Yasushi Noguchi's Compact Life Project prompts us to reconsider our "devotion to large scale" by delving into the lives of
people of different countries—Kenya, Japan, Sweden, and so on—who live remarkably simple lives.
This study investigates the life of a woman living in the slums of Kenya covered by this project, and adopts linguistic
ecology as a theoretical framework to explore how language functions for this woman in a wholly different language
environment from Japan. More specifically, we assess the speech of this woman through semi-structured interviews on
the theme "interpersonal relationships in my life up to now," and consider how language functions for her and how she
networks with others. In other words, the study qualitatively examines whether she is consciously aware she is building
mutual negotiative relationships as she goes about living her life.
We found that even in the slums of Kenya which are far removed from Kakamega where this woman is from, she
consciously maintains relations with her blood relatives and continue to speak her own native dialect, which suggests that
these behavioral traits are linked to her own cognitive and sentimental stability.
「コンパクトライフ・プロジェクト」に関する一考察 ― 言語生態学的視点から ―
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