"l'm a cleva!": the linguistic makeup of identity in a South African urban environment

Abstract

Rapid urbanization and the approach adopted by the authorities during the previous dispensation have left the new democratic government with townships and informal settlements on the peripheries of the urban concentrations of South Africa. Contact at all levels between Speakers of the nine Bantu languages of South Africa, together with the process of modernization, characterize the social dynamics of these urban societies. The result has been multilingual communities that interact on a daily basis in the urban areas and their peripheries in both a dynamic and complex ränge of contexts. Multilingual interaction fuelled by the competitive forces of supply and demand coupled with the free movement of communities have resulted in a hybrid form of identity, which distinguishes urban people from their rural counterparts. This paper examines the relationships that exist between the languages and Speech varieties of some selected urban communities and their ethnic and assumed linguistic identities. It has been found that the boundaries and distinctions between ethnic identities and the identities assumed by urban residents become blurred and indistinct, with their lifestyles and sociocultural characteristics changing äs they are absorbed within the urban areas of South Africa.

Slang registers, code-switching and restructured urban varieties in South Africa

“…While many linguists make this distinction clear (e.g. Slabbert & Finlayson 2000;Makhudu 1995), some do not (e.g . Holm 1989;Slabbert & Myers-Scotton 1997;Ntshangase 1995: 296, esp.…”

Asymmetrical Hybridities: Youths at Francophone Games in Canada

“…For instance, this concept has been used to theorize cultural identities at the intersection of the global and the local (Kraidy, 1999;Pieterse, 1994Pieterse, , 1995Pieterse, , 1997, modernity and tradition (Garcia Canclini, 1995) and the colonial and the colonized (Bhabha, 1994;Young, 1995). Studies on youth identities (Butcher and Thomas, 2002;Kraidy, 1999;Noble, Poynting and Tabar, 1999) and on ethnicity (Meerwald, 2001;Romberg, 1996;Slabbert and Finlayson, 2000) have also drawn on this concept to analyze diverse ethnic and linguistic border-crossing experiences.…”

Explaining the ordinary magic of stable African multilingualism in the Vaal Triangle region in South Africa

“…This is particularly true among users of African languages as home languages in urban communities (Slabbert and Finlayson 2000;Ndlangamandla 2010).…”

“…There are some studies that document the multilingualism of users of African languages (for example, Slabbert and Finlayson 2000;Ndlangamandla 2010) and in other studies the issue is treated conceptually (for example by Banda 2009;Prah 2010). However, the majority of the current studies about the multilingualism of South Africans focuses on the role of the home language and the potential influence of English related to issues of language maintenance and language shift; and it laments the failure of language policies that do not succeed in increasing the use of African languages in new and higher status domains.…”

“…In the case of multilingual people, beliefs about the languages they know and how these languages relate to individual and group identity are by nature complex and result in complex linguistic identities (Slabbert and Finlayson 2000). The interview data provide many examples where participants relate their home languages to their 'identities', and even more importantly, the notion that one needs to be multilingual to fit into the South African urban society.…”