ABSTRACT
Tanzania was long an example of what sociolinguists preferred as 'local': a state even officially devoted to self-reliance, nonalignment and autonomy, with an unchallenged government and a population often imagined as Swahili-speaking monoglot. Sociolinguistic reflections followed simple tracks, usually revolving around 'Swahili versus English' in education – a topic that dominated the literature on Tanzania for decade. One of the most conspicuously different features of Dar es Salaam urban life these days is the generalized use of mobile phones. The amount of code-mixing in publicity for mobile phone providers should already make clear that 'language' is not the best unit to describe what goes on. Vernacular globalization comes with two important qualifications. One: it is heavily restricted to the urban centers of the country due to the unequal distribution of the online-offline infrastructures. Second, this urban phenomenon is also not pan-urban but socioculturally niched, a feature of the restratification and specialization of the consumer market in urban Tanzania.
