Language and Communication Challenges in Kenya’s County Assemblies’ Hansards: Implications for Devolution, Governance, and Democracy.

Abstract

This article examines the linguistic and communicative challenges affecting Hansard reports from Kenya’s county assemblies (CAs), specifically in budget debates from 18 assemblies between 2013 and 2019. Five principal challenges are highlighted. First, substandard grammar emerges in poor sentence structure, incorrect verb tenses, subject-verb disagreement, and misuse of pronouns, prepositions, and articles. Second, improper diction involves inappropriate word choices, unedited code-mixing without translation, and frequent misspellings. Third, coherence issues arise from rambling sentences, unclear speaker attributions, and inconsistent financial figures. Fourth, punctuation errors are evident in the misuse of commas, ellipses, full stops, capitalisation, acronyms, colons, and apostrophes. Fifth, poor typography is marked by inconsistent pagination, fonts, spacing, alignment, and formatting. These linguistic and communication problems undermine Hansard quality by introducing distortion, ambiguity, factual misrepresentation, incomprehension, and reduced readability. As a result, the transparency of Hansard reports as records of representative democracy is compromised, making it more difficult for the public to hold legislators and county assemblies accountable. In addition, these shortcomings erode the reports’ integrity and professionalism, increasing the risk of litigation regarding assembly proceedings. Cumulatively, such problems diminish the authority and historical value of Hansard reports and can weaken county assemblies as democratic institutions. By foregrounding the language and communication challenges in county assembly Hansards—a perspective often overlooked—this research draws attention to critical threats facing governance and democracy in Kenya’s evolving devolved governance system.

Key Words: Language and Communication Challenges, Kenya, Governance, Devolution, County Assemblies, Hansard, Representative Democracy