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Chapter 14 - Language Use and Language Shift in Post-Apartheid South Africa

from III - Language Interfaces

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2019

By
Dorrit Posel  and
Jochen Zeller
Edited by
Raymond Hickey
Raymond Hickey
Affiliation:
Universität Duisburg–Essen
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Summary

This chapter examines the evidence of language shifts to English in post-apartheid South Africa. We first present a brief overview of the language situation in South Africa and offer a review of the literature on language shift. A number of scholars have expressed concern that the maintenance of language diversity in South Africa is threatened by the dominance of English in schooling and the economy. However, other studies find that despite an increased use of English, mother-tongue languages have retained their cultural value as languages of identification. Moreover, recent quantitative work shows that among Africans the increased use of English is associated primarily with an increase in bilingualism rather than with the displacement of Bantu languages by English. We add to this literature with an analysis of Population Census data from 1996 to 2011 to investigate possible language shift from Afrikaans to English, particularly among Coloureds. We show that, despite a small decline in the use of Afrikaans as L1 and a corresponding rise in the use of English, the overall use of Afrikaans increased, because of the considerable growth in English–Afrikaans bilingualism.

Keywords

language shiftbilingualismAfrikaanscensus dataColoureds
Type
Chapter
Information
English in Multilingual South Africa
The Linguistics of Contact and Change
 , pp. 288 - 309
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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