A thesis submitted in partial fulfillement of the requirements for the Award of the degree "Licence en langue et littérature Anglaises"

Résumé,

This work sought to make a sociolinguistic study of Kinyarwanda influence on Kirundi. The study was carried out among the members of the Pentecostal church in Bujumbura city. In carrying out this study, we focused on three objectives : first, the study, investigates the Kinyarwanda words borrowed by Kirundi in the songs used by pentecostal church in Bujumbura city, second, the study tried to determine the social interactions that account for the language influence among the members of this church and finally the study tries to find out how this language influence of Kinyarwand on kirundi is perceived by the members of the pentecostal church. The study was conducted on the following research questions : -What are the words borrowed by kirundi from Kinyarwanda in the songs used by pentecostal church in Bujumbura city? - What are the social interactions that account for this language influence?.- What is the Burundian perception of the Kinyarwanda influence on Kirundi? At the end all our research questions were answered.

The collection of data was carried out by the use of the following methods : our observation, three selected songs for analysis and questionnaire administered to selected members of choirs belonging to selected three parishes. After analysis of our data, we found out that members of this church borrow various Kinyarwanda words in their songs. We found out that these words belong to various grammatical classes. In addition, analysis of the data from the questionnaire showed us that main way that occasions this language influence was listening to kinyarwanda religious songs by use of various electronic objects. Finally, we discovered that this borrowing is not well perceived by many Burundian members of this church. Afterwards we recommended to set up measures that would help avoiding bias and continue research in the same direction.