ABSTRACT
This chapter explores from a social anthropological viewpoint some problems of language choice in a multilingual urban community. The community is of 1,468 households in two municipal housing estates in Kampala East, Uganda. The chairman recalled how he himself had come to Kampala many years before without any knowledge of Swahili, but that now here he was addressing a large gathering in the language. Proportionally few of the local ethnic group, the Ganda, live in the housing estates, most preferring to live in Mengo. The transitionary period of Uganda's independence is thus the political context of situation. The housing estates of Kampala East have significance in this context because they include a large proportion of Kampala's expatriate Kenyan workers. Each housing estate can be said to be made up of small neighbourhoods. Houses are allocated not according to tribal membership but according to socio-economic status.
