Political power, national identity, and language: the case of Afrikaans

• Autores: P. Eric Louw
• Localización: International journal of the sociology of language, ISSN 0165-2516, Nº. 170, 2004, págs. 43-58
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Afrikaans is the home language of 5.9 million people. During the 1980s, Afrikaans was the dominant state language and a widely-used lingua franca in South Africa and Namibia. But by the end of the twentieth century, English had replaced Afrikaans as the dominant state language and a decline in the use of Afrikaans was in evidence, even among native Afrikaans speakers. An examination of this language's twentieth-century journey helps illustrate the relationship(s) between political power, national identity, and the growth and/or decline of languages.