Sociocultural and linguistic corollaries of ethnicity in South African society

• Autores: Ernst F. Kotzé
• Localización: International journal of the sociology of language, ISSN 0165-2516, Nº. 144, 2000, págs. 7-18
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • An understanding of the role that ethnicity in conjunction with language played in the shaping of South African society is offen obfuscated by the stigmatization of concepts äs a result of the country's political history. In this article, an attempt is made to view the corollaries ofsocial engineering within the objective framework of Haugen 's ecology of language and to understand the ways in which social, cultural, and linguistic factors interacted both äs a result of and in spite ofpolicies aimed at manipulating the formation of communities in this country. Some ofthese corollaries are (1) the formation of communities sharing a common language, but by law divided along ethnic (read "racial") lines; (2) the formation by law of communities on the basis of linguistic differences, but with a common ethnic affiliationj ancestry; (3) the formation ofkoines and creole varieties;

    (4) purism and shifts in language loyalty; and (5) contradictory views on the Status and function of the mother tongue. A prognosis of future developments is made, given the multilingual nature, andhence heterogenous ethnolinguistic composition, of South African society. Two opposing forces are at work, viz. an increasing awareness of the necessity to revalorize the indigenous languages, and a strong tendency to select an erstwhile colonial language, English, äs lingua franca. The author submits that the outcome of this new struggle will have a profound effect on the linguistic and sociocultural future of the country.