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INTRODUCTION
The situated and dynamic nature of context is well illustrated in multilingual settings, particularly those in the postcolonial world, where language alternation that involves indigenous and previously colonial languages often carries a variety of meanings. In urban Tanzania, the use of Swahili and English, or "Swahinglish," illustrates the varied meanings that language mixing creates quite well. For example, the juxtaposition of Swahili and English may be nothing out of the ordinary but rather may reveal the establishment of what Auer 1999 calls a fused lect , a phenomenon also demonstrated by Blommaert 1992, 1999, Maschler 1998, and Swigart 1992. Among the same set of speakers, however, the use of these two languages in other interactional contexts may constitute what Auer 1999 terms codeswitching if the switches can be seen to carry pragmatic meaning at the level of sequence (e.g., Alvarez-Caccamo 1998; Auer 1984, 1998; Gafaranga 2000; Li Wei 2002). Such alternation in Tanzania may also carry macro-linguistic significance by recounting the history of British rule in East Africa; at other times, the mixture may relate more clearly to the globalizing forces of modernity. More often than not, though, the larger contexts triggered by the talk are not made audible within a conversation, for they are typically in the more abstract realm of discourse , the mostly unspoken "ways of thinking, acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, believing and using symbols" that speakers integrate with language (Gee 1999:13). Because these unspoken contexts are potentially multiple and contradictory, they are an interactional challenge for listeners and speakers alike.
Although language mixing is a seemingly difficult interactional challenge, conversational participants clearly do find ways to make meaning with one another. To better understand the processes involved in achieving intersubjectivity, this article examines how a group of Tanzanian journalists find common ground in one particularly challenging episode of talk wherein a joke is made using Swahinglish. All of the participants laugh at the joke, but the basis for their shared laughter is ambiguous at best. The humor can be said to draw upon several different discourses in urban Tanzanian society, including those of Western imperialism, which are connected to the historical and political discourses of African socialism, and those of urban modernity, which are linked to contemporary discourses of globalization....