A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Award of the degree "Licencié en Pédagogie Appliquée, Agrégé de l'Enseignement secondaire en anglais

Résumé,

This work entitled "Language and identity : A Sociolinguistic Study of the importance of silence in Kirundi", aims at studying the relationship between language and Identity through the sociolinguistic analysis of the importance of silence in Kirundi. The main question analyzed was, Is there any relationship between language user and his idiosyncratic behavior? The work operated on the hypothetical contention that, in Burundian discourse, the way a person speaks and expresses himself somehow reflects his personality and that silence has a great value and importance in Burundians' every day language speech. For this purpose, using the "Accidental sampling", also known as " The opportunity sampling technique". the researcher met and interviewed a hundred Burundian people of different walks from Muyinga province and Bujumbura Municipality . As result, having analyzed the collected data, it has been discovered that Burundians somehow behave in the same way even though there are discrepancies here and there, and that, although speech and silence are intertwined, the silence is given more consideration than speech in the mind of some Burundians . Silence is powerful and Burundians compare its value as the one of golden and it is important in human life. It is, then, recommended to all Burundians, (i) to owe respect to any kind of speech uttered no matter who the speaker is, (ii) to enhance and sustain Burundian traditional and cultural values for the maintenance of their identity