‘Chips Funga’

Abstract

Like other young people, and indeed everyone all over the world, Kenyan university students find reasons to talk about sex and sexual intercourse. In doing this, they naturally find themselves constrained by the societal dictates, which preclude direct reference within the sexual domain, thereby restricting themselves to the creative, euphemistic, and periphrastic terms. This article reports the findings of a study conducted to determine how Kenyan university students, in their efforts to engage in sexual discourse, circumvent such societal and cultural dictates, which prohibit direct sexual reference. Using a Sexual Synonyms Scale (SSS) as the main research instrument, this study surveys how lexical choices in sexual discourse shift in different contexts. The study adopts the tenets of Cognitive Sociolinguistics to attempt to understand why Kenyan university students make the lexical choices regarding sexual discourse they do. The study reports that lexical choices in sexual discourse is constrained by various sociological, demographic, and linguistic factors. It is further argued that an understanding of how young people view sexual intercourse is reflected in the lexical choices that they make as they talk about their daily sexual exploits, aspirations, and fantasies.