Language in South Africa

by Edited by Rajend Mesthrie

• ISBN13: 9780521791052
• ISBN10: 0521791057
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-11-18
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This is a comprehensive and wide-ranging guide to language and society in South Africa. As the authors demonstrate, the South African context offers a treasure trove of data and examples for linguistic and sociolinguistic study. The book surveys the most important language groupings in the region in terms of pre-colonial and colonial history; contact between the different language varieties, leading to language loss, pidginization, creolization and new mixed varieties; language and public policy issues associated with the transition to a post-apartheid society and its eleven official languages. It details the history of indigenous languages, the impact of European languages upon them, and of transformations to the European languages themselves. Written by a team of leading researchers, all the chapters are informed by the importance of socio-political history in understanding questions of language. The book will be welcomed by students and researchers in language and linguistics, sociology, anthropology and social history.

Table of Contents

List of maps	viii
List of contributors	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
List of phonetic symbols	xiii
List of abbreviations	xv
Introduction	1	(10)
Part I The main language groupings
South Africa: a sociolinguistic overview	11	(16)
R. Mesthrie
The Khoesan Languages	27	(23)
A. Traill
The Bantu languages: sociohistorical perspectives	50	(29)
Robert K. Herbert
Richard Bailey
Afrikaans: considering origins	79	(25)
Paul T. Roberge
South African English	104	(23)
Roger Lass
South African Sign Language: one language or many?	127	(21)
Debra Aarons
Philemon Akach
German speakers in South Africa	148	(13)
Elizabeth De Kadt
Language change, survival, decline: Indian languages in South Africa	161	(18)
R. Mesthrie
Part II Language contact
(A) Pidginisation, borrowing, switching and intercultural contact
Fanakalo: a pidgin in South Africa	179	(20)
Ralph Adendorff
Mutual lexical borrowings among some languages of southern Africa: Xhosa, Afrikaans and English	199	(17)
William Branford
J. S. Claughton
Code-switching, mixing and convergence in Cape Town	216	(19)
K. McCormick
Code-switching in South African townships	235	(23)
S. Slabbert
R. Finlayson
Intercultural miscommunication in South Africa	258	(21)
J. Keith Chick
(B) Gender, language change and shift
Women's language of respect: isihlonipho sabafazi	279	(18)
R. Finlayson
The sociohistory of clicks in Southern Bantu	297	(19)
Robert K. Herbert
The political economy of language shift: language and gendered ethnicity in a Thonga community	316	(23)
Robert K. Herbert
(C) New varieties of English
From second language to first language: Indian South African English	339	(17)
R. Mesthrie
Black South African English	356	(25)
Vivian De Klerk
David Gough
(D) New urban codes
The lexicon and sociolinguistic codes of the working-class Afrikaans-speaking Cape Peninsula coloured community	381	(17)
Gerald L. Stone
An Introduction to Flaaitaal (or Tsotsitaal)	398	(9)
K. D. P. Makhudu
Language and language practices in Soweto	407	(12)
Dumisani Krushchev Ntshangase
Part III Language planning, policy and education
Language planning and language policy: past, present and future	419	(15)
T. G. Reagan
Language issues in South African education: an overview	434	(15)
Sarah Murray
Recovering multilingualism: recent language-policy developments	449	(27)
Kathleen Heugh
Index	476