This study explored the role played by economic, cultural, and political power and influence when a particular dialect was elevated to the status of an official standard language. This was a qualitative study that employed text analysis where journal articles, dissertations, theses, academic books and Parliamentary Joint Constitutional Review minutes were considered for data collection and analysis. In order to supplement the above-mentioned method, 267 research participants involving students (undergraduate and postgraduate) and lecturers from the selected five South African universities, including members of the language authorities, were also invited to participate in the study. Self-administered survey questionnaires and face-to-face interviews were chosen as qualitative methods for data collection. From a dialectal point of view, this study indicated that all official standard languages were dialects before. However, these dialects were considered superior and elevated to the status of official languages because of socio-economic power and political influence. This article further recorded that the status type of language planning in the South African context is quite political in nature, not less linguistic. It was against this background that the researchers claim that there is no official standard language that was not a dialect before.
The recent COVID-19 pandemic took the world by storm. The rate of infection and prevalence of death struck fear in the hearts of many across the globe. The high likelihood of infection required continual testing whilst the trauma of bereavement left many distraught. For traditionalists, a principal concern was whether they would be permitted to exhaustively practise their burial rites in the course of mourning their loved ones. The importance of the custom, as it is believed, is to prevent unsettled feelings in family members. This article is aimed at stimulating consideration, reflection and understanding of the concerns experienced by traditional societies surrounding COVID-19 regulations and the non-performance of important burial rites. Surviving family members experience troubled thoughts as a result of the fear of repercussions, which may include the living-dead withholding their protection of the family which consequently will cause ailments and accidents. This article will utilise inductive thematic analysis to interpret the data collected .
The polygynous nature of most marriages in isiZulu-speaking societies, the fact that co-wives do not get along, and the presence of jealousy, envy and fighting in households such as these are underlying major causes of friction within Zulu family units. These feuds become undercurrents of tensions and fracture within the family unit and lead to family members suspecting and accusing each other of practising witchcraft when a family member dies. In such instances, the use of penthonyms is an extremely useful channel of expressing discontent or passing criticism. This article will use data collected from kwaMambulu to assess the extent to which this age-old practice around name bestowal in isiZulu-speaking family structures such as these is still enforced. It argues that despite changes brought by Christianity, Western modernity and recently the post-apartheid period, modalities around name bestowal in a number of isiZulu-speaking communities still persist. The kwaMambulu community continues to reflect the undented epistemologies around name-giving in much of the tradition-based African households. Allegations of the practice of witchcraft and sorcery are always alluded to in this society when death strikes. When the parents suffer the misfortune of losing children, they resort to giving penthonyms. Penthonyms are given to male children because they are believed to be the future of the family. The male children protect the family and when the man of the house dies the male children take over family matters.
The study embraced the onomastic possibility of renaming the Sepedi and Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho) language names that have caused and are still causing onomastic confusion to the first language (L1) speakers of the language under scrutiny, and also to the speakers of other languages. The study was conducted in 2019 at five selected South African universities – University of Johannesburg, University of South Africa, University of Limpopo, University of Venda and Tshwane University of Technology – which offered the language under investigation as an L1 module. In addition, language experts (practitioners) at the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) and its sub-structures and the National Department of Arts and Culture, including Limpopo and Gauteng Department of Sport, Arts, Culture and Recreation, were also involved in the study. Quota sampling was used to select all the 267 participants in the study. The study found that both Sepedi and Sesotho sa Leboa (Northern Sotho) language names are rejected by onomastic principles of naming an official language. An overwhelming majority of the participants opined that this language should be renamed, with the anticipation that the new name will bring peace, unity and solidarity to the L1 speakers of Sepedi.
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