English in Multilingual South Africa


Book Description

An innovative and insightful exploration of varieties of English in contemporary South Africa.




Languages, Identities and Intercultural Communication in South Africa and Beyond


Book Description

African countries and South Africa in particular, being multilingual and multicultural societies, make for exciting sociolinguistic and applied language analysis in order to tease out the complex relationship between language and identity. This book applies sociolinguistic theory, as well as critical language awareness and translanguaging with its many facets, to various communicative scenarios, both on the continent and in South Africa, in an accessible and practical way. Africa lends itself to such sociolinguistic analysis concerning language, identity and intercultural communication. This book reflects consciously on the North–South debate and the need for us to create our own ways of interpretation emanating from the South and speaking back to the North, and on issues that pertain to the South, including southern Africa. Aspects such as language and power, language planning, policy and implementation, culture, prejudice, social interaction, translanguaging, intercultural communication, education, gender and autoethnography are covered. This is a valuable resource for students studying African sociolinguistics, language and identity, and applied language studies. Anyone interested in the relationship between language and society on the African continent would also find the book easily accessible.




Decolonising Multilingualism in Africa


Book Description

This book interrogates and problematises African multilingualism as it is currently understood in language education and research. It challenges the enduring colonial matrices of power hidden within mainstream conceptions of multilingualism that have been propagated in the Global North and then exported to the Global South under the aegis of colonial modernity and pretensions of universal epistemic relevance. The book contributes new points of method, theory and interpretation that will advance scholarly conversations on decolonial epistemology by introducing the notion of coloniality of language - a summary term that describes the ways in which notions of language and multilingualism in post-colonial societies remain colonial. The authors begin the process of mapping out what a socially realistic notion of multilingualism would look like if we took into account the voices of marginalised and ignored African communities of practice - both on the African continent and in the diasporas.




Language in South Africa


Book Description

A wide-ranging guide to language and society in South Africa. The book surveys the most important language groupings in the region in terms of wider socio-historical processes; contact between the different language varieties; language and public policy issues associated with post-apartheid society and its eleven official languages.




Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication


Book Description

To date, there has been no published textbook which takes into account changing sociolinguistic dynamics that have influenced South African society. Multilingualism and Intercultural Communication breaks new ground in this arena. Its scope ranges from macro-sociolinguistic questions pertaining to language policies and their implementation (or non-implementation), to microsociolinguistic observations of actual language use in verbal interaction, mainly in multilingual contexts of Higher Education (HE). There is a gradual move for the study of language and culture to be taught in the context of (professional) disciplines in which they would be used. This book caters for this growing market. Because of its multilingual nature, it caters to English and Afrikaans language speakers, as well as the Sotho and Nguni language groups. It brings together various interlinked disciplines such as Sociolinguistics and Applied Language Studies, Media Studies and Journalism, History and Education, Social and Natural Sciences, Law, Human Language Technology, Music, Intercultural Communication and Literary Studies. The unique crosscutting disciplinary features of the book will make it a must-have for twenty-first century South African students and scholars and those interested in applied language issues.




Rethinking Language Use in Digital Africa


Book Description

This book challenges the view that digital communication in Africa is limited and relatively unsophisticated and questions the assumption that digital communication has a damaging effect on indigenous African languages. The book applies the principles of Digital African Multilingualism (DAM) in which there are no rigid boundaries between languages. The book charts a way forward for African languages where greater attention is paid to what speakers do with the languages rather than what the languages look like, and offers several models for language policy and planning based on horizontal and user-based multilingualism. The chapters demonstrate how digital communication is being used to form and sustain communication in many kinds of online groups, including for political activism and creating poetry, and offer a paradigm of language merging online that provides a practical blueprint for the decolonization of African languages through digital platforms.




Languages and Education in Africa


Book Description

The theme of this book cuts across disciplines. Contributors to this volume are specialized in education and especially classroom research as well as in linguistics, most being transdisciplinary themselves. Around 65 sub-Saharan languages figure in this volume as research objects: as means of instruction, in connection with teacher training, language policy, lexical development, harmonization efforts, information technology, oral literature and deaf communities. The co-existence of these African languages with English, French and Arabic is examined as well. This wide range of languages and subjects builds on recent field work, giving new empirical evidence from 17 countries: Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as to transnational matters like the harmonization of African transborder languages. As the Editors – a Norwegian social scientist and a Norwegian linguist, both working in Africa – have wanted to give room for African voices, the majority of contributions to this volume come from Africa.




Encyclopedia of Language and Education


Book Description

In this third, fully revised edition, the 10 volume Encyclopedia of Language and Education offers the newest developments, including an entirely new volume of research and scholarly content, essential to the field of language teaching and learning in the age of globalization. In the selection of topics and contributors, the Encyclopedia reflects the depth of disciplinary knowledge, breadth of interdisciplinary perspective, and diversity of socio-geographic experience in the language and education field. Throughout, there is an inclusion of contributions from non-English speaking and non-western parts of the world, providing truly global coverage. Furthermore, the authors have sought to integrate these voices fully into the whole, rather than as special cases or international perspectives in separate sections. The Encyclopedia is a necessary reference set for every university and college library in the world that serves a faculty or school of education, as well as being highly relevant to the fields of applied and socio-linguistics. The publication of this work charts the further deepening and broadening of the field of language and education since the publication of the first edition of the Encyclopedia in 1997 and the second edition in 2008.




Interactions Across Englishes


Book Description

The global spread of English has resulted in contact with an enormous variety of different languages worldwide, leading to the creation of many new varieties of English. This book takes an original look at what happens when speakers of these different varieties interact with one another.




Relanguaging Language from a South African Township School


Book Description

Using data from a long-term ethnographic study of English language classrooms in a South African township, this book highlights linguistic expertise in a setting where it is not usually expected or sought. Rather than being ‘peripheral and unskilled’, South African township teachers and learners emerge as skilled (re)languagers central to the workings of South African education, and to our understanding of how language classrooms work. This book foregrounds the heterogeneity, flexibility and creativity of day-to-day language practices that African urban spaces are known for, and conceptualises language teaching not as a progression from one fixed language to another, but as a circular sorting process between linguistic heterogeneity (languaging) and homogeneity (a standard language).