https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/unjll <p>The journal carries peer-reviewed articles about any aspect of language of communication and about any language of the world. The journal is published in both print and online format.</p> Department of Linguistics and Languages, University of Nairobi en-US The University of Nairobi Journal of Language and Linguistics 2224-1655 https://uonjournals.uonbi.ac.ke/ojs/index.php/unjll/article/view/2844 <p>The adverb <em>kindly </em>is little used as a polite request mitigator (<em>Kindly close the door</em>) in World Standard English (WSE). But it is a frequent occurrence in Kenyan English (KenE), where, unlike in WSE, it is not limited to a pre-verbal position: it can occur even without an accompanying verb whose illocutionary force it is supposed to mitigate, as in <em>Kindly, I’m appealing to you </em>and <em>I’m appealing to you, kindly</em>. Still unlike in WSE, <em>kindly </em>freely co-occurs with <em>please </em>(the other request mitigator), as in <em>Kindly please listen to me </em>or <em>Please kindly listen to me</em>. Also, <em>kindly </em>frequently premodifies the verb <em>request</em>, as in <em>I’m kindly requesting you to listen to me</em>. These various positions and pragmatic configurations in which <em>kindly </em>occurs in KenE are evidence of its syntactic and pragmatic versatility, as illustrated by the 105 SMS, WhatsApp and email messages used as data in this article.</p> Alfred Buregeya Zipporah Otiso ##submission.copyrightStatement## https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode.en 2025-06-16 2025-06-16 11 1 1 20