This paper examines the perceptions of Kenyans towards the way other Kenyans speak Swahili from a Folklinguistic perspective. The study involved two main tasks. In the first task, informants were provided with blank maps of the country and asked to identify areas where they thought there was a distinct way of speaking Swahili. In the second task, they were provided with the same map showing Kenyan’s eight provinces and asked to rank them in terms of correctness, attractiveness and closeness to the way they speak Swahili. The results show little or no difference between the rankings of correctness versus pleasantness of Swahili varieties. The study also shows that Kenyans do not identify with the normative variety modeled on the standardized or Kenyan coastal Swahili which is used in the schools or mass media. Similar to other studies in perceptual dialectology, the informants’ judgments were influenced by their background knowledge and stereotypes about different regions that have little or no relationship with linguistics factors per se. Unlike other studies in perceptual dialectology however, languages that are not the object of study have a strong influence on respondents’ perceptions. Beside the ethnic stereotypes that characterize Kenya’s multilingual discourse, Kenyans’ attitudes towards varieties of Swahili seem to be filtered through the lens of a competitive hegemonic language that has enjoyed historical advantage. As a result, the promotion of an idealized variety of Swahili in light of the dominance of English and the continued use of local languages is not likely to increase its acceptability as a national and official language
