication, and cultural identity in contemporary Tanzania. The study concludes that social media has reshaped language use by encouraging innovative linguistic practices while maintaining communicative effectiveness. It recommends digital literacy programmes to enhance awareness of how these linguistic features influence readability and engagement and calls for further research on language use across different social media platforms and their long-term impact on Swahili and English in Tanzania.