Paper short abstract:

This paper looks into the complex identities of members of African community living in Soqotra by analyzing the manifestations in their speech of Heritage African language, as well as multimodal identity markers, paying a specific attention at the pointing gesture.

Paper long abstract:

This focuses on the linguistic identities of the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean, specifically by focusing on people of African ancestry inhabiting the island of Soqotra, the largest of the four in the homonymous Archipelago. The territory is located 380 kilometers south of the Arabian Peninsula near major shipping routes and is politically part of the Republic of Yemen. This case-study is of specific interest because it focuses on a complex case of linguistic identities of an ethnic minority (African Soqotris) within another ethnic minority (Soqotris), while at the same time contributing to existing and emerging literature on the diverse ethnic minorities inhabiting the Arab world. To shed light on this understudied topic, I will first outline the sociolinguistic situation on the island of Soqotra and the history of African diasporas in the Indian Ocean region. I will then present the data collected during fieldwork conducted in Soqotra (April 2019), and offer my analysis based on mixed-methods (multimodal & sociolinguistics). In particular, I will pay specific attention to manifestations of the Heritage African Language (Gintsburg & Esposito 2022) and the multimodal identity markers confirming African origin, first and foremost, the pointing gesture (Gintsburg & Esposito 2022).