Taking a closer look at Tanzanian prose in the early 90s, it can be said that it has preserved the main structural features which had taken shape within the previous two decades of its development. One of these features is a more or less rich system of genres (short story, novelette, novel). Another is a traditional division into `popular` and `elite` literature. This division had already been noted by many researchers in the 70s and the 80s, although they used different terms for it; e.g , popular and serious literature (Bertoncini 1989), popular and standard literature (Ohly 1990), riwaya-pendwa and riwaya-dhati (Mlacha and Madumulla 1991), and others.

In the last two decades, Swahili chronicles have been thoroughly re-evaluated by historians of the East African coast, and their usefulness as historical sources subject to serious doubt and criticism. Typical of this new attitude were the words of Gill Shepherd: `Such chronicles are less objective histories than annotated pedigrees of a single ruling lineage`. Given such a perspective, the question may be asked whether the chronicles are a suitable guide to the search for historical identities of coastal societies.

An important editorial achievement has been the recent translation into Swahili of the first volume of the monumental work on the life of Jesus Christ in ten volumes, L`Evangelo come mi Stato rivelato (the title of the English version is The Poem of the Man-God) by the Italian mystic Maria Valtorta (1897-1961).

Manqala games are played in large parts of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South-America and some parts of Europe. Bao is the variation which is found on the East African coast, and only in the Swahili speaking areas. Ways of playing Bao though differ along the coast, and de Voogt focused his research on the sophisticated variant of Zanzibar. The author deals with this Zanzibar variation of Bao in analogy to chess. The first aim of his research project was to find out what distinguishes a master of Bao from an ordinary player. Psychological methods, derived from the study of chess playing are his main methodological instruments, which make the book a remarkable study in the psychology of players, and the role of memory and calculation. His second aim is to introduce Bao to the field of computer games, comparable to computer-based chess.

Naturally occurring dialogue is by far the most frequent manifestation of human speech and therefore has a legitimate claim to being regarded as a prime object of study in the sciences of language. Looking at the factors which determine the structure of natural dialogue, one cannot escape the conclusion that not only what is being said but also what is being inferred from what is said contributes towards determining the sequence and content of moves as well as the choice of grammatical features which are crucial for dialogue cohesion and for the interpretation of utterances in dialogue: `Constellations of surface features of message form are the means by which speakers signal and listeners interpret what the activity is, how semantic content is to be understood and how each sentence relates to what precedes follows.`

In Swahili Forum III Elena Bertoncini-Zubkova (1996) discussed some of the political criticisms, expressed in the form of literary motifs and imagery, that emerged in the works of the Tanzanian Swahili writer Euphrase Kezilahabi since 1978 onwards. She situates this emergent critique in the new political discoursive context where critical reviews of the Ujamaa policy could now be publicly voiced since President Nyerere himself admitted the failure of Ujamaa in his delivery Azimio la Arusha baada ya Miaka Kumi (The Arusha Declaration Ten Years Later, 1977). According to Bertoncini this admission `clear[ed] the way for critical literary works` of which Kezilahabi satirical play Kaputula la Marx (Marx`s Shorts, 1978) and his short story Mayai- Waziri wa maradhi (Eggs- Minister of Sickness, 1978) were among the first.

This paper speculates about the origin of the overall use of the form iko in Inland Swahili. Its functional scope comprises predication, identification, location, existence, and association. In Standard Swahili, the primary function of iko is to express the locative relation of nouns belonging to noun class 4 or 9. For the expression of identification various other means are used. As Inland Swahili is mostly acquired as a second language it will be argued here that the functional expansion of iko might be due to the crosslinguistic influence of the first language. However, first languages, such as Maasai, exhibit a formal distinction between location and predication. A conceptual merger of both functions in the second language is more likely to occur when the first language contains only one obligatory copula expressing both concepts. This obligatory copula can be found in many Indo-European languages, e.g. English or Hindi. Until today Indians speaking Swahili are characterised by the frequent usage of iko, a fact which points to the view that the overall use of iko could be due to substrate influence of Hindi.

A book review of `Zanzibar: Kinyang`anyiro na utumwa´by Issa Nasser Issa AI-Ismaily (1999).

Bwana Tela (1856-1927) alikuja Afrika ya mashriki kutoka Ulaya katika mwaka 1297 wa hijti (mwaka 1880 wa miladi), akakaa kwa muda wa myaka khamustaashara takriban. Ingawa alikuja kutangaza dini ya kiNasara, kazi aliyofanya zaidi Mambasa ilikuwa ni ya mambo ya utaalamu wa lugha ya kiSawahili, na mashairi yake, na utamaduni wa waSawahili. Alipata bahati ya kuwa na marafiki wataalamu wa kiMvita, khaswa Mwalimu Sikujuwa al-Batawi, na Bwana Hemedi al-Mambasi. Nyimbo zake za kiMisheni alizotunga kwa kiSawahili hazikutiwa maanani, lakini mahadhi aliokuwa akiimbiya yalibakiya kwa myaka mingi kwa jina la `mahildhi ya Tela´. Bwana Tela alisaidiana na Mwalimu Sikujuwa kuhifadhi t´ungo za washairi wengi wa kale zisipotee, khaswa t´ungo za Bwana Muyaka. Kadhalika alikusanya mithali ya kiSawahili, zaidi ya sita-mia. Karatasi zake alizoandika mambo ya kiSawahili, nyingi sasa ziko maktaba ya SOAS, London, na ni muhimu katika kutusaidiya kufahamu kiSawahili cha kiSawahili. Si makosa kusema kuwa Bwana Tela ndiye mtaalamu mkubwa wa kiSawahili katika wataalamu wote wa kiNgereza.

In conversation, participants operate under the condition that they must demonstrate to each other what they assume to be the nature of their talk. This happens on a sequential basis. Every turn in conversation is typically followed by another one, and therefore it is paramount for the second turn in line, for its own intelligibility, to make clear how it relates to the preceding turn. In this way, by tracing the interpretations that are made `available´ by the participants themselves as they assemble their talk, one can obtain a technical specification from within of the procedures conversationalists use for eo-constructing their encounter. This approach to the study of talk and interaction, heavily influenced by Harold Garfinkel´s (1967) ethnomethodological program, became known as Conversation Analysis (CA). This paper, then, is an attempt to reconceptualize the notion of institutionality in CA. At the same time, because it uses real conversational materials for doing so, it contains a substantive analysis of some of the procedures and situated practices the people in the sample resort to for accomplishing their interaction.