Mwisongo, Eusebius G2019-08-282019-08-282013Mwisongo, E.G. (2013). The contribution of media to growth and distortion of Kiswahili in Tanzania. Dodoma: The University of Dodoma.http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12661/1177Dissertation (MA Linguistics)The purpose of this study was to find the contribution of media to both the growth and distortion of Kiswahili in Tanzania. The study was conducted in Dodoma Municipality and it employed three methods of data collection. These are interview, observation and corpus linguistics. In structured interview questions were administered to respondents. The researcher made some observation through watching EATV and listening to Clouds FM radio to see how language is used in the named media. Also forty copies of different informal newspapers (Ijumaa, Ijumaa Wikienda, Risasi, Uwazi, Kiu, Sani, Amani, and Jumatatu) were collected in the corpus and a careful examination of language use was done. The findings show that there is incorrect use Kiswahili in the media especially the kind of lexicon and sentence structure used. The study further revealed that media today has three major roles, which are: the major agent of language distortion, an agent of language change and the agent of language growth. It does so through the kind of language it uses especially the lexicon and the sentence structure. It was also revealed that the non formal language used by the media has negative impacts to the Kiswahili speech community especially the young generation. Lastly, the findings show that most old people have negative attitude towards the use of the non formal language in the media while the young generation seem to be some how positive.Language growthLanguage distortionKiswahiliLanguage changeTanzaniaDodoma municipalityMediaContributionDissertation