The Ambiguity of English as a Lingua Franca: Politics of Language and Race in South Africa 9780367143558, 9781032052953, 9780429031472

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Framing the Study
2. English in the World and as a Lingua Franca
3. The Making of English as a Lingua Franca in South Africa
4. Marginalization and Empowerment
5. Linguistic Mobility and Racial Authenticity
6. Cosmopolitanism and Parochialism
7. Gender(ed) Ambiguities
8. Disruption and Innovation
9. Positionality and Reflexivity
10. Conclusion: Moving the Centre
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The Ambiguity of English as a Lingua Franca

Grounded in ethnography, this monograph explores the ambiguity of English as a lingua franca by focusing on the identity politics of language and race in contemporary South Africa. The book adopts a multidisciplinary approach which highlights how the ways of speaking English constructs identities in a multilingual context. Focusing primarily on isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers, it raises critical questions around power and ideology. The study draws on literature on English as a lingua franca, raciolinguistics, and the cultural politics of English and dialogues between these fields. It challenges long-held concepts underpinning existing research from the global North by highlighting how they do not transfer and apply to the identity politics of language in South Africa. It sketches out how these struggles for belonging are reflected in marginalization and empowerment and a vast range of local, global, and glocal identity trajectories. Ultimately, it offers a first lens through which global scholarship on English as a lingua franca can be decolonized in terms of disciplinary limitations, geopolitical orientations, and a focus on the politics of race that characterize the use of English as a lingua franca all over the world. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, World Englishes, English as lingua franca and African studies. Stephanie Rudwick is a linguistic anthropologist and interdisciplinarian in African Studies/Political Science at the University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic and an honorary affiliate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Her research focuses primarily on the sociocultural politics of language, race, ethnicity, and gender and she has published widely on these topics.

Routledge Studies in Linguistic Anthropology

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For more information about this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Linguistic-Anthropology/ book-series/RSLA

The Ambiguity of English as a Lingua Franca Politics of Language and Race in South Africa

Stephanie Rudwick

First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Taylor and Francis The right of Stephanie Rudwick to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-14355-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-05295-3 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-03147-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472 Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis Books

To my parents, and to my children, but especially to Joshua who has been my guardian angel all along

Contents

Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: Framing the Study

viii 1

2 English in the World and as a Lingua Franca

17

3 The Making of English as a Lingua Franca in South Africa

36

4 Marginalization and Empowerment

49

5 Linguistic Mobility and Racial Authenticity

65

6 Cosmopolitanism and Parochialism

81

7 Gender(ed) Ambiguities

100

8 Disruption and Innovation

116

9 Positionality and Reflexivity

133

10 Conclusion: Moving the Centre Bibliography Index

143 153 185

Acknowledgements

This book was written in unprecedented times. The COVID-19 pandemic has created challenges on uncharted territory for humankind, but it is also another aspect of human existence which marked this recent period: Black Lives Matter. Although I primarily write about language matters, racialization processes and racism come into play on many pages of this book. In South Africa, language and race intersect in complex ways in English lingua franca interaction and to ignore race would mean to ignore socio-political injustices. In some ways the pandemic highlighted that language is a racial justice matter, for instance, by the extensive codeswitching from English to African languages in official national COVID briefings by politicians. English often fails as a useful lingua franca and this book can therefore only partially do justice to the harsh raciolinguistic realities in the country. And yet, I hope that this monograph offers a perspective from which we can pay increasing attention to the complex ways in which linguistic and racial dynamics intersect and mutually constitute each other. I have aimed to develop understandings of the ambiguous roles of English as a putative lingua franca in South Africa through a wide ethnographic lens. Carving out contradictions and tensions due to South African raciolinguistic realities is what this book is about. It provides a transdisciplinary, and an un-disciplined way of exploring language matters. This book is the result of my profound affinity to South Africa during the past 20 years. Although I only permanently lived in the country for eight of these years, my elective affinity and the research brought me back to the country once a year and usually for several months. South Africa’s hybrid multilingual climate produces an exceptionally intriguing range of socio-cultural and racial politics that are an inspiring ground for any linguistic anthropologist. The privilege I had to be able to work in such an exhilarating climate and with people who are extremely open, hospitable, and willing to share their experience deserves my greatest acknowledgement and gratitude. Many South Africans contributed in significant ways to my various projects and the book they have become, most importantly, the participants, interviewees, and consultants in the field. After months of ethnographic research in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, I am deeply indebted to many extraordinary individuals in the eThekwini region, Umlazi, KwaMashu, and Hambanathi, as well as in Stellenbosch, Cape Town,

Acknowledgements

ix

Kayamandi, Idas Valley, Somerset West, Mitchell’s Plain, and Manenberg. The people in these places have shown me remarkable kindness, they have shared their thoughts, ideas, and feelings with me. They spoke about their languages and their sense of belonging, they shared thoughts about race, culture, and their views of ‘others’. It is their knowledge, their sharp memories of identity struggles, discrimination, racism, exclusion, and empowerment, their ways of being in a world in which English is ubiquitous which make this book. Many of these extraordinary people also prepared meals for me, their children played with mine, they laughed about and with me, and I stand in awe of their knowledge, and the readiness with which they have responded to my presence and relentless questioning. Thank you. There are also many individuals located in different corners of the world who have both professionally and emotionally helped me in writing this book. Very special thanks go to the many kind colleagues, friends, and consultants in South Africa, Germany, the United States, France, Spain, and the Czech Republic who were willing to read one and more of the chapters in this book. Specifically, I want to thank Magda Altmann, Ntokozo and Hlengi Buthelezi, Busi Dube, Ubah Christina Ali Farah, Fiona Grayer, Anele Hofmeyer, Bonginkosi Khumalo, Michel Lafon, William Leap, Sinfree Makoni, Gerhard Maré, Hannelie Marx, Monwabisi Mhlophe, Phindezwa Mnyaka, Christine Du Plessis, Kholeka Shange, Tamah Sherman, and Lorryn Williams. Their views and academic advice have informed many aspects of this book and they all deserve my greatest thanks. All remaining shortfalls are my own. Over the past 20 years, I have benefitted more generally from the vast knowledge and experience of students, colleagues, consultants, and research assistants in four institutions, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies, the University of Hradec Králové, and Leipzig University. Very special thanks go to Miracle Agbele, Rose Marie Beck, Promise Biyela, Andrea Filipi, Lloyd Hill, Hana Horáková, Thobekile Mabala, Sarifa Moola, Johan Brink, Thabo Msibi, Dorrit Posel, Magcino Shange, Zameka Sijadu, Annelie Van der Merve, Lorryn Williams, and Jochen Zeller for providing both academic and emotional support. I also want to thank especially Tamah Sherman for a discussion about the field of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in Prague many years ago which sparked off much of this research. And I want to thank the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies and all its wonderful staff for the generous fellowship and support during the first half of 2020 when much of this book was conceptualized and written. The University of Hradec Králové and my colleagues all deserve thanks for supporting my research stay in South Africa and the publication of this book. Finally, I want to thank my parents not only for raising me in a house filled with books, creativity, and love but for the sense of justice I believe they instilled in me. And I thank my children and Pavel for being my ‘home’, my sanity, and my raison d’être. Without my family’s ability to adapt during our many extended stays in South Africa and without their miraculous gift of being able to

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Acknowledgements

continuously sanitize my mind during the writing process there would have been no book. On a different note, I acknowledge permission from the publishers for allowing me to use parts of two previous published texts. Parts of Chapter 5 were first published entitled ‘Language, Class and Racial Mobility in South Africa’ in Hana Horáková, Stephanie Rudwick, and Martin Schmiedl (Eds.), African on the Move: Shifting Identities, Histories and Boundaries (pp. 93–110, Berlin: LIT Verlag). Portions of Chapter 6 first appeared in 2018 in the journal Human Affairs (28(3), 417–428) under the title ‘Englishes and Cosmopolitanisms in South Africa’.

1

Introduction Framing the Study

Language as such is never neutral. There is no language which unambiguously brings peace and well-being to humankind. The choice of one particular language over another might be considered more neutral in a given context by certain speakers. This one language, however, could be considered a very politically loaded and biased choice in another context and by other speakers. The English language is no exception to these social realities although its oftenunquestioned status as a global lingua franca might make it seem to be such. English as a lingua franca (ELF) has often been portrayed as a ‘neutral’ medium between people who speak a different first language. In South Africa, English is far from a generally ‘neutral’ medium and this book examines precisely the non-neutral and ambiguous nature of the way South Africans speak, hear, write, perceive, and interpret English ways of speaking in lingua franca discourse. In fact, the major argument throughout this book is that ambiguity is the least contested, most defining, and yet insufficiently acknowledged feature of English as a lingua franca in the South African context. Investigating ambivalence among English lingua franca users is an opportunity to reassess how they view their linguistic and social belongings as they attempt to make sense of an ever-changing world. For linguistic anthropologists there is a benefit in observing these ambivalent positions and ambiguous dimensions by paying more attention to inconsistencies and seemingly contradictory positions. Several languages have acquired lingua franca functions throughout human history (Trudgill 2001; Knapp & Meierkord 2002) and lingua francas are utilized not only in international and cross-cultural contexts but within national boundaries, such as South Africa. There are many different English lingua franca contexts in the world, but they are all marked by various levels of competencies in the language among speakers. Language ideological frameworks position one variety, most commonly the ‘Standard’ as superior and hegemonic (Silverstein 1996). The co-occurrence of such a Standard English vis-à-vis non-Standard and lingua franca forms creates complex power dynamics which are often racialized. It would be tantamount to “ignor[ing] reality” (Knapp 2002: 221), if an analysis of English lingua franca discourse were to exclude interactions where monolingual native speakers interact with proficient bilinguals, poor and mediocre English speakers.1 My own conceptualization of lingua franca interaction is, to DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472-1

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Introduction: Framing the Study

some extent, along the lines of Knapp and Meierkord (2002): a type of communication characterized by much sociolinguistic variation which serves as the platform of interaction by a heterogenous group of English speakers with divergent levels of competencies. This book is essentially, but not only, about power and ideology because these concepts have a fundamental impact on the politics of language (Wodak 1989, 2001). The various contexts in which I analyse the ambiguity of the lingua franca status of English is fundamentally based on a discourse of unequal power relations. Much of this unequal power and politics is the simple fact that African people have been discriminated against throughout history. One contribution of this book is, thus, not only linguistic but also racial identity politics in its multiple guises, with a focus on English lingua franca communication. Bourdieu (1991) has shown how identity politics are essentially struggles over legitimacy and power and how these include views about language in making and unmaking groups. To address this topic, I have aimed to bridge the literature on English as a lingua franca, raciolinguistics, translingual practice and the politics of language and identity through a broad ethnographic lens. Over 12 years, the topic of English as a (multi)lingua franca has occupied my mind and I conducted interviews with altogether 158 participants in the KwaZulu-Natal and Western Cape provinces.2 Among these participants were eight consultants whom I worked with over several years and not only for the project of this book. The primary ethnographic data used for this study took on the form of narrative interviews with isiZulu and Afrikaans-speakers which were conducted between 2014 and 2020. A few of the study interviewees only constituted brief encounters during my fieldwork while others were persons whom I visited in their homes repeatedly and met their families and friends.3 My ethnographic approach also included close relationships with a few isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers over a number of years. Many interviews were conducted in several languages, including English, isiZulu, isiTsotsi, Afrikaans, Kaaps, and German. A number of interviews that were conducted in isiZulu and Afrikaans were facilitated by my research assistants who find acknowledgement in the Acknowledgments. Interviewees were given conversational space and I often allowed conversations to develop in directions which were not directly related to my own interests. There were also many encounters and interviews which were not digitally recorded. Although I used a voice recorder or my mobile phone when possible, some of my interviewees preferred not to be taped and, in a few situations, I chose not to record them.4 As an ethnographer who studies as broad a field and as ubiquitous a subject as ‘the use of the English language as a lingua franca in South Africa’ I also collected valuable information in the least likely situations, such as standing in a queue at the supermarket. Spending time as an ‘every-day’ fieldworker I met interviewees while watching the soccer training of my son, waiting at the HipHop and painting class of my daughter, hanging out at the public pool or library, attending an environmental activists’ meeting, going to a soccer match with a friend, and an academic book launch.

Introduction: Framing the Study

3

My theoretical approach is embedded in theories of coloniality (Mignolo 2001; Quijano 2000) which have drawn attention to the persistence of rigid colonial systems of thinking and acting in relation to language and race.5 It is decidedly anti-essentialist, seeing both language and race as socio-historically constructed and fluid categories, but I have also aimed at providing a ‘realistic’ account of diverse identity politics (Blommaert & Rampton 2011: 12). The interface of language, race, and identity constitutes a site for social justice issues (Omoniyi 2016), and the voices I have aimed to capture might well be rooted in strategic essentialist thinking (Spivak 1988, 1996). Some of my own previous studies (Rudwick 2004, 2008) show that isiZulu-speakers might flag the significance of English for academic and/or professional purposes but only reluctantly acknowledge the influence of English in their cultural identities. The mostly negative ‘coconut’ label employed in reference to African people who speak Standard and/or excessive English captures one aspect of this widely prevalent essentialist perception that an African (black) person is not ‘properly’ African if he/she speaks excessive English or does so with a Standard English accent. South Africa is a place where both language and race are used “as a resource for imagining and taking upon subjecthood” (Soudien 2014: 206). One of the most distinct developments in South Africa’s multilingualism is the “dramatic increase in the reporting of a second home language, which has been associated particularly, although certainly not exclusively, with the increased use of English as a second home language” (Posel & Zeller 2020: 305). More than 50 percent of South Africans reported to speak a second language in 2011 (compared to merely 15 percent in 1996), and of these second language speakers English was reported by 60 percent (Posel & Zeller 2020: 305). Further support for the status of English as a lingua franca in the country is that parallel to the increasing bilingualism which includes English, we can observe that the number of South Africans who report English as their first language only increased about 1 percentage point (Posel & Zeller 2020: 305). This suggests that language shift towards English has not been evident in the most recent censuses and that the status of English is that of a lingua franca for many South Africans. Against these data, it is a fruitful undertaking to examine how different South African communities who speak a language other than English communicate in lingua franca settings. A nuanced portrayal of how South Africans, and mostly those of isiZulu and Afrikaans6 backgrounds, invent, deconstruct, and reconstruct their own and other peoples’ identities in English lingua franca interaction is the primary focus in this book. The account I offer departs quite significantly from the majority of ‘traditional’ studies on English as a lingua franca, especially those that are associated with the acronym ELF because mine is a linguistic anthropological study rather than an applied linguistics one. I have not collected a particular ELF corpus, nor do I engage with ELF linguistic principles but rather I explore the sociocultural and political relevance of English as a lingua franca. Gal’s (2013) short but insightful considerations of ELF as a process rather than a bound entity or

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Introduction: Framing the Study

a concrete thing constitutes the basis of this approach. It is conceptually, methodologically, and geo-politically ‘different’. While ELF literature is valuable and continues scholarship which is fruitful on many different levels, it is one of the aims of this book to challenge the research normativity in and of many ELF studies as emerging in the global north. But I am not concerned with the structural issues of English but rather with the cultural politics of its status as a lingua franca and how this manifests specifically in the South African context by creating new meanings from a global South setting. Thus, one of my central aims is also to disrupt the Eurocentric epistemological categories that have formed the basis of much of applied linguistics on English, and ELF scholarship in particular. Many studies which engage with identities in English lingua franca communication remain locked in a type of ‘happy English’ paradigm and issues of discrimination have not received much attention. I am approaching English in South Africa with a background of African language and cultural study. It is the usage of English vis-à-vis isiZulu/ isiXhosa and vis-à-vis Afrikaans/(Afri)Kaaps which is replete with social meaning this book aims to unravel. By focusing on South Africa’s ‘loudest tribes’, Zulu and Afrikaners and by studying the politics behind the ways English is being used in lingua franca discourse, the book aims to highlight how South African Englishes, isiZulu(s), and Afrikaans(s) shape a plethora of identities in South African social and political life. South Africa has 11 official languages and can, from many perspectives, be considered a sociolinguistic laboratory. The Constitution (Act 1996) provides, among many democratic rights, for the linguistic and cultural rights of every citizen and is regarded as one of the most progressive and liberal bills in the world. It is, at least on paper, a warranty for linguistic and cultural pluralism. In social reality, however, pluralism is often not respected and the ways in which South Africans use ELF also puts these pluralistic aims to the test. Ways of speaking English result in racialization processes many of which lead to discrimination. Pennycook and Makoni (2020: 79) show that researchers from the global North have too often produced “a vision of language that had little to do with how people understood languages locally”. In line with their approach of “engaging respectfully with diverse ideologies” (Pennycook & Makoni 2020: 79), I have aimed at prioritizing local people’s ways of speaking and being, their thoughts, and their emotions while reflectively analysing them. The following pages demonstrate how different forms of English and/or isiZulu and Afrikaans ways of speaking inform sociocultural behaviour and racialization processes in contexts where English is employed as the primary lingua franca. Of course, South Africa has several lingua francas, both isiZulu and Afrikaans are also used as lingua francas in certain areas and contexts. This extremely multi and translingual environment characteristic of South Africa offers a laboratory in which English as a lingua franca can be explored as one among many. The majority of South Africans speak languages other than English in both inside and outside their homes (Posel, Hunter & Rudwick 2020). ELF, and the way it is approached here, acknowledges that being an English youth in

Introduction: Framing the Study

5

South Africa also includes bilingualism and a multilingual mindset (CoetzeeVan Rooy 2020). At the same time, however, there are also young first language speakers of English who seem to have the common misconception that the language is the only South African lingua franca, the most widely spoken language or even the “best way to communicate” (Jeewa & Rudwick 2020). While English is indeed dominant in education, business, commerce, and politics, it is certainly not “the best” way to communicate in any arbitrary situation. After all, the above-mentioned ‘higher’ settings are domains to which many, predominately black South Africans continue to have restricted access, and for this reason English also continues to have a marginalizing and discriminatory force. It is important to recognize that “despite its status as an apparent lingua franca, or maybe because of its status as a lingua franca, English also acts as a barrier to social and educational mobility”, particularly in rural communities (Van der Walt and Evans 2018: 195). And, at the same time, the focus of this book, English lingua franca discourse, also acts as a barrier to social cohesion and creates realities which many South Africans experience as marginalizing. Hence, this book tackles macro issues about the ambiguous position of English as a lingua franca and micro questions about the social and political processes where English is employed as a lingua franca and people speak in various lingua franca forms. This does not make the monograph a nice fit in the way English has been studied as a lingua franca in the framework of the specific research paradigm with the acronym ELF as its centre of research gravity in Europe and, to a lesser degree, Asia. This regional or geopolitical paucity in studies specifically on the lingua franca functions of English has been a concern. With this monograph I offer to fill some of this gap by tackling ELF communication in South Africa in order to address critical issues involving power, ideology, and identities. English has always been caught in an ambivalent social climate creating tensions and controversies in this country. ELF discourse is reflected by dichotomized and seemingly contradictory dynamics resulting in inclusion and exclusion, mobility and immobility, marginalization and empowerment, and a vast range of identity trajectories. The focus on the South African multilingual setting fits well with Jenkins’ recent (2015, 2018a, 2018b, 2020) call to extend ELF to EMF (English as a multilingua franca). Most significant for this study, Jenkins (2018a, 2018b) argues that EMF reduces the extent of the significance of English in ELF encounters and focuses to a higher degree on the multilingualism that characterizes most ELF communicators. While the acronym has not been widely adopted, this line of multilingual development has opened up ELF enquiry to include scholarship on translingual practice and translanguaging (Ou, Gu and Hult 2020). My approach includes scholarship on English multilingualism which previously might have been seen as parallel to or even conflicting with the ELF approach. The work of scholars such as Alistair Pennycook (2007, 2017, 2020) Suresh Canagarajah (2000, 2006, 2013, 2018), and Sinfree Makoni (Makoni 1996, 2003; Makoni & Pennycook 2012; Pennycook & Makoni 2020) are

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important to mention here. My approach aims at harmonizing rather than antagonizing the distinctions of different paradigms within the study of English. The complex entanglements English as a lingua franca has in a multilingual and multicultural African space such as South Africa benefits from a wide range of perspectives and approaches. I foreground the non-monolithic nature, fluidity, and multiplicity of the language complex known as English as a lingua franca. This monograph, hence, draws from analytical tools and concepts such as translingual practice (Canagarajah 2013), languaging and translang-uaging (Garcia 2009, 2010; Garcia, Johnson & Seltzer 2017; Jaspers 2018) metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook 2010; Pennycook & Otsuji 2015) as well as epistemologies from the South (Mignolo 2001; Comaroff and Comaroff 2012; Connell 2007; Pennycook & Makoni 2020). The idea is to give a fresh impetus to the ambiguous role English holds as a lingua franca in the world through critical perspectives from Africa. These perspectives require some background on the important social variables which are a vital part of the analysis in South African English lingua franca realities.

Ethnicity, Race, and Gender (in South Africa) As most volumes about gender start the discussion with Judith Butler, much work on ethnicity starts with reference to Frederik Barth who focused on the significance of boundaries in the work of ethnicity. Although ethnicity is often characterized “by a sense of history and origin that gives coherence and legitimacy to the present existence of the group” (Maré 1993: 14), we also now know that this sense of belonging is often ‘imagined’ (Anderson 1991 [1983]). This does not mean, however, that members of ethnic groups do not construct their ethnic identities on specific criteria. What it does mean is that commonalities and differences between members of one ethnic group vis-à-vis another are blurry and negotiable. Idiosyncratic and individual differences may outweigh shared patterns of culture, knowledge, and tradition within one ethnic group. Ethnic identities, like other social identities, are flexible and can change throughout time and space but there is also much intent by actors “to shape ethnic identity in a way which suppresses potentially competing identities” (Maré 1993: 22). Zulu ethnicities, for example, give expression to many disparate and seemingly irreconcilable identities. “The social identification of ‘Zuluness’, for example, … does not include the same set of self-descriptions for each and every member of the Zulu ethnic group” but there might be situations where “this ‘Zuluness’ can become the dominant identity” (Maré 1993: 9). Against the background of an understanding that language, ethnicity, and gender are deeply entangled in South Africa, educated isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers might reject ethnicity as an artificial state invention. Others, however, might regard it as a useful alternative to the linguistic and cultural practices of groups they do not identify with. When Jacob Zuma referred to Afrikaners as the “white tribe” of Africa in a 2009 speech in Sandton, Johannesburg he assured Afrikaans speakers “their place” in the country and signified that

Introduction: Framing the Study 7

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ethnicity was a valuable source of belonging. During his rape trial (see Chapter 5) ethnic and gender dynamics had skilfully been interwoven and this entanglement distressingly seemed to have echoed across ethnic and cultural groups in South Africa at the time. Suttner aptly identified the “commonality of patriarchy across cultures” (2009:9) and noted that Zuma and the white Afrikaans judge both “deployed well-worn stereotypes of what one expects of a woman when she was raped” (Suttner 2009: 11). Language, ethnicity, and race formed a tripod on which the Zuma rape trial was built, and it is the intersectional nature of these variables which is reflected also in the pages of this book. Both isiZulu and Afrikaans are essentially inventions of colonial and apartheid linguistics (Makoni 2003; Makoni & Pennycook 2012) but today they serve as proxies for culture, ethnicity, race, and belonging. During apartheid, ethnicity served as a means of justifying segregation and it functioned as a discriminatory political weapon (Bekker 1993; Maré 1995). Language, culture, and ethnicity are understood as being tightly entangled in the country because these social variables, together with the concept of race and territory, presented the main pillars on which apartheid politics relied.8 One of the benefits of English has always been the fact that it was widely and cross-ethnically regarded as a relatively ‘neutral’ and de-ethnicized language (Beck 2018). However, as this book will show, this assumed neutrality rests on shallow ground because ways of speaking English are linked to complex identity politics which lead to many social injustices uncharacteristic of a so-called ‘neutral’ medium. In addressing intersectionalities of multilingual English lingua franca practices, ethnicity, race, and gender open up a complex platform on which struggles for (be)longing and identity politics emerge. These intersections are by no means static but evolve anew in every encounter and this is why this book can only provide a selective picture of the multifaceted tensions in the country’s raciolinguistic dynamics. The roots of intersectionality lie in the realization that there are multiple social variables which contribute to power and identity politics and that monolithically analysed social categories do not yield sufficient insight into the complexities of the human condition. Crenshaw (1991: 1244) strongly emphasized that it is the intersection of race (racism) and sex/gender (sexism) which factors “into Black women’s lives in ways that cannot be captured wholly by looking at the race or gender dimensions of those experiences separately”. The cultural politics of language and identity are built in social actions and they are also the products of particular historical and contextual conditions. Linguistic anthropologists, in particular, have a history of falsely assuming “that identities are attributes of individuals or groups rather than of situations” (Bucholtz & Hall 2004: 376). More recently, the linguistic anthropological and raciolinguistic lens has provided three primary insights into the study of language and race. First, racialized language as produced and received by individuals and groups is ideologically constructed, secondly, racialization takes place discursively throughout time, space, and context, and, thirdly, race ascriptions are embedded in sociopolitical structures (Lo & Chun 2020). Identities which are produced and performed in multilingual English lingua franca

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Introduction: Framing the Study

communication draw heavily on context-dependency and they are also intermeshed in multiple social divisions (Yuval-Davis 2011). Intersectionality studies have proliferated, and the approach has “been put to use in a wide variety of disciplinary ad methodological traditions” (Levon & Mendes 2016: 11). In this book, I understand intersectionality as the complex ways in which language, ethnicity, race, and gender mutually constitute each other. Ethnic, racial, and gender construction of identity have multiple expressions and representations in ELF interaction, and these multifaceted dynamics need to be interwoven with an acknowledgement of their great complexity. Macro political dimensions of ethnicity with reference to Zulu and Afrikaner South Africans is not the focus of this book, but variable Zuluness, Afrikanerdom, and Afrikaans-ness are also linguistically constructed, and this is where my focus lies. It is the politics of English as a lingua franca rather than ethnic politics which constitute the focus here. Some readers might find it problematic to focus on two South African population groups as different as isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers. I have a major reason, however, why I do so. In the post1994 academic accounts of linguistic and ethnic dynamics Afrikaans and isiZulu speakers have featured prominently (see, for instance, Cornelissen & Horstmeier 2002; Madiba 2005; Calteaux 2005; Wilmsen 2005; Orman 2009). Arguably, these two groups have asserted their linguistic ethnicities in the postapartheid state to a greater degree than others. In 2009, the leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), a predominately Zulu party, Mangosuthu Buthelezi was meeting with an Afrikaner forum in Pretoria and reportedly (and rather bizarrely) said that Afrikaner and Zulu people share a part of struggle history. He is quoted as saying: “Just as you fought for the preservation of your cultural identity, language, and values as we negotiated a democratic settlement, I fought for the recognition of the Zulu kingdom and the Zulu monarchy”.9 As one of my informants in the Western Cape put it: “Afrikaners have die taal (the language), and Zulus isiZulu”.10 I am certainly not the first scholar to see the comparative potential of the two language groups (Engel 1997; Webb 2002; Perry 2004a, 2004b; Holmes 2018; De Vos 2012). Zulu and Afrikaners have both been ‘loud’ about the significance of ‘their’ languages.11 When it comes to the Internet giant Google, for instance, they have been heard. Since 2011, YouTube videos are also available with Afrikaans and isiZulu interface, not in any other South African language, English excluded. In the year 2014 the Webmail service Gmail also added (only) these two languages as interface options and in 2018, Google maps introduced (only) these two South African languages.12 The Global Language Network (GLN) has called upon specifically Afrikaans and isiZulu speakers to apply for their Teaching Fellowship program since 2014.13 Numerous other examples of global responses to specifically these two language groups could be mentioned. Race is linked in complex ways to ethnicity in South Africa. The Afrikaans language group is multiracial, and I am not limiting my account to any particular race group here. White but as will be seen, increasingly also brown Afrikaans speakers and Zulu people arguably share a strong sense of what they experience

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as linguistic belonging to their respective ‘mother-tongues’. Previous portrayals of the relationship between Afrikaans and Afrikanerdom have focused on the white population, but I also draw some insights, albeit towards the end of the book, from the majority Afrikaans speaking coloured population.14 ‘Brown’ South Africans speak a variety known as Kaaps, or in Cape Town increasingly described as Afrikaaps. While Afrikaans speaking South Africans arguably make up the most diverse population group, isiZulu speakers also do not constitute a homogenous ethnolinguistic group. Frueh (2003: 25) aptly cautioned scholars not to narrow their analysis of identity as it runs the risk of sidestepping “in-group differences and reify[ing] actors as undifferentiated, solid things – an Afrikaner or the Zulu people or the South African nation”. Most linguistic anthropologists and social scientists today agree that primordial and essentialist thinking is no longer appropriate in the context of linguistic and ethnic identity politics. Empirical findings from grassroots levels, however, do not always coincide with academic knowledge construction. Fishman (1999: 447), for instance, recognized that despite the fact that the primordialist approach was abandoned long ago in the social sciences, “it nevertheless remains a commonly held position in most cultures throughout the world”. South Africa is no exception here and rigid linguistic, ethnic, and racial classifications exist (Carton 2008: 3). For many people isiZulu and Zuluness are monolithically bound, primordial, and fixed (Wright 2008; Rudwick 2004, 2008, 2018). Similarly, Standard Afrikaans remains among the primary markers of a ‘fossilized’ Afrikaner ethnicity (Blaser 2007; Bosch 2000; De Kadt 2006; Engel 1997; Kriel 2003, 2006; Webb & Kriel 2000). Indeed, one can argue convincingly that neither isiZulu nor Afrikaans constitute flexible variables in constructions of Zuluness and Afrikanerdom. For both groups it represents one, if not the most significant, element of their identity. And coloured Afrikaans speakers are also increasingly reasserting their linguistic belonging as will be seen later. Although the points and claims I make throughout this book are often quite specific to the South African context and this particular point in time, some of the empirical findings of the close relationship between language, ethnicity, race, and gender might well transfer to other post-colonial and English lingua franca contexts. As Soudien (2014: 214) puts it: The challenge and the opportunity that South Africa represents it seems, are to think of how its transgressive post-apartheid experience, in the presence of our better knowledge of the constructed nature of social difference and especially that of race, makes possible new ways in which one might come to understand the constituted body and to release descriptions of the body from their biologised moorings. Both colourism and racism are constant features of South African society and languages play a vital role in these social processes. Against this background, it is a rather common myth that English as a singular entity is an emblem of a

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Introduction: Framing the Study

shared South African identity. For one thing, English is deeply racialized and this is why much is written about race in this book. Pennycook’s (2017) insights into Malaysian society are to some extent applicable here. He notes (Pennycook 2017: 193) that “not only is ‘race’ taken as the primary division of society, but ‘racial characteristics’ are posited as a primary and deterministic explanation of social difference”. It is one of the aims of this book to find possibilities for employing post-colonial contexts in a way that reshape realities through English (Pennycook 2017: 261). It cannot be denied that in Africa, English has both enriched indigenous African languages through lexical borrowings and linguistic creativity but, on the other hand, it has also stultified and marginalized them (Mazrui & Mazrui 1998: 79). Higgins (2009) compellingly captured the multiple ways in which English can be seen through the concept of multivocality which “allows for an analysis of the multiplicity of meanings constructed through English that include aspects of linguistic imperialism and global hegemony, as well as resistance to imperialism in the forms of appropriation and transcultural hybridity”. While I aim to show some of these aspects in South African Englishes towards the end of this book, the focus was put elsewhere, namely on English as a discursive act saturated with linguistic and social ideologies (Pennycook 2007, 2010). As a result, it is about conflictual politics which are beyond the linguistic philanthropy that ELF studies have proposed. Many ELF and other applied linguistic scholars will perhaps feel that this monograph ‘misses the point’ in terms of ELF. I am neither using the broader theoretical or corpus linguistic framework common for ELF, nor do I elicit ELF per se and as a paradigm. My approach is to study ELF communication as a local practice (Pennycook 2010), a mobile tool (Blommaert 2010), and an activity type (Levinson 1992; Park & Wee 2014). More distinctly, I follow Park and Wee’s (2014: 51) proposal: ELF interactions, we suggest, may represent a particular class of activity types, one where the goal involves the need to communicate in a situation where none of the participants share the same L1. In such a situation, ease of understanding and shared norms of interpretation involving the same code cannot be taken for granted. Uncertainties that permeate such contexts may lead to complex outcomes. The many unshared norms of interpretation and uncertainties in English as a local practice and lingua franca is the focus of this book with reference to South Africa and I argue that this setting and vibrant environment might well serve as an inspiration for ‘classic’ ELF scholars. Not only the South African perspective, but Africa more generally can be instructive for advancing what has been known as ELF scholarship because multilingualism is pervasive and issues of ‘accent’ inequality, race, ethnicity, and gender play a significant part in shaping the role of English as a lingua franca on this continent. ELF studies have rarely employed long-term, qualitative, and ethnographic data. With

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few exceptions (Smit 2010b; Björkman 2008; Ehrenreich 2009) and a text ‘ethnographic’ approach (Jenkins 2007), ELF studies have not drawn from linguistic anthropological field ethnography and multidimensional methods that put the focus on context-specific usage (Ehrenreich 2018) and reflexivity. While identity has increasingly featured as a variable in ELF studies (e.g. Jenkins 2007; Pölzl & Seidlhofer 2006; Virkkula & Nikula 2010), not all have paid sufficient attention to how power and ideologies influence positionings in an ELF context. In this book, identity is studied as the “social positioning of self and other” (Bucholtz & Hall 2005: 586) in a diverse context in which English takes up a lingua franca role. This approach sees identities created and negotiated through discursive interaction on both a structural and individual level. In much of the mainstream ELF scholarship the “ineradicable role that the researcher’s personal subjectivity plays through the research process” (Rampton, Maybin & Roberts 2015: 16) has been ignored. Rapport with participants, interpersonal and individual narratives, as well as critical engagement with the many asymmetrical power distributions of research have therefore been a focus here. The discourse ethnographic frame (Krzyzanowski 2011) of this study aims to offer a new lens through which ELF can be researched and understood. My focus on ambiguities can be explained by the fact that many second-language speakers of English are ambivalent when it comes to their English language trajectories and how they employ English as a lingua franca. In Africa, this is reflected in its labelling of English as a “language of liberation”, on the one hand, and as a ‘language’ of ‘colonialism/imperialism’ or oppression, on the other hand (Mazrui 2004: 32). Despite its colonial baggage, it has been the language most aggressively promoted by the African elites (Ndhlovu 2015), but there have always been mixed motives (Ridge 2000). The binary views of English as a nonAfrican, ‘colonial’, and ‘alien’ language, on the one hand, and English as local, hybrid, and ‘Africanized’, on the other hand, play out in complex ways in everyday South African reality and sometimes blur the many ‘in-betweens’. The intersectional nature of various forms of oppression complicate any singular perception of the politics of English in the country. What this book suggests is that the fault lines of power dynamics in English as a lingua franca in South African society run along racial constructions. It is the perspective of this book that global scholarship on English as a lingua franca requires a broadening of scope, both in terms of disciplinary location and geopolitical orientation. It needs decolonial thinking that closely considers the matrixes of racial discrimination (Mignolo 2007: 164). Its primary focus on Europe and the ‘developed’ nations in Asia has delivered an unbalanced view of how English operates as a lingua franca. It is my hope that the following pages will offer the reader a nuanced account of how the many ways in which South Africans speak English as a lingua franca is entangled in rigid ideologies of power. These multiple ambiguities of English as a lingua franca are reflected in mobility and immobility, inclusion and exclusion, conflict and consensus, marginalization and empowerment, and a vast range of local, global, and glocal identity trajectories.

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Chapter Outline The next chapter briefly surveys important literature about English in the world and the ELF field as a backdrop to my own more anthropological approach. I discuss scholarship with reference to critical voices and illustrate how individual ELF scholars have responded to this multifaceted critique. Recently, the shift and reorientation towards multilingualism has strengthened ELF scholarship as a field which is cognisant of the significance of languages other than English. This new direction also opens up possibilities for ELF scholarship to be conducted in the ex-colonies of the British Empire in which dynamics of power, ideology, and race strongly impact on the role English maintains as a primary lingua franca. The chapter also discusses raciolinguistic frameworks without which a linguistic anthropological study of the role of English as a South African lingua franca would not be feasible. Chapter 3 provides socio-historical background to the study of English vis-àvis other languages in South Africa. The story of the making of English as a lingua franca is, first and foremost, a story of colonialism. Keeping the legacies of English colonialism in mind when analysing the current politics of the language is essential (Pennycook 1998, 2007). Afrikaans and isiZulu speakers fought their own separate struggles against English language domination, but ultimately it has been South Africa’s least questioned lingua franca. During the twentieth century many African language speakers embraced English as a lingua franca medium both for national and international communication because it was felt to bridge ethnic divides and facilitate the international struggle against white oppression. This is why it acquired the label of ‘language of liberation’ despite its colonial status. During apartheid, English continued to be supported among African language speakers as it was perceived as a much lesser ‘evil’ than Afrikaans which was the language of the apartheid state. The 1976 student protests which became known as the ‘Soweto uprising’ further strengthened English because protests were directed against Afrikaans as the instruction medium not against English and, importantly, also not for African language instruction. Since the transition to democracy it has been primarily Afrikaans and isiZulu speakers who have asserted their languages, and although Afrikaans has failed to maintain its privileged position, isiZulu has gained ground, even in domains such as higher education. The chapter lays the foundation for understanding the current postcolonial moment in South Africa where further ‘decolonialization’ is on the horizon, not least through language and race issues. In Chapter 4 I have aimed to carve out some of the complexities in the processes of marginalization linked to the kind of raciolinguistics the English lingua franca space has created. At the same time, and in line with the theme of ambiguity it also portrays how the defiance of the lingua franca status of English can be used for empowerment in a specific political space. I initially focus on how the racial and raciolinguistic ideologies of Englishes are intertwined with the discrimination of black South Africans. Selected narratives of black South Africans’ experience of the housing market also show the limits of language against the

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power of race. Focusing on the domains of ambiguities rather than the domains of language usage in Fishman’s (1972) sense, the discussion takes place across contexts and settings. This chapter also shows how South Africa’s ex-president, Jacob Zuma, defied the lingua franca status of English in the rape trial in order to evoke cultural, linguistic identity politics. He strategically mobilized isiZulu as a cultural weapon to fight the English Eurocentric dominance of the court. Lastly, there is a discussion about how some segments of the Afrikaner community have embraced the marginalization rhetoric by constructing what has been termed ‘subaltern whiteness’ by pitching the ‘colonialization’ of English against Afrikaner indigeneity. Chapter 5 shows the complex entanglement of English linguistic mobility and the ambiguities of what is perceived as racial authenticity. South Africa’s stark socio-economic disparities manifest continuously in white economic privilege but also in an increasingly solid black middle class. Shifting to the ‘black’ gaze in this chapter, I draw from the concepts of mobility and authenticity to offer a raciolinguistic perspective on some black politicians’ ways of speaking English and the responses of the public. By analysing through this raciolinguistic lens, I also aim to demonstrate how, on the one hand, people have fixed perceptions about racial identities in relation to English usage, and, on the other hand, there is much mobility and fluidity when it comes to English language usage. This chapter exhibits manifestations of coloniality of language (Veronelli 2015) and discusses how the social and racial injustices of the colonial and apartheid past simmers in the minds of many South Africans and how this creates and recreates much coloniality in South African people’s perceptions of how English is spoken. Chapter 6 focuses on the ideologies of cosmopolitanism as linked to English vis-à-vis the perceived parochialisms of local languages in relation to higher education in South Africa. As elsewhere in the world, English has – in its strong position as the global academic lingua franca – strong support from local stakeholders. At the same time, Afrikaans has been constructed as the ‘language of exclusion’ by student groups which has led to it losing ground in its previously established position in the higher education system. And yet, calls for decolonization also interrogate the hegemonic role English holds in South African education and the low positioning of African languages in teaching and learning (Dube 2017). In this chapter I describe how the role of English as an academic lingua franca has triggered a language policy change at Stellenbosch University, and, at the same time, runs parallel to a metalanguage discourse in the Afrikaner community that constructs English as the ‘only’ oppressive language in the country. The objective of the chapter is to deconstruct the binaries which arise from these contestations and shows the parochial and ethnic identity politics resulting from this space and context. Chapter 7 focuses on the gendered ambiguities of English in relation to isiZulu and the tension it creates in the Zulu community. It aims to capture some of the ‘lived realities’ in the constructions of femininities, masculinities, and other-gendered identities through isiZulu vis-à-vis English. By doing so I

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carefully formulate the argument that female isiZulu speakers might find it easier to embrace so-called white English rather than strive for a black accented or lingua franca variety.15 Zulu men, in contrast, appear to hold on to an isiZulu inflected English which provides cultural clues about their ethnic and racial identity. I suggest that claims of belonging are at the basis of this dynamic. While my argument is located, to some extent, within the binaristic thinking of previous language and gender studies in South Africa, I also aim to dismantle some of this thinking in order to allow for a more nuanced perspective of isiZulu speakers by drawing on the experience of men who have sex with other men (MSM). The next chapter (8) challenges the conceptualizations of English as an entity bounded by particular linguistic, social, and racial criteria. Against the background of the previous chapters which portrayed ideological conceptions of what English is and does to identities, this chapter provides primarily a text analytical approach to show that what English is and does currently in the South African landscape offers much insight into new ontologies and epistemologies of English. I discuss the politics of belonging through the lens of English translingual writing. Selected pieces from the Mail & Guardian weekly newspaper, as well as song lyrics and blog writing, are analysed in terms of their English embedded translingualism. Through their writing these African and Afrikaans authors establish a direct relationship between an ELF audience, diverse cultural references, and their own identities. Their texts are representative of a new generation of South African English writers and artists who are in the process of reclaiming their voice through innovative translingualism and by demonstrating linguistic citizenship. English serves as a lingua franca but it is not a bound entity anymore; rather it represents an open platform which sources other languages in order to create a politics of belonging for all South Africans. In the chapter preceding the conclusion (9), I engage with and reflect on the fieldwork and research methodology. My personal background and positionality as a white female German with South African residential status and an English lingua franca speaker has contributed to how I have collected, analysed, and presented my data and arguments. Thus, I address the continuous process of reflection, personal stories, and experiences of working with isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers. It illustrates how I negotiated insecurities and critically engaged with my own whiteness and white privilege. Drawing on fieldnotes and reflections with participants I show that one’s status is always unstable, fluid, and filled with dissonance. Research is replete with power relations and certainly my position came with its own power baggage. However, while researching language, race, and other intersections, scholars can build rapport and relationships on various different levels, not least by learning from flawed behaviour. And yet, striving to portray the social actor’s voices in authentic ways does not suffice as portrayals are always tainted by our own biographical subjectivity. This is also why most chapters were read not only by colleagues to get academic advice but also by some of the

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participants of the research who were cited. Methodological reflexivity and the building of dialogue between the consultants, myself, and the field meant a permanent learning curve and this chapter summarizes the main shortfalls and limitations of this process. The conclusion describes one of the primary purposes of this book as to move the centre of attention of ELF research from Europe/Asia to the African context. My objective has been to demonstrate the complexity of its sociocultural and political ambiguity in this space. While this book bears witness to the vitality and vibrancy of African languages, it still suggests that English is likely to be one of the country’s primary lingua francas for the years to come. The argument of this book is that ambiguity is one of the primary features of English as a lingua franca by showing that language, race, and, to a lesser degree, ethnic and gender identity mutually constitute each other. In decolonizing language scholarship, and ELF in particular, Africa and its diaspora have important roles to play. The entanglement of ELF communication in the processes of racialization, racial positioning, and racism requires more attention in dismantling the whiteness of English as a lingua franca. If English continues to develop as a multi and translingua franca not only in South Africa but globally, it also offers a platform on which other languages and cultures can receive recognition and this provides the potential to deconstruct boundaries. This study does not offer any descriptive or applied framework of how English ‘should’ ideally be used and understood in racially mixed lingua franca communication, but it makes an appeal to break with the rigid ideologies of what ELF ought to be by unthinking its Eurocentric root.

Notes 1 In has, in fact, been suggested that native speakers must be given closer attention in English lingua franca communication (Carey 2010). 2 In the text, I refer to both consultants and interviewees as participants. Chapter 9 also provides further methodological information and concerns. 3 All participants of this project were informed of the nature of the research prior to the interview. All names employed throughout the monograph are pseudonyms in order to assure the anonymity of the individuals. 4 The use of analogue field notes in my moleskin was quite productive, often only after the encounter, which meant that precise transcription of the conversation was not feasible. Verbatim quotes employed throughout the book, however, were captured in electronic files. 5 In South Africa, the four apartheid-based race categories (African [black], coloured, Indian, and white) continue to serve bureaucratic purposes and are part of the everyday discourse of most South Africans. Although reluctantly and uncomfortably, I maintain these racial classifications here in order to demonstrate their ambiguity and how race matters to South Africans. I do not, however, employ race and racial categories in inverted commas in order to have a more reader friendly text. 6 While I acknowledge the claim by Afrikaners that Afrikaans is indigenous to South Africa in the sense that it is linguistically distinguishable from Dutch which is the original ex-colonial language, I consider it meaningful in the context of this study to label it as a South African rather than an African language.

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7 https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/zuma-afrikaner-only-true-white-south-african439000 (accessed 16 May 2020). 8 See, for instance, Alexander 1997, 2000, 2004, 2005, De Klerk 2002, Herbert 1992, Kotzé 2000, Finlayson and Slabbert 1995, Kamwangamalu 1997, 2000, Orman 2009. 9 https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/afrikaners-zulus-share-same-struggle-438490 (accessed 16 May 2020). 10 Linsie, 58 year-old female Afrikaner academic, Stellenbosch 3 February 2015). 11 Many white Afrikaans speakers have interpreted the post-1994 “anglicization” as a threat to their identities but the importance of language also resonated with the Zulu community (Perry 2004a). 12 https://www.htxt.co.za/2014/07/08/gmail-is-now-available-in-zulu-and-afrikaans (20 Jan 2020), and https://businesstech.co.za/news/internet/234483/google-mapsadds-afrikaans-and-zulu-language-options (accessed 20 Jan 2020). 13 www.saembassy.org/are-you-interested-in-teaching-zulu-or-afrikaans (accessed 20 Jan 2020). 14 Afrikaans speakers make up a racially heterogeneous group and the so-called coloured population forms (with 54 percent) the majority of Afrikaans speakers today. So-called coloured people do not claim what is known as Afrikaner identities. The term ‘coloured’ was the label employed by the apartheid government to homogenize people into one group who had primarily a mixed-race background. Everyone who did not ‘fit’ into the dominant categories of ‘White’, ‘Black’, and ‘Indian’ became classified as ‘Coloured’. Coloured people are the most diverse population group constructing identities through a Khoikhoi and Malay background or racially mixed heritage. As an identity category it is more complex than other South African identities and it is arguably more fraught with ambiguities and contradictions (Erasmus 2001; Adhikari 2013). 15 In this book, I use terms and labels such as black/African (accented) English as well as white English to capture terminology which the participants of this study employed. In most instances, the racial dimension of language was foregrounded in discussions, rather than whether a person learned English as a first language or not.

2

English in the World and as a Lingua Franca

Introduction English has been the most commonly employed tool for international communication for some time (Crystal 2003). World Englishes (WE) is a research field initiated by Braj Kachru (1976), who laid the foundations for a critical approach to the linguistic and geo-political study of varieties of Englishes around the world. Although his Three Circle model (Kachru 1982, 1985) has been criticized (e.g. Bruthiaux 2003, Pennycook 2017), his pioneering work in critiquing the usefulness of the term “native speaker” and “mother tongue”1 has certainly lasted. The fundamental paradigm underlying the work of WE scholars is that the vast spread of the English language has resulted in many kinds of Englishes that can be formally described and presented as varieties in their own right. Accordingly, it is also argued in WE research (and post-colonial Englishes) that the so-called English ‘native-speaker’ no longer serves as the dominant point of reference. The field of WE is vast and it is characterized by much fluidity, as new varieties of Englishes are continuously emerging around the world. In South Africa alone, there are a number of different Englishes, both ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ spoken around the country. Part of this broader research field, but also distinguishable in the WE paradigm, is the more recent study of English as a lingua franca. Unlike most WE researchers, however, who have focused their study on specific places and varieties of Englishes, ELF scholars shifted their analytical lens from region to context and focused on the strong communicative value of English spoken as a lingua franca. Also, unlike the study of WE, ELF’s geographical focus has centred on Europe and, to a lesser degree, Asia. It has been argued that, in the contemporary world, “English’s primary role is to act as a lingua franca among multilinguals for whom English is an additional language” (Kirkpatrick 2013: 13). It is from this perspective that the study of ELF has value in South Africa but my approach to its study certainly does not fall into the traditional paradigms of the field. For one thing, this study is located within linguistic anthropology and not in applied linguistics, it portrays cultural and identity politics and makes no recommendations as to how we ‘should’ be thinking about English. Rather, it portrays South African people who use ways of speaking DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472-2

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English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)

English as a way of creating meaning in their life and making their words become political. As Bourdieu (1990: 54) put it “politics is, essentially, a matter of words”. The ELF field has been evolving, there has been quite a bit of confusion about terminology in the field focusing on the role of ELF. Dröschel (2010: 43), for instance, called upon scholars not to conflate ELF and Lingua Franca English (LFE). In particular, she states that The definition of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) should be based on the functional aspects the language has for its users and its social status in a particular speech community. However, the term ‘Lingua Franca English’ should be restricted to formal properties of the language, i.e. the development of particular varieties of English in cross-cultural communication. I suggest that the terms ‘English as a Lingua Franca’ and ‘Lingua Franca English’ should no longer be used indistinguishably … However, in a recent publication Canagarajah (2018), for example, employs the acronym LFE to refer to diverse approaches to English social/interactional studies which include ELF, translingualism, English as an International Language (EIL), and pragmatics. Due to the proliferation in scholarship on English there continues to be much inconsistency in the ways acronyms for specialized fields are employed. For the purpose of this book I will define my approach to language, and English more specifically, as based on the human condition and therefore it is marked by ambiguity. It is an understanding of language as a social resource and a means of communication replete with ideological positions and sociopolitical meanings. Language ideologies are basically “beliefs, feelings, and conceptions about language structure and use” and they “often index the political economic interests of individual speakers, ethnic and other groups, and nation states” (Kroskrity 2010: 192). When English is used as a lingua franca in South Africa, especially among isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers, ideologies about ways of speaking stir complex identity politics. ELF communication as social practice is not immune to this, in fact ELF can be understood as a mobile communication platform through which identities are constructed. Drawing from Gal’s (2013) linguistic anthropological approach, I also understand ELF as a process and a dynamic rather than a ‘thing’. I concur with the opinion that “the acronym [ELF] is handy but may sometimes be misleading. The full phrase brings out the processual aspect of what we are studying” (Gal 2013: 179–180). This is also why this book only makes use of the acronym occasionally, most of the time I employ the full phrase. The participants and consultants of this book have all learned English as a second, third, or fourth language and they employ it primarily in conversation with other language speakers, hence it has meaning as a lingua franca. It is clear, from these defining efforts that the way I am making meaning of the role of English as a lingua franca is quite radically different from the

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way most applied linguists speak and write about ELF. While applied linguistic work is valuable from a variety of perspectives, Pennycook and Makoni (2020) have highlighted the discipline’s ‘northern’ bias in terms of ‘universal’ claims and theorizing. They note the importance of applied linguistics recognizing the “complicity between ways of knowing embedded in the field and a history of colonialism, discrimination, and unequal knowledge distribution” (Pennycook & Makoni (2020: 136). They aptly point out that “the ways these forms of knowledge are tied both to a colonial history and a colonial present link them to violence and privilege” and they call on scholars to work towards a redistribution of knowledge and resources so that new forms of knowledge can reinvigorate the field (of applied linguistics) (Pennycook & Makoni (2020: 136). This book aims to deliver a new form of knowledge and a new perspective on the multiple roles of English as a lingua franca in the world by focusing on variables thus far neglected in this field (i.e. race) and by showing how English is caught in great sociocultural ambiguity in South Africa.

ELF Scholarship The writing on English as a contact language has of course been longstanding (e.g. Knapp 2015 [1987]; Crystal 2003; Graddol 1997, 2006; Fishman 1987) but the field associated with the acronym ELF only established itself in the early 2000s. Jenkins’ (2000) phonological and Seidlhofer’s (2001) lexico-grammatical studies of ELF are widely considered the first two milestones in the inauguration of ELF as a research field in its own right. There has been significant corpus development of ELF, such as Seidlhofer’s Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) and Mauranen’s corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (ELFA), both of which have received much attention. More recently, Kirkpatrick (2010) has been working with a team of scholars on an Asian Corpus of English (ACE). For several years there was a focus on what is termed the Lingua Franca Core (LFC) which can be defined as a “finite set of pronunciation features which, it is claimed, are necessary for achieving international intelligibility in spoken English” (Deterding 2013: 7). However, since these earlier studies and criticism, there has been much change in ELF scholarship and a general move away from the linguistic description of ‘ELF varieties’. There has been extensive debate about what exactly constitutes ELF interactions and discourse. Today scholars at the forefront of the field (for instance, Jenkins, Mauranen, Seidlhofer) insist that the analysis of ELF discourse must not exclude English first language speakers, that ELF is a variable contact language, and that a certain level of multilingualism in the environment is a prerequisite for ELF. Meierkord (2004: 115) characterized English as a lingua franca as “a variety in constant flux, involving different constellations of speakers of diverse individual Englishes in every single interaction”, hence ELF is not a variety of English that can be “formally defined” but rather it is “a

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variable way of using it” (Seidlhofer 2011: 77). In line with the WE philosophy, ELF scholars argue that English spoken as a lingua franca ought to be seen as “different rather than deficient” (Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey 2011: 284) and that stakeholders in the educational sphere, for instance, ought to acknowledge this. ELF has established itself as a separate research field within applied linguistics with its own journal, an annual conference, and a prolific output of book chapters and monographs. The recent Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca (Jenkins, Baker & Dewey, 2018) is also strong testimony to the fact that ELF is thriving. The political message is that as long as Englishes are internationally intelligible they should be acknowledged as valuable academic media. It is noteworthy that the Mouton de Gruyter Journal of English as a Lingua Franca (JELF) states on the author’s guidelines: While standard style sheet stipulates, under ‘Special attention’, that authors should have their “contribution carefully checked by a native speaker”, the editors of JELF simply expect authors to submit manuscripts written in an English which is intelligible to a wide international academic audience, but it need not conform to native English norms. While this stipulation is remarkably progressive from a general editorial perspective, my own African Studies Journal (Modern Africa, Politics, History and Society) could hardly afford such a disclaimer in the author’s guidelines for a number of reasons. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of authors in the JELF are European and, to a lesser degree, from Asian developed countries. Access to Standard English in education is fairly high in these geographical regions and the majority of submissions can be assumed to be of a high level of English (albeit European) after all. Modern Africa is a platform and outlet for primarily African scholars or scholarship from Africa and as such the overwhelming majority of papers are also from scholars who acquired English as a second, third, or fourth language, hence a ‘typical ELF’ crowd. However, access to a British or American Standard English is hard to come by in many African public institutions. So, my point is this: as long as the global North sets the standard for publishing, the African context cannot yet afford such a generous disclaimer as JELF offers, if we want to appeal to an international academic audience. This confronts me, as chief editor of Modern Africa with a complex dilemma: Shall I be true to my ideological conviction that ELF should “rule” or shall I provide a platform for African scholars to publish their work in an internationally accepted form? For professional and academic reasons I admit preferring the latter, facing up to my own hypocrisy and being reminded of Jaspers’ (2018: 10) sharp observation that “we sigh with exasperation when teachers and policy makers hesitate to embrace linguistic diversity, while we would think twice about transforming our own journals … into multi-, if not translingual, locations for science”. English is, as any other language, a tool to distinguish Us from Them; language has immediate effect and is highly political. Language purism is

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often linked to political conservatism and, from this perspective, the ELF paradigm is attractive. But Jaspers also remarks with reference to the burgeoning translanguaging literature that an uncritical propagation of fluid and flexible language use is not without its problems as it constructs a type of “truth regime that allows ‘good’ subjectivities and disallows ‘bad’ ones” (Jaspers 2018: 8). European English lingua franca, the classic ELF discourse, is marked by access to the kind of English(es) which are still pretty close to the so-called standard. The majority of learners on the African continent and in South Africa do not have access to this kind of English and that is why part of this monograph is to “take a step back, to pause, to ask what possibilities are being excluded as new ideas are put forward” (Pennycook & Makoni 2020: 136).

Critique ELF as a relatively young research field has currently two continental centres of research gravity: Europe and Asia (Jenkins et al. 2011; Motschenbacher 2013). This has led one critic to describe the “ELF movement” as “geoculturally Eurocentric” (O’Regan 2014: 540). The focus on Europe and Asia is indeed a bit puzzling, given that there are other multilingual regions such as Africa where English has also been employed extensively as one of the lingua francas. In South Africa, even in the most nuanced analysis, it has been discussed as an “unquestioned lingua franca” (Deumert 2010: 15). While it has become clear that the social and political realities of countries of the global South are markedly different from those of the global North (Pennycook & Makoni 2020), most current ELF research continues to focus on Europe. Without doubt, multilingual contexts in the global South offer a very significant impetus to reflect on existing theory making in ELF research. Colonialism and the spread of English are inextricably linked, and the ‘transcultural’ use of English found in ex-colonies and both its ‘fluidity’ and its ‘fixity’ (Pennycook 1998, 2007) offer much substance for the study of ELF communication. Given that English has been a preferred medium of the South African multilingual elite and ‘the’ academic and professional lingua franca despite its contested role as an ex-colonial language, this geo-political focus provides a fruitful ground on which to try to unravel the ambiguities in ELF communication. There are several reasons why ELF is relevant in Africa and Africa significant for ELF research. One of the developments that gave rise to WE and ELF as research fields is the recognition that in the contemporary world English is employed as an additional language far more commonly than as a first language. This holds even within the South African context where English is spoken as a first language by less than 10 percent of the population. The place of English as a South African lingua franca moves on an extremely complex, contradictory, and shifting socio-cultural terrain and there are multiple English varieties, or what Mauranen (2018) has started to refer to as similects. The high variability of Englishes employed as lingua franca in African contexts (see, e.g.

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English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)

Meierkord, Isingoma & Namyalo 2016) might actually pose some challenges to conceptualizations of ELF as broadly intelligible even within the same national context. While my study is not rooted in variationist sociolinguistics, nor does it engage with the traditional ELF paradigm, it takes up the transformation of ELF into English as a multilingual franca (EMF). In other words, it contributes to the disinventions of English (Makoni 2003) which reject a “monolingual provincialism and see it within prevalent multilingualism” (Ishikawa & Jenkins 2019: 6). Further criticism has been levelled against ELF for its limited socio-cultural analysis (Phillipson 2008; Modiano 2009; Rubdy & Saraceni 2006; Park & Wee 2011) and for ignoring some of the forces in the political economy of global Englishes. Indeed, much of ELF literature focuses on language teaching in English medium institutions and lacks critical engagement with the socio-cultural politics of English in specific places and the world more broadly. The study of power dynamics, ideologies, and identities has only received attention more recently (Jenkins 2014; Virkkula & Nikula 2010; Seidlhofer 2009, 2011; Baird, Baker & Kitazawa 2014). Although ELF research has undergone extensive changes in approach and paradigm there is still a lack of engagement with the socio-cultural politics of English. Pennycook recently stated: While the ELF approach has been able to avoid some of the problems of the World Englishes focus on nation- and class-based varieties and can open up a more flexible and mobile version of English, it has likewise never engaged adequately with questions of power. While the WE approach has framed its position as a struggle between the former colonial centre and its postcolonial offspring, the ELF approach has located its struggle between so-called native and nonnative speakers. Yet neither of these sites of struggle engages with wider questions of power, inequality, class, ideology or access. (2017: ix) The approach to ELF in this study engages these questions through portraying the struggles of ordinary South Africans in diverse English lingua franca contexts through a broad ethnographic lens because “to take up a cultural political project must require a battle over the meanings of English” (Pennycook 2017: 265). It is my conviction that the only universal features that characterize English as a lingua franca are its diverse power dynamics and its socio-cultural ambiguity. The mere prevalence of English as a lingua franca in multilingual settings triggers a host of inclusionary and exclusionary processes, it creates marginalization and empowerment. While in Europe, many universities have been confronted with increasing demands for English as a language of learning and teaching since the Bologna process, there have been efforts in South Africa to challenge the hegemony of English at university level. The University of KwaZulu-Natal, for instance, has formulated a language policy which states

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that the local language isiZulu is to be developed in order to gain the same institutional status as English (Rudwick 2017, 2018). The usage of English as a lingua franca presupposes that the language is embedded in multilingualism and linguistic diversity, otherwise English would simply shed its lingua franca status. Nonetheless, and it seems to me that this has been neglected in some of the ELF literature due to its focus on Europe, there are many spaces and contexts where English in its lingua franca status also reconstitutes and reproduces social injustices. In particular in the African context, English is prevalent only because for some interlocutors there is no better option available. As a matter of fact, most white South Africans do not speak an African language and, therefore, communication between black and white people is by default in one of the ex-colonial languages, and increasingly English. Concerns about social justice in South Africa go hand in hand with questioning the hegemony of English in spaces of power. The African context demands to be examined in ways where there is openness for strategies through which African languages can cohabit intellectual spaces with English (Bokamba 1995). ELF scholars recently acknowledged that the negative aspects of ELF communication and the uncooperative behaviour in ELF discourse have not found sufficient attention (Jenkins et al. 2018: 3). Knapp (2002) long argued that the type of situation in which English lingua franca communication takes place is significant and that in competitive and contested spaces, such as universities, cooperative behaviour might not occur. The tendency among African language speakers to remain silent in spaces where white English speakers lead the conversation is common. It has been argued, that English as academic lingua franca has strong communicative value (Mauranen 2012). From one perspective, this also holds true in South Africa where some learners refer to English as the “communicative” language (Rudwick 2008) but its position of English as ‘the’ academic lingua franca in South Africa continues to be on contradictory ground. In Chapter 5 the student movement (#Open Stellenbosch) will serve as an example of how bottom-up dynamics have triggered a university language policy change that enacted English (as opposed to Afrikaans) as the primary academic lingua franca but this has happened under contested circumstances. English continues to be caught in an ambivalent climate with much tension among Afrikaners in Stellenbosch. While recent empirical data from the South African context suggest that students embrace linguistic practices in education that allow for a combination of languages, “English-plus multilingualism” in the classroom (Van der Walt, Klapwiyk & Klapwiyk 2016), there is a strong sense of purism among Afrikaner people, even some of the youth. While the educational language context of some black learners has changed in the sense that more and more black children attend multiracial schools where they have access to socalled Standard English, the overwhelming majority of African children continue to attend schools where, as Gough wrote in 1996, children do not have much exposure to first language English, or varieties other than Black South African English (BSAE). Such English second language identities (Block 2014)

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English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)

are communicated in English lingua franca contexts and they deserve nuanced analysis. African people have invested in English and actively employ the language as a resource to communicate and to ‘be in the world’. English does form part of their identities, but this did and does not always happen by choice. It takes place because of South Africa’s colonial past and the simple fact that nonblack South Africans have failed to learn African languages. For the most part South Africa’s multilingualism involves the speakers of Bantu languages, the majority of white, Indian and coloured people are, at most, bilingual (Census 2011).

Reorientation towards Multilingualism English lingua franca environments are inherently socio-linguistic diverse and also offer great potential for research on multilingualism (House 2003; Jenkins 2015; Cogo 2018; Smit 2018). This is particularly important given that the criticism of English in Africa is often built around abstract but very emotional concerns that local languages will be swept away in a wave of ‘westernization’ (Banda 2009). For English to have lingua franca status in Africa presupposes its coexistence with African languages and Afrikaans. And this is precisely what has happened for centuries. There is great natural potential for multiple languages to coexist next to each other in diverse ways, albeit often within a hierarchical order and diglossic relations that place English either implicitly or explicitly at the top. After all, multilingualism has long been “a fact of African life” and, by extension, Africa’s primary lingua franca (Fardon & Furniss 1994: 4). Complex dynamics have generated multiple forms of more or less habitualized multilingual practice. Since South Africa`s transition to democracy in the early to mid-1990s the role of English as one of the country’s national lingua francas has been strengthened on various levels but, at the same time, multilingualism has continued to flourish (Census 2001, 2011). Quantitative analyses of census data suggest that increasing bilingualism rather than a language shift to English is occurring in South Africa (Posel & Zeller 2015). English, or rather its various varieties, coexists with other languages within a complex and fluid multilingual order. This social analysis of English lingua franca communication is embedded in ‘other’ ways of speaking multilingual, understanding multilingualism as a “new linguistic dispensation” (Singleton et al. 2013). In this way, the aim is also to dis-invent language (Makoni 2003) by acknowledging its non-bounded nature, flexibility, and multiplicity. It gives way to English(ing) as translingual practice (Canagarajah 2013; Canagarajah & Kimura 2018), through multivocality (Higgins 2009), metrolingual context (Otsuji & Pennycook 2010), and a southern gaze (Pennycook & Makoni 2020). The focus on South Africa’s multilingualism as a basis for my analysis meshes well with most recent developments in the fields of language studies. Even ELF research (Jenkins 2015, 2018a, 2018b; Cogo 2018; Smit 2018) has increasingly been framed in multilingualism. As a result of this development ELF scholars have responded to their critiques. One scholar (O’Regan 2014)

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in particular, had attacked the scholarship at its very core by claiming that ELF studies reify English as a lingua franca as a fixed product based on an idealist rationalist ideology that ignores important forces in the political economy of global English. Indeed, early ELF scholarship showed little critical engagement with socio-political issues that arise from the simple fact that English is the global lingua franca. However, as the field evolved, it has received some attention (Jenkins 2014; Virkkula & Nikula 2010; Seidlhofer 2011; Baird et al. 2014). O’Regan’s (2014) criticism did not consider how ELF research evolved and responded, at least to some extent, to the very critique he levelled against it. The argument that ELF scholarship has not engaged sufficiently with the cultural politics of global English (Pennycook 2012: 140) is, however, still valid. The mere fact that the global South has not featured much in the analysis and that Africa and other post-colonial settings have been neglected does represent a shortfall. Given this situation, it is perhaps not surprising that ELF remains a controversial school of thought despite its establishment as a legitimate research field characterized by bourgeoning volumes and monographs.2 Jenkins (2018a: 4) recently argued that greater theoretical premise ought to be given to the multilingual repertoires ELF speakers bring to the table in order to “gain a more nuanced understanding of ELF’s multilingual nature”. In recent papers (Jenkins 2015, 2018a, 2018b), she expanded ELF to EMF, English (as a) multilingual franca as part of this emphasis that English is only one (among many) ‘bridging’ and ‘communicative’ tools in the multilingual learning context. The acronym EMF is not generally accepted as an improved term among ELF scholars but there are several studies (Weihua 2019; Ishikawa 2020; Baker & Sangiamchit 2019) emerging that make reference to the term. By locating English as a lingua franca in relation to other languages, scholars might be able to escape the narrow view of ELF and the frequent polarizations in discussions about English. Many contributions to the debate about global English and also English as a lingua franca have tended to be strongly ideologically grounded. Strong metaphors such as “lingua frankensteinia” (Phillipson 2008) invoke a picture of a horror scenario which provide a very narrow and one-sided view. While Phillipson’s (1992) Linguistic Imperialism (LI) placed the study of English in the world within a valuable framework that highlighted the social and linguistic inequality English contributed to, it provides little space in which to examine how English has empowered the marginalized. As Blommaert (2004: 62) put it, linguistic imperialism has an important political message but socio-linguistically “it needs to be approached as something that could cause more harm than good if advocated and implemented with immediate effect”. Phillipson’s (2006) more recent work also seems to acknowledge to a much greater degree positive developments involving English. In South Africa, many language activists nonetheless dwell on an uncritical linguistic human rights framework. Language has complex socio-historical entanglements in the country and to speak of English as ‘only’ an imperial tool yields little insight into the complexities of

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appropriation and ownership taking place on the individual and collective identification level. For many African language speakers in South Africa English has also been a tool to escape poverty and marginalization. Refiloe Lepere writes in the Foreword to Jefferson Tshabalala’s (2018: 5) debut script Khongolose Khommanding Khommissars: “In the era of decolonisation it’s hard to admit that I find the English language delicious. *Hides face*. But I do.” The flipside of the perspective that places English as ‘only’ hegemonic and dangerous is that the African influences on English are ignored and that vernacular languages might become romanticized. Language, culture, and identity are often perceived as very closely entangled in these contexts. There are Herderiantype of schemata which link language intrinsically and inextricably to culture, identity, and nation and South African socio-linguistic scholarship is replete with it, even my own earlier studies fall into the trap of essentializing these relationships (Rudwick 2004). Scholars (Errington 2007; Bauman & Briggs 2003; Banda 2009; Makoni & Pennycook 2012) have persuasively shown that the Herderian ideology is a legacy of colonial linguistics and quite severely misrepresents the complexity of linguistic practices and identity trajectories as they manifest on the ground, especially in places such as Africa. Keeping this scholarship in mind the aim in this monograph is to focus on the natural potential of multiple ways of speaking English and other languages to coexist, complement each other, but also to compete in social, political, and academic spheres. English as a lingua franca has also been portrayed as “neutral” (House 2014), even “bereft of collective cultural capital” (House 2003: 560). In South Africa these associations are quite far removed from social reality. While some ELF studies (e.g. Baker 2015, 2018) have conceptualized ‘culture’ in ELF communication more critically, there has previously been a focus on what might constitute a shared culture and identity through ELF (Cogo & Dewey 2012). Much of the current ELF literature (including the various articles in Jenkins et al. (2018) continues to flag the benign status of ELF. Power dynamics emerging from ELF communication in everyday social life, politics, the media, and education have not found much attention in ELF scholarship (Prodromou 2008; Park & Wee 2011). Park and Wee (2011: 366) note that “the ELF project needs to be greatly more sensitive to the political consequences of formulating and promoting” an alternative market in which a hybrid English lingua franca form can gain authority. ELF scholars have responded to criticism and acknowledged that ELF is best studied in multidisciplinary frameworks (Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey 2011: 302). However, the field is still lacking analytical tools to grapple with the extent of cultural politics and necessary decolonization practices (Pennycook 2020). As Joseph (2006: 9) aptly states: “The matter of who has ‘authority’ over English is a political linguistic issue par excellence, centring as it does on the question of who English belongs to, and what exactly are the ‘boundaries’ of a language”. To describe just how these politics of language unfold in the South African context is the principal aim of this book. Grounded in linguistic anthropology, the study hopes to offer an analytical depth of power dynamics which neither WE nor ELF scholarship have

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provided. With few exceptions (Smit 2010b; Björkman 2008; Ehrenreich 2009, 2018) long-term qualitative methods have not characterized the fields. There is an illuminating ethnographic approach to text in one study (Jenkins 2007) but ELF scholarship, more broadly, has barely used anthropological field ethnography and multidimensional methodologies that put the focus on context-specific usage (Ehrenreich 2018). Participant observation strategies, holistic approaches to subjects and data, focus on emic categories, and thorough critical self-reflection all deserve more attention in the field. In order to make sense of English as a lingua franca in the lifeworlds of South Africans I focus on reflexivity, both my own and that of my consultants and participants. Although Baird et al. (2014) interrogated the role of the researcher in ELF communication, there are no comprehensive studies in the socio-political meanings inherent in the multiple identity work created in English lingua franca contexts. Using an ‘additional’ not a first language as a medium, for instance, has distinct implications not only for learning and teaching in South African higher education (Smit 2010a) but also for the socio-cultural language politics a person finds him/herself in. The ‘tactics of intersubjectivity’ which provide a focus on the semiotics of language are helpful in the examination of diverse linguistic and social identities (Bucholtz & Hall 2004). Putting stress on the ‘making of identities’ in context and an approach that acknowledges that ideologies and identities are temporary, in flux, and negotiated in relation to power, we can also come to understand more adequately the multilingual realities involving English practices in South Africa. Few English lingua franca studies focus on socio-cultural dynamics and identification processes in discourse (e.g. Jenkins 2007; Kolocsai 2014) and only recently has a more translingual perspective been added (Canagarajah 2018). Hiu (1995: 26) was one of the first scholars to employ the term translingual practice in the context of the condition of translation and “of discursive practices that ensue from initial interlingual contacts between languages”. She defined the study of translingual practice as “the process by which new words, meaning, discourses, and modes of representation arise, circulate, and acquire legitimacy within the host language …” (Hiu 1995: 26). Hiu’s work was deeply embedded in translation studies but it was pioneering in the sense that she identified (in the mid-1990s) conceptual gaps between the ‘east’ and the ‘west’. Later, in 2013, Canagarajah extended the concept of translingual practice and framed it as ways of speaking in a broader theory of global citizenship and cosmopolitan striving. Suggesting that it could potentially “provide a more complex understanding of competence for global citizenship” (2013: 13), Canagarajah moved the term into more mainstream applied linguistic scholarship. The concept is useful as it exposes the weaknesses of the previous conceptualization of English in the world. Translingualism is an inextricable part of English lingua franca communication as it involves changing linguistic norms and thereby paves the way for the fluid relationship and flow between languages as an ever-changing dynamic. In South Africa, socio-linguistic scholars have employed Canagarajah’s (2013) conceptualization of translingualism

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as a transformative practice (Hibbert & Van der Walt 2014; Munro & Lemmer 2018) and this book reasserts this position. The reason for this is that the ontological approach to language here is deeply embedded in linguistic anthropology which links all language practices to identities. Language as such is never only just a means of communication.

Communication vis-à-vis Identity A division between “languages of communication” and “languages of identification” as once conceptualized (Hüllen 1992) is not useful for English lingua franca studies (see also Fiedler 2011). English lingua franca usage cannot be regarded as communicative in function only, as it always raises “issues of identification and representation in relative degrees” (Canagarajah 2006: 200). There are various and differentiated scales and levels of communicative and identity-endowing processes in the use of English as a lingua franca in South Africa. My earlier studies (Rudwick 2008, 2017, 2018; Parmegiani & Rudwick 2014) demonstrate that many Zulu people, for instance, highlight the importance of English for (academic and socio-economic) communication in their lives but they only reluctantly acknowledge English influence in their cultural and ethnic identities. In most lingua franca contexts, individual socio-cultural background, communicative goals, and speakers’ competence influence the encounter (Meierkord 2002: 129). African language speakers might well construct distinct boundaries between an English and an African cultural identity, but this does not mean that African identities do not also find extensive expression in and through English ways of speaking and writing. Language remains one of the most pervasive resources in identity politics and it is often flexibly employed among people to form loyalties and alliances, on the one hand, and to construct difference and boundaries, on the other. This flexibility is a source of ambiguity in particular in English lingua franca discourse where different ways of speaking English have different currencies in different contexts. While it could be argued that few languages in the world have triggered loyalties beyond specific cultures, nations, or territories to the extent that English has, the English language is far from being culturally ‘neutral’. It is helpful to adopt an epistemological orientation to language politics around English as a lingua franca that exposes the significance of power and ideology in metalinguistic discourse. Putting language ideologies and the ways they intersect with constructions of identity at the centre stage I aim to contribute to a better understanding of the current conceptual struggles in the broader field of English in the world. Language ideological frameworks (Silverstein 1979, Blommaert 1999; Simpson 1993; Woolard & Schieffelin 1994; Woolard 1994, 2010, 2016; Kroskrity 2004, 2010) shed light on the ways in which “language ideologies are productively used in the creation and representation of various social and cultural identities” (Kroskrity 2004: 509). Piller (2015) has carved out the reciprocal and dialectical nature of language and social behaviours and argues that while undergirding language use language

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ideologies are also influenced by linguistic behaviour. Language ideologies are based on beliefs and feelings which manifest in value judgements and these judgements intersect with ethnicity, race, and gender. In South Africa, essentialist views associated with language, culture, ethnic, and racial identity feature prominently and they are often an “ontological claim in the service of ideological contestation and identity politics” (Van der Waal 2008: 54). One could argue that ELF communication, as defined earlier in this chapter, might have the potential to unite South Africans but this view would grossly ignore how ways of speaking English regiment power relations and racism in the country. ELF scholars often highlight the communicative value of ELF interactions. Erasmus students, for instance, have been documented as describing their English lingua franca usage and experience as highly mutually intelligible, creative, and fun and they are documented as having little concern about ‘mistakes’ in terms of Standard English (Kolocsai 2009). IsiZulu speakers often call English a ‘communicative’ language but that does not mean that they easily communicate in it (Rudwick 2006). It cannot be denied that, adherence to the standard language ideology (Milroy & Milroy 1999) is prevalent, in the academic setting particularly. Jenkins (2014) shows that in higher education institutions and universities especially those who regard themselves as ‘international’ are strongholds for the native speaker ideology. A nuanced analysis of English lingua franca communication includes the constellations where monolingual native speakers, proficient bilinguals, mediocre or low proficiency English speakers interact. It also needs to be carefully contextualized in place and time. Knapp (2002) has shown that the type of situation in which English is used as a lingua franca influences power dynamics significantly. The often-reported cooperation and convergence in ELF discourse3 does not necessarily hold in more competitive and contested spaces where actors fight for their personal success (Knapp 2002). Higher educational institutions, for example, are highly competitive spaces and, especially in Africa, they are also elitist places, and the multiple dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in classroom interactions require ‘thick description’ in order to evaluate their impact on socio-cultural processes. My own teaching experience (2002–2009) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal supports Knapp’s (2002) descriptions of the “fading-out” of the non-native speaker. The tendency among African language speaking students to remain silent in higher education classroom discussions has not been sufficiently documented. English lingua franca forms of speaking are not necessarily linked to a particular social, ethnic, or racial group. While certain accents might have immediate associations with a certain racial or ethnic group, there are also many exceptions. Increasingly, in South Africa, due to spatial desegregation and more and more African children attending previously white, so-called ex-Model C schools4 more and more African language speakers are proficient in an English that was previously associated with white people. In a meticulous socio-phonetic analysis it was shown that a growing number of African middle-class youth speak a variety of South African Standard

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English, as opposed to BSAE and this is particularly noteworthy among women (Mesthrie 2017a). Mesthrie suggests that these white accents are contributing to deracialization dynamics in the country (Mesthrie 2017a, 2017b). While one can indeed argue that the South African Standard English accents blur the boundaries of the inherited relationship between race and language in South Africa, this book also aims to demonstrate that this is only one perspective on the social development and cultural politics involved in South African Englishes. It can also be argued, as I will do later, that due to the increasing divergence of accents among African language speakers, there is also more linguistic boundary work which results in complex racial identity politics. South Africa offers an abundance of linguistic and social hybridities to argue that any one-to-one associations of English ways of speaking and speakers’ identities is not tenable. Due to multiracial schooling, there are many disruptions to the previous raciolinguistic order. In KwaZulu-Natal, for example, an increasing number of Zulu children are attending schools in areas that are predominately Indian. Some of these African children grow up speaking a variety of so-called Indian South African English rather than South African Standard English. The study of the socio-cultural politics and identity dynamics involved in English lingua franca discourse in South Africa calls for theories and methods that can cope with indeterminacy and heterogeneity. Language scholars working in and about Africa have started to theorize how space and mobility play significant roles in the analysis of contemporary socio-linguistic dynamics. Blommaert (2010) has provided conceptual tools in order to practise a “sociolinguistics of globalization” that understands language as a fragmented and mobile resource. Examining the ways of speaking English as a lingua franca as an African mobile resource can give rise to questioning macro sociolinguistic processes that polarize European and African languages. Pennycook has wondered how far lingua franca communication is indeed based on mutual understanding and harmonious interaction. He suggests a change of perspective, one I found most helpful in making sense of what happens on the ground in ELF communication in South Africa. English might not promise ‘harmonious’ interaction, it might simply be the only option available. But who decides whether English is to be spoken as a lingua franca rather than Afrikaans or isiZulu? And what does it mean in terms of the identities of speakers when English is chosen rather than another language, or when languages merge with English? Clarifying “whether the advance of English represents lingua franca rather than lingua frankensteinia trends” (Phillipson 2008: 265) might be framing an analysis in terms that are far too polarizing. Linguistic and social ecologies of South African vernaculars are so multifaceted that they do not neatly fall into an only positive or only negative scenario. Phillipson’s theories only partially relate to South Africa where colonial and apartheid policies contributed to English establishing itself as the main academic language franca and primary medium of instruction. However, BruttGriffler (2002) has shown through impressive archival evidence and literature

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from the early twentieth century that the language educational politics of British colonialists in Southern Africa were not aimed at spreading English proficiency among African people more broadly. In fact, the racist imperialists feared the intellectual sophistication of the “Black Englishman” emerging from missionary schooling and, as a result, apartheid Bantu Education restricted black children’s access to English until a higher school grade (Dunjwa-Blajberg 1980). This is not to say that many isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers do not experience English as an oppressive language in South Africa today. The Afrikaans press has been replete with pieces portraying English as a killer language. And Sbu, a 40-year-old Zulu choreographer remarked bluntly during one of our informal gatherings in Durban in October 2019: “English keeps me small. If it was for me, it [English] should fxxx off”. Language is an extremely emotional issue in South Africa and because of its intersections with ethnicity and race it is also very political. It was long argued that English, if used as a lingua franca among African people, was “typically restricted to formal communicative situations” (Gough 1996: 54). But there are only few articles in which English is discussed specifically in terms of its lingua franca role. In the early 2000s Balfour (2003) illustrated the debate waging between supporters of South African Standard English (SASE) versus Black South African English (BSAE) with regard to which English variety better represents a South African lingua franca and which ‘should be’ the educational norm. He (Balfour 2003: 00) ends his article with the following statement: English in South Africa seems to be entering a phase described best as its post-colonial twilight; a period of political instability and ambivalence where its ‘international allure’ and ‘local inaccessibility’ is both the cause and consequence of an ‘imperialism’ of our own creation. In the Oxford English Dictionary “twilight” is defined as “a period or state of obscurity, ambiguity, or gradual decline”. Although Balfour wrote this article 17 years ago, it does not seem that English in South African has yet quite left the phase described as post-colonial twilight when it comes to ambiguity. Van der Walt and Evans’ (2018) chapter in the Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca shows how ambivalent sociolinguists feel about the space English inhabits as a lingua franca in the country. WE scholars have been doing remarkable work and BSAE has been examined for several decades. Scholars (Schmied 1991; De Klerk & Gough 2002; Gough 1996; Lanham 1996; Mesthrie 2006; Makalela 2004; Smit 1996; Van Rooy 2004; Wade 1996) have shown both the linguistic features characterizing BSAE varieties as well as social factors contributing to its prevalence. Chick and Wade noted as far back as the late 1990s on the basis of research conducted in KwaZulu-Natal that BSAE signals “social identity and prestige” (1997: 279). Due to the increasing socio-economic mobility of BSAE speakers during the 1990s and early 2000s, scholars have argued that the variety was increasingly

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seen in a positive light among African language speakers (Wade 1996; Lanham 1996; De Klerk & Gough 2002). Given these studies one might assume that in English lingua franca communication African ways of speaking English feature as an overall valued South African form of English. While this is indeed so in certain contexts it is not so in others. Due to the fact that BSAE is a proxy for race it is a way of speaking that attracts racialization processes and, as Chapter 4 will show, racist behaviours in various guises. While granting ELF a linguistic philanthropy, Holliday (2009: 27) warns that political aspects of discrimination in English lingua franca communication have been neglected and, although not explicitly, he alludes to aspects of raciolinguistics. Juxtaposing the ideological dimensions of the native/non-native speaker distinction among English language instructors and users, he illustrates how categorizations of native/nonnative do not solely have a linguistic basis but also racial dimensions. Employing the metaphor of centre versus periphery, he aptly reminds us of the extent of the discrimination taking place through raciolinguistic criteria in the English learning industry. This book does not focus on English learning and does not concern itself with the applied linguistics distinctions of native versus non-native English. However, Holliday’s (2009) study is instructive for my work in ways that highlight the socio-political rather than the linguistic aspect of English as a lingua franca. Ways of using English both in lingua franca discourse and more generally are inextricably linked to racial ideologies in South Africa and it is precisely for these reasons that this study pays close attention to ethnicity and race-constructed identity categories that South Africans claim, assign, contest, and subvert in multiple ways.

Racializing English as a Lingua Franca When analysing the cultural politics of English as a lingua franca in South Africa, race is nowhere, and race is everywhere. While WE scholarship has happily labelled varieties along the lines of race and ethnicity, ELF scholarship exhibits a conspicuous avoidance of race as an analytical category. It is, for instance, remarkable that the Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca contains the term “race” precisely three times. Once, in a chapter on intercultural communication (Baker 2018), then in Kirkpatrick’s (2018) contribution about ELF and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and one more time, but only in the context of the “entire human race” (Wang 2018). Traditional ELF scholarship has thus far not paid attention to race as an analytical category, which seems surprising given the prevalence of racism in Europe. Race contributes to a large extent to the cultural politics of English as a lingua franca not only in South Africa but also elsewhere in the world. Hence, ELF scholarship more generally seems to be in need of racialization. Only when race no longer contributes to discrimination and marginalization can we refrain from examining race as a category. As Chaplin and Jablonski argue “today still, racism is real even if races are not” (2020: 152).

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The relationship between social variables such as language, race, ethnicity,5 and gender is complicated in any society but South Africa’s multilingual, multiethnic, and multi-racial realities combined with the colonial and apartheid history inject further complexity.6 The intersections of language, culture, race, and ethnicity constituted the main socio-political pillars on which the apartheid system relied (Alexander 1997; De Klerk 2002; Herbert 1992; Niedrig 1999; Kamwangamalu 2000b; Kotzé 2000). The link between language and ethnicity has been shown to be quite strong by some scholars (Fishman 1977, 1989, 1996; Garcia 2010), while others focused on linguistic and ethnic instability in ethnic identity constructions (Le Page and Tabouret-Keller 1985; Pavlenko & Blackledge 2004). Post-structural studies on power and language (Bourdieu 1991) have helped to conceptualize language politics in society. Language as a sociocultural and political tool shapes subjectivities discursively, constructs social and ethnic belonging, and is entangled in complex power relations. The work of post-colonial scholars has influenced scholarship on ethnicities and the hybridity that characterize them (Hall 1990, 1996, 1997; Bhabha 1994, 1990). Language in its various ontological representations seems to be a tenacious feature of understandings of ethnicities, especially in Africa. While in current contexts, urban Zulu and Afrikaner people might well see ‘culture’ and ‘identity’ as social variables that are constructed, flexible, and variable, the component language (isiZulu/Afrikaans) and ethnic belonging (Zuluness/Afrikanerness) are mostly regarded as being tied inextricably. IsiZulu and Afrikaans are, hence, not contingent markers of these ethnicities but rather perceived as one of their primary factors. As May (2012: 12) argues, “in theory, language may be just one of many markers of identity but in practice, it is often much more than that”. Anderson (1991) ascribed language a primary role in the imagination of the ethnic group and he has shown how the mere symbolic commitment to language can contribute to the persistence of an ethnic group and culture.7 Given, first, that the conditions of modernity have not done away with ethnicity in people’s sense of belonging and, secondly, that the social construction of race and racial difference might be the most divisive factor in contemporary global society, it is fruitful to explore their significance in relation to the dominant global and South African lingua franca: English. It is through a broad theoretic lens of ethnicity and race that I examine how language practices in South Africa wax and wane throughout time, space, and context. English lingua franca usage has been part and parcel of the country’s language practices for a long period of time and despite its often alleged ethnic ‘neutrality’, it constructs ethnicities throughout different contexts, times, and space. Makoni et al. (2003) long pointed out the importance of ‘race’ as a category in language scholarship in their volume Black Linguistics. In 2015, Flores and Rosa first employed the term ‘raciolinguistics’ in a seminal paper of the Harvard Educational Review. I make use of the term as meaning to encompass all scholarship concerned with language and race. A number of volumes have been published now which focus on this intersection and it can be argued that raciolinguistics has become a research field in its own right (Alim &

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Smitherman 2012; Alim, Rickford & Ball 2016; Alim, Reyes & Kroskrity 2020). Raciolinguistic perspectives provide a space in which the racism in dominant language ideologies can be unmasked (Flores & Rosa 2015: 154). Although this theoretical framework has been applied mostly to the US American context so far, studies are beginning to emerge with reference to South Africa (Williams 2016a; Ndhlovu 2019; Kerfoot 2019). The careful study of the link between language and race can show how current debates about raciolinguistic authenticity are constructed “in relation to colonial logics” (Rosa & Flores 2017: 6). There are five key components which Rosa and Flores (2017) have identified as marking a raciolinguistic perspective which are considered throughout this book: 1) historical and contemporary colonial co-naturalization of race and language; 2) perception of racial and linguistic difference, 3 regimentation of racial and linguistic categories; 4) racial and linguistic intersections and assemblage; and 4) contestation of racial and linguistic power formations. These perspectives, if dialogued across disciplines, can expand our knowledge about linguistic and racial injustices in significant ways. Indeed, “raciolinguistics can be more than just an academic field of enquiry but also a critical, progressive linguistic movement that exposes how language is used as a means of social, political, and economic oppression” (Alim 2016: 27). But in order to become such a movement it is necessary to provide detailed case studies that show how language shapes our ideas about race. The South African context where a complex matrix of linguistic, racial, and economic injustices obstruct social cohesion is a productive and profitable research space. Learning to adopt a raciolinguistic lens in relation to English language usage in South Africa has meant, first, acknowledging that English lingua franca dynamics continue to be replete with coloniality, secondly, exploring the social and cultural politics involved in English as a lingua franca, and thirdly, aiming at uncovering social injustices in relation to diverse English usage, processes of racialism, and racism. But before considering these current issues, we must explore the historical trajectory of the English language in the country.

Notes 1 For an excellent discussion of the problematic nature of concepts such as “native speaker” and “mother tongue”, see Love and Ansaldo (2010). 2 See, for instance, Jenkins (2007, 2014; Jenkins and Mauranen 2019, Prodromou 2008, Kirkpatrick 2010, Smit 2010b, Cogo and Dewey 2012, Deterding 2013, Mauranen 2012, Motschenbacher 2013, Jenkins et al. 2018, Seidlhofer 2011, Kolocsai 2014, Hynninen 2016, Guido 2018, Konakahara and Tsuchiya 2020). 3 When used in this book discourse refers broadly to produced speech or text which is understood as socio-historically and politically influenced and collectively shared. 4 In South Africa, the term ‘Model C’ (school) is widely associated with formerly white English-medium schools which are dominated by a white learning environment. 5 Barth’s (1969) seminal study on ethnicity broadened our understanding of ethnicity as a social process and ethnic boundaries as negotiated. For the sake of succinctness, I define ethnicity, drawing from the work of Edwards (2009), as

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allegiance and collective identification among the members of a social group that believe to share ancestral links, cultural ties, and have a sense of group boundary. 6 Language and ethnic identity dynamics have been studied in relation to ‘culture’ as an important variable because ethnic differences are often framed and communicated as or alongside cultural issues (Fishman 1999). Although it is now acknowledged as primordialism, the influence of the German Romanticists (Herder, Humboldt, and Fichte) is widely recognized in the study of the link between language, culture, identity, and nation within the concept of Weltanschauung [worldview] (see Heeschen 1977). 7 Anderson’s (1991) conceptualization of communities as imagined units inspired extensive scholarship in sociolinguistics (Norton 2000, 2001, 2010; Pavlenko & Norton 2007).

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The Making of English as a Lingua Franca in South Africa

The story of the making of English as a lingua franca in South Africa is, first and foremost, a story of colonialism. And “one must understand South Africa’s colonial history” in order to make sense of the current language dynamics (Kamwangamalu 2013: 238). Because this book has an ethnographic focus on isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers’ relations to English, my historical discussion also centres on these two language groups. Imperialism in South Africa manifested itself much as it did elsewhere in the world, with English being imposed on local communities through administration, education, and churches (Pennycook 2017). But English missionaries, in particular, also promoted and invented the African languages as bounded discrete units (Makoni 2003). The historical roles played by both English speakers and Dutch/Afrikaans speakers created a fundamentally unjust power base which still lingers in complex ways in South Africa. Language ideologies, attitudes, practices, and behaviour still largely reflect the hierarchies of the past and the resulting language politics have influenced how language identity politics are constituted. During colonialism and apartheid, language laws were designed to suit (only) the white minority and excluded African language speakers. An African language was then quite unambiguously a black language. Today, it is argued that both Afrikaans and English are able to claim African status to some degree, but the ambiguities of these claims will be discussed later in the book. There are many languages which have had lingua franca functions in the world. The term ‘lingua franca’ was first used with reference to a pidgin spoken along the Mediterranean coast between the fifteenth and nineteenth century (Meierkord and Knapp 2002: 9). Lingua francas emerge as a form of communication among people with different language backgrounds. They are complex linguistic tools with heterogenous characteristics, and they can be conceptualized in multiple ways.1 In South Africa, English is only one of several lingua francas, such as Afrikaans, isiZulu, and urban mixed languages. English is extensively employed among African language speakers and there has been a continuous growth in the number of second language (L2) English speakers (Posel & Zeller 2015). However, recent quantitative data also show that less than 10 percent of African people report speaking English “as their main language outside the household” which is evidence of the vitality of the African languages (Posel, Hunter & Rudwick 2020). DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472-3

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The history of South Africa’s language and identity politics is a history of discrimination and exclusion. This chapter is mainly about English but with a focus on its intersection with other languages, in particular Afrikaans, as the early history of South Africa is dominated by the history of the white invaders who subjugated the native population. Apparently, an English captain suggested to the Imperial Government as early as 1620 that the Cape should be annexed, but at the time he found no hearing (Thomson 2001: 32). More than 30 years later, in 1652, Jan van Riebeck and the Dutch East India Company (DEIC) claimed the Cape and colonial authorities determined that ‘natives’ (mostly Khoisan communities) had to learn Dutch. The first missionary institutions where learning took place in Dutch were arguably “the first conscious, intervention in the sphere of language policy in a multilingual South African polity” (Alexander 1989: 13). The language contact between native people, slaves, traders, and soldiers created a Dutch-based pidgin which was initially known as Kaapse Hollands (Cape Dutch) and some natives and Dutch households adopted these ways of speaking as their primary language as early as the late seventeenth century (McCormick 2006; Hendricks 2018). British settlement and the presence of the English language dates only from 1795, but in the early nineteenth century imperial expansion began to take over many Dutch areas into British administration. This can be regarded as marking the first colonial language struggle between English and Dutch (only later did Afrikaans enter the struggle) (Christie 1985: 33). In 1822, Lord Charles Somerset declared English was to be the only official language in the colonial area with the result that English was used as a medium of instruction in schools (Hartshorne 1992, 1995). In many ways this development was symptomatic of the aggressiveness of colonial expansion and British imperial power. A mere three decades after the British invasion English was the ‘only’ official language in the Cape colony (Lanham 1978: 21). In what has been described as a policy of Anglicization, the British largely substituted Dutch with English (Kamwangamalu 2002). Throughout the early nineteenth century the Dutch settlers saw their influence dwindle under the British and “although English was a foreign language for the Afrikaner population, by the 1830s it alone was authorized for use in government offices, law courts, and public schools” (Thompson 2001: 95). The Dutch embarked on a major exodus, known as the Great Trek (1835–1846), to escape the domination of the English. Towards the end of the century and triggered by the discovery of gold, the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) took place (Ndhlovu and Siziba 2018). Prior to this, in 1875, the Dutch-turned Afrikaner population formed the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (GRA) (Union of ‘True’ Afrikaners) in Paarl to fight for the recognition of Afrikaans, rather than Dutch, as the mother tongue of the Afrikaner.2 The early nineteenth century also saw the area of contemporary KwaZuluNatal (KZN) brought under the single political authority of the Zulu by Shaka kaSenzangakhona, who became king of Zululand. It is common knowledge that he extended his power substantially by forcefully assimilating

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other clans into his kingdom that spoke similar languages.3 By 1819, Shaka was in control of the mightiest kingdom in south-east Africa, and isiZulu became the dominant language among African ethnic groups in the area (Maartens 1998: 28). According to Zungu (1998: 37), Shaka was very conscious of the ‘purity’ of the isiZulu spoken by his people and did not tolerate people who departed from this way of speaking. Wright (1991: 4), however, maintains that “the common notion that Zulu ethnic consciousness can be traced back to the time of Shaka in the 1820s is quite wrong”. When the colonizers built the first settlement (Port Natal) in the area that is now KZN, they opened communication with Shaka and recognized his overlordship in order to gain permission to occupy land and to trade (Ballard 1989: 118). Shaka was murdered in 1828 by two of his half-brothers, Mhlangana and Dingane. The latter then became king and reigned for over a decade.4 Due to neither Shaka nor his successor (Dingane) allowing Zulu people in the kingdom from entering into direct trade relations with the white settlers, the influence of the colonizers was limited at that time. During this period, however, missionaries started to document ‘vernaculars’ and in a sense ‘invented’ the orthographies of the African languages as they currently exist (Makoni 2003). The nine Bantu languages which are part of the official eleven languages of the South African constitution today are, therefore, a legacy of colonial linguistics. Prior to colonial intervention the boundaries between African languages are thought to have been much more fluid. Missionaries arbitrarily made distinctions between African ways of speaking and “subsequently awarded academic credibility through grammatical descriptions” (Makoni 2003: 137). In the case of isiZulu, Zulu ethnic consciousness was stimulated and this coincided with an increased interest in isiZulu, which was led ironically by Western missionaries and ideas based on German Romanticism (Nyembezi 1961; Makoni 2003). Arguably, the influence of the vernacular languages in religious and other life experiences had an effect on the identity trajectories of isiZulu and other African language speakers. The orthographies provided African language speakers with “potent literary sources for the imagining of ethnic history and culture” (Berman, Eyoh & Kymlicka 2004: 5). Only a few African language speakers received education in mission schools; the vast majority of the African population could speak neither English nor Dutch/Afrikaans. Initially, the medium of instruction was mainly English, but there were schools in the area of contemporary KwaZulu-Natal where isiZulu was used as the medium of instruction as early as 1885 (Hartshorne 1992: 193). The learning of the English language was believed to be a privilege, and the few African language speaking learners attending English missionary schools developed into a small English-speaking elite, referred to as ‘Black Englishmen’ in the literature (see Dunjwa-Blajberg 1980). The colonial history of the 1800s is characterized by an entanglement between the English language and Christianity (De Kock 1996). At the turn of the century and in the early twentieth century, the new ‘class’ of African language speakers were English proficient,

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had accepted English names, wore Western clothes, and absorbed Christian values. Amakholwa were Christian converts in the area known as KwaZuluNatal today and they were alienated from the rest of traditional Zulu society. But amakholwa by no means abandoned their mother tongue, in fact, they were characterized by a high level of bilingualism and many also developed their isiZulu literacy skills. In 1903 they established an isiZulu newspaper, Ilanga Lase Natali, which played a significant role in Zulu people’s struggle against colonization and apartheid (Buthelezi 2019: 67). The late nineteenth century also marked an important time in the development of Afrikaans with nationalist strivings and in the establishment of the language as an essential symbol of the Afrikaner people. The Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) contributed to much hatred towards the English and the rift between the two language groups became so entrenched that their differences became what has been termed “untranslatable” (Steyn 2005). Van der Waal (2012: 450) reminds us that “Afrikaans was used to mobilise Afrikaners around an anti-English and white ethno-nationalist identity – it became the main symbol of being an Afrikaner socially, culturally and politically …”. But Afrikaans was not thought of as an ‘African’ language as such. Giliomee (2003a: 11) traced how the first claims of a ‘white man’s language’ were established in the early writing of the Afrikaans poet and activist C.J. Langenhoven. That also meant that coloured people and other non-white Afrikaans speakers were excluded from the discourse around and claim to Afrikanerdom and this persisted throughout the twentieth century. As far as a lingua franca goes, however, Afrikaans established itself as a lingua franca in the Cape at the turn of the nineteenth century (Thompson 2001) and it retained this role throughout most of the twentieth century, not least because Afrikaners vehemently promoted their language. There were great regional differences when it came to language usage but both English and Dutch settlers promoted their language through the gospel and their missionaries. The English-only politics of British imperialists triggered strong resistance from Dutch settlers and Afrikaners during the early twentieth century. Between 1908 and 1909 National Conventions were held in various parts of the country which aimed at reconciling the conflicting linguistic interests of the two colonizers. In 1910, English and Dutch (not yet Afrikaans) became the two official languages of the Union of South Africa but in the early twentieth century Afrikaner cultural nationalism grew, and Afrikaans (die taal) became a central pillar on which Afrikanerdom was built (Hofmeyr 1987). In 1925 Afrikaans replaced Dutch as the official language alongside English. English dominance ended in 1948 when Afrikaner Nationalists gained power and enforced what has been termed an ‘Afrikanerization’ (Kamwangamalu 2002). It has been argued, however, that “the dominance of the view that the late colonial state (apartheid) is essentially an Afrikaner project enables English liberals [sic.] thin out affinal ties between the English and colonial racial oppression in South Africa” (Lushaba 2016: 198). While Afrikaans was politically promoted to a greater extent than English during

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apartheid, the latter can still be described as “the master code in the colonial epistemic violence” (Lushaba 2016: 198). There is a sizeable body of literature which connects Afrikaans and Afrikaner ethnicity. Many studies discuss the role of the Afrikaans language in relation to ‘Afrikanerdom’ in apartheid and post-1994 South Africa (Bosch 2000; Davies 2009; Giliomee 2003a; Orman 2009; Webb and Kriel 2000; Kriel 2006). Language, ethnicity, race, and territory became deeply intertwined during the twentieth century. Although the British Government had already established ‘reserves’ to separate the white population from African people by the middle of the nineteenth century through the government’s ‘divide and rule’ policy, under apartheid this strategy became further developed as an elaborate system of ethnic, racial, and linguistic separation. There were ten so-called ‘Bantustans’ or homelands for the black population, one of which was home to isiZulu speakers, the KwaZulu homeland (which is part of the province of KwaZulu-Natal today). Linguistic and ethnic boundaries between groups were maintained through geographic divisions. Although the Nguni language cluster comprises of several mutually intelligible languages, the four which make up the cluster (isiZulu, isiXhosa Siswati, isiNdebele) are today representative of distinct cultural or ethnic groupings. Ironically, much of the conceptual basis for such separate ethnolinguistic thinking is still intact today, not least because languages (and by default ethnicities) are enshrined in the conceptualization of South Africa’s 11 official language policy (Makoni 2003). Although the English language was dominant in many areas, Afrikaans was also introduced as a medium of instruction in schools in 1914, and as the political power of Afrikaners grew throughout the early twentieth century, an authorized committee in the education department advised that both English and Afrikaans were to be introduced mandatorily in all schools (Hartshorne 1992: 194). When the National Party (NP) came to power in 1948 the policy of Christian National Education (CNE) was adopted, which introduced the principle of mother-tongue education for every child. This change in paradigm in the historical language treatment became “a bone of contention in the apartheid era” (Maartens 1998: 39). Originally missionaries and politicians were of the opinion that the indigenous African population needed to become ‘civilized’ and that this could only be achieved through the medium of a European language. This idea, however, changed with the commencement of institutional apartheid. It is assumed that this paradigm shift was at least partly based on the fear that the majority of the black population could become as educated as the ‘Black Englishmen’ mentioned earlier, which would result in a loss of the manual work force which could be exploited (Alexander & Helbig 1988; Dunjwa-Blajberg 1980). With a few exceptional periods and places, imperial Britain was not supportive of having the indigenous populations taught in English. Whether for white supremacist, racist, or other reasons, it has been documented by several scholars that African people in South Africa and other British colonies only had restricted access to learning English (Joseph 2006, Mazrui & Mazrui

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1998; Brutt-Griffler 2002). The limited access to English “provided a means of social control over the working classes” (Brutt-Griffler 2002: x). Contrary to what was argued in some decolonial debates, English was not forcefully imposed on the African population, it was not a common good for black people during apartheid. Rather, the education system for most African students was intended to systematically disadvantage them (Hammond-Tooke 1997: 68) and this strategy included only providing restricted access to English. The Bantu Education Act of 1953 is argued to have had the objective of “miseducat[ing] the Africans so that their academic certificates became irrelevant for the labour market” (Hlatshwayo 2000: 65). Linked to Bantu Education was also the policy of ‘retribalization’ and ‘divide and rule’ which fostered the separate development of the diverse ethnolinguistic groups (Davenport 1991; Chidester 1992, 1996). Language-in-education policies were “part of the larger social-engineering project that would ensure the segregation of different racial groups and the hierarchical organisation of South African society, with Black South Africans in the lowest rung of an exploited workforce” (G. De Klerk 2002: 33). As the apartheid state only empowered a few black people who were proficient in either English or Afrikaans, mothertongue instruction was regarded as an additional oppressive tool during apartheid. Gugushe (1978: 215), for instance, argues that Africans lacked motivation to study their mother tongues because English and Afrikaans were the “bread-and-butter” languages. Human ‘Othering’ was a paramount strategy of official colonial and apartheid politics. While race became the primary discriminatory factor during apartheid, language served to distinguish between the racially constructed groups. Afrikaner Nationalists aggressively promoted the Afrikaans language throughout the twentieth century and the language became closely entangled with identity. Van der Waal (2012: 450) explains: The creation of the Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (Academy for Science and Arts) in 1909 and the standardisation of Afrikaans was celebrated in the Taalfees (Language Festival) of 1959 with the image of a fire as the visual symbol of the ‘miracle’ language. In 1975, this enthusiasm for the Afrikaans language was expressed by the creation of the huge monolithic monument at Paarl. The myth of Afrikaans as a white language, in association with the political mobilisation of white Afrikaans-speakers, was strengthened by the institutionalisation of Afrikaans in various organisations that were given the role to protect and standardize the language. All this suggests that Afrikaners succeeded through the apartheid ideology that Afrikaans and Afrikaner culture became elevated to occupy equal status to English. Needless to say, African languages were not given any such support, the history of African languages – or rather their speakers – is one of systematic discrimination and subjugation. In 1972, the Bantu Education Advisory Board

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recommended that only the initial six years of schooling should entail mothertongue education, and thereafter instruction should be in either Afrikaans or English, but preferably not in both languages (Maartens 1998: 32). Despite this recommendation, the National Party Government decided to maintain a dualmedium policy and essentially forced African children to learn in Afrikaans. When stakeholders in the African education system became aware that government was not going to change the 50 percent Afrikaans-50 percent English school language policy that enforced Afrikaans as an equal medium of instruction, they knew they had to do something to initiate change. By 1976 teachers’ associations, principals, and students had lost their patience with the department, and boycotts, strikes, and violence erupted, initially and most heavily in the Soweto township. During the Soweto uprising of June 16 many African students and teachers lost their lives through ruthless police intervention (Hartshorne 1992: 203). A photograph featuring a small boy, named Hector Pieterson, dying in the arms of an older student shocked the world. The protests of education stakeholders were not confined to Soweto and spread to many other areas in the country, an estimated 1,260 people died (Perry 2004a: 113). The fact that the uprising was a protest against the use of Afrikaans in education is relevant here because it also profoundly affected the role English played as a ‘chosen’ lingua franca in education. The events of 1976, today marked as Youth Day on 16 June, are an important reminder of how sensitive and emotional language matters are for most South Africans. Seeing that hundreds of black learners lost their lives in a struggle that had language at its core, it is not surprising that language continues to be a deeply emotional and highly politicized issue. Arguably, the Soweto uprising marked one of the primary instances which firmly established English as South Africa’s academic lingua franca as the protests were directed against Afrikaans and for English (Hirson 1979). It happened in this way, however, not because African language speakers did not culturally value their mother tongues. It happened because the system (both nationally and globally) already had the English language established as a powerful tool through which apartheid could be fought (inside and outside the country). Afrikaans largely shielded English from the stigma of a colonial language at that time and throughout apartheid. The National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) was established as a civil society movement in order to address the persistent protests and to find solutions for the ongoing crisis in the African education system. Subsequent to its first conference at the end of 1985, a second conference was held in March 1986 where two institutions were established: 1) a People’s History Commission and, 2), a People’s English Commission (Norton Peirce 1989: 410). One of the ideas was to make English more accessible to African people but when the NECC called for a third conference it was banned. Afrikaner Nationalists worked against the promotion of English. Furthermore, the Apartheid Government invoked the so-called Public Safety Act which put a prohibition on non-approved education materials and

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interrupted all the activities of the NECC. The state was afraid of the NECC’s activities because People’s English represented a type of “pedagogy of possibility for the majority of South Africans and consequently a threat to minority rule” (Norton Peirce 1989: 410). In the KwaZulu homeland, the controversial Mangosutho Buthelezi, who was chief of the Bantustan, stirred Zulu ethnic nationalism by reviving ‘traditional’ symbols and customs through Inkatha and later the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP).5 From about the mid-1970s, Zuluness was politically mobilized but the language, isiZulu, did not play an explicit role, perhaps because it was the most obvious characteristic that the KwaZulu constituency already had in common (Maré 1992; Marks 2004). Arguably, isiZulu was simply too ubiquitous for it to be mobilized as a cultural tool and symbol at the time. This is not to say that metalanguage discourse was not significant or that social power dynamics involving geographic and socio-political variation did not exist. It is, for instance, documented that during the 1990s, some Inkatha ‘warriors’ identified enemies by their ‘impure’ isiZulu, apparently because amaqabane (African National Congress (ANC) supporters) spoke more urban varieties of the language (Marks 2004: 192). But Dlamini (2001: 201) argued that Inkatha “claimed ownership of Zulu symbolic resources, including language, which then made it difficult for other organisations to use the symbols in pursuing their aims”. During this period, Afrikaans and its elaborate development into a ‘high standard’ language became further and yet more inextricably linked with Afrikaner nationalism, and white-exclusive Afrikanerdom. Apartheid, Afrikaans, and its white minority rule “served as an operationalisation of Afrikaner nationalism” (Van der Westhuizen 2016: 1). It is against this background that, despite its imperialist history, English acquired the label of the “language of liberation” from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Vilakazi (1958: 351) wrote in dramatic terms that many Africans refused to “worship at the shrine of the mother tongue” and preferred to employ English as a perceived de-ethnified medium. At the official level, English was chosen as the primary language of the liberation movement, the ANC, first, to facilitate internal communications between members of different ethno-linguistic groups, and, second, to have an international voice in the fight against apartheid. The ANC chose English as the language in which the Freedom Charter was drafted, and international communication took place. Nonetheless, one can safely assume that much of the internal communication among ANC comrades took place in African languages. The armed wing of the ANC, for instance, also carried an official Nguni name: Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation). It has been argued that English was the language used for ANC protest (Mesthrie 1995) but the ANC struggle slogan amandla ngawethu (power to the people) seems to have been used extensively. And, remarkably, this slogan is used in South Africa to this day at any kind of protest action as it works exceptionally well in dialogue where a leader of the protest calls amandla and the protesters will respond ngawethu. Ironically, this struggle slogan is now used in protest

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against the ANC Government about service delivery and other civil society grievances. Still, during apartheid, ANC members who shared the same African home language can be assumed to have spoken English only when absolutely necessary. English was, of course, essential in gaining international visibility and in fighting apartheid from outside the country. Arguably there are many distinct varieties of Englishes that are spoken in South Africa. According to Ndhlovu and Siziba (2018) there are five ethnically distinguished varieties, i.e. Black South African English, Coloured South African English, South African Indian English, Afrikaans English, and White South African English. The division between Afrikaans and English-speaking white people continued to be marked in the 1990s. As Mazrui (2004: 7) writes, “language had ‘tribalized’ the White population of South Africa”, and Afrikaner people employed the parochialism of Afrikaans as an argument for its apparent indigenous status. When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1992 and ‘official’ apartheid could slowly come to an end, language became “a terrain of struggle, a struggle over the basic human right to express oneself in one’s mother tongue” (De Klerk 1996: 8). Moreover, it was “about self-worth and belonging” and it was “underpinned by power: economic interest, political muscle and cultural concerns” (De Klerk 1996: 8). Members of the ANC reluctantly supported multilingualism; English had established itself firmly as an internal communication tool. Indirectly, this also implied that English would function as the dominant language of parliamentary negotiation in the 1990s and beyond. The NP and Afrikaner politicians were supportive of a multilingual dispensation because their objective was to maintain Afrikaans as an official language. The multilingual dispensation was interpreted as a “lastditch compromise to retain the status of Afrikaans, and not out of a commitment to linguistic rights” (Ricento 2002: 50). Not maintaining Afrikaans as an official language would have been seen as lack of recognition of Afrikaners as a volk (people) (Alexander & Heugh 2001: 28). These identity politics, as will be seen later, continue to play out in current times. Language, culture, race, and ethnicity had, at this point, become deeply entangled through a toxic mix of colonial linguistics and apartheid sociolinguistic engineering with particular reference to Standard Afrikaans and Afrikanerdom. In 1995, a group of language specialists, such as Neville Alexander, was commissioned by the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) to advise on the development of a future language policy. The report testifies that colonial and apartheid language policies were part of the larger political policy which “gave rise to a hierarchy of unequal languages which reflected the structures of racial and class inequalities” (LANGTAG 1996: 14). As Ndhlovu and Siziba (2018: 81) put it “language policies can determine who gets ahead and who gets left behind”. Social injustices were systematically created because only English and Afrikaans were languages of socio-economic power. Although it was alleged that the language experts chosen for the group came with ideological baggage (Harnischfeger 1999), the LANGTAG Report indisputably provided the background and basis

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for a democratically just language policy solution which emphasized the perspective of language as a resource (Alexander & Heugh 2001: 31). At least on paper. The first two points of the language clause of the South African Constitution (1996) read as follows: 6.(1) The official languages of the Republic are Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, and isiZulu; (2) recognising the historically diminished use and status of the indigenous languages of our people, the state must take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these languages; Additionally, the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) was established as an independent statutory body, taking on the role of a ‘watchdog’ over language politics. Although its significance for post-1996 language politics is widely acknowledged, its instrumental and legislative power has been questioned (Alexander & Heugh 2001; Perry 2004a, 2004b). Afrikaner complaints dominated the platform to a large extent during the first years of its existence (Perry 2004a, 2004b). The government has not given particular support to PanSALB, which also “comports with the ANC’s historical preference for English” (Perry 2004b: 511). The apparently very positive attitudes of African language speakers (and ANC members) towards English must be understood against the background that proficiency in the language was key to liberation, economic advancement, and success (Dunjwa-Blajberg 1980: 31). It was not the instrumental benefit alone that was sought but its emerging role as a global lingua franca and international medium to fight apartheid. In some instances, English has also been framed as “neutral” (Perry 2004a, 2004b) while the African languages are linked to a particular ethnic allegiance. However, this consolidating role of English in terms of ethnicities is not the only association many South Africans have with the language. In fact, the position of English must be assumed to have always been a paradoxical one that saw it as the ‘language of the colonizer’, on the one hand, and the ‘language of the liberation’, on the other. Such opposing and controversial associations with English still linger in the everyday life experience of many South Africans and later chapters will provide some empirical substance for this. South African scholars have long argued that there was something of a “dangerous power of English” (De Kadt 1993) and that African people have a love-hate relationship with the language (De Klerk & Gough 2002). During the first years of democracy, there was much societal support for English from the general public in South Africa, but socio-linguistic scholars lamented the dominance of the language in many domains (Heugh 2000b; Kamwangamalu 2001b, 2003; Webb 1996; Wright 1996; Webb 1996). McLean and McCormick (1996: 329) argued that the multilingual, 11-official language policy was often “perceived as a symbolic statement” and that for

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instrumental and functional reasons English was “the dominant language in South African public life”. Kamwangamalu (2000a: 50) described a “threetier, triglossic system, one in which English is at the top, Afrikaans is in the middle and the African languages are at the bottom”. And yet, scholars were also aware of the vitality of African languages. The English language was not considered a useful tool of communication for the majority of the South African population (Gough 1996, Wright 1996). However, its powerful economic lingua franca status became even more entrenched post-1994. This is not to say that African vernaculars showed no language vitality at the end of apartheid. Quite the contrary, the last three censuses (Census 1996, 2001, 2011) showed that there was very little indication of a language shift in African households towards English. In KwaZulu-Natal, Campbell, Maré and Walker (1995) concluded a qualitative study in a township where informants had no sense of isiZulu being under threat because of English or any other language. While some sources (De Klerk 2000a; Kamwangamalu, 2001b, 2003; Reagan 2001) suggested a language shift from indigenous African languages to English in certain urban environments, the numbers were rather low. Census data has consistently provided evidence for the vitality of the African languages. African languages and Afrikaans always have and continue to coexist with English in the daily lives of many South Africans (Slabbert & Finlayson 2000). Some of the socio-linguistic literature might have overstated the role of English in the country, but more recent studies (Posel & Zeller 2015) point instead to a rapid growth in African/English language bilingualism. This bilingualism is not, however, pointing to a language shift, rather it demonstrates the increasing role English plays as a lingua franca in the country. Numerous scholars have referred to English as South Africa’s main lingua franca (e.g. Deumert 2010, Swanepoel 2013) and arguably this role might have become further entrenched in the years immediately post 1994. In recent years, however, there have been various disruptions to the English hegemony in the higher domains6 of language usage, and the next chapters will provide some empirical evidence for this. The historical trajectory of English in South Africa is significant for the analysis of its lingua franca status today. Keeping the legacies of English colonialism in mind when analysing the current politics of the language as a global and local lingua franca is essential (Pennycook 1998, 2007). One has to be conscious of the perceived superiority English carries in almost all South African communities. The power of English influences the speakers of the African languages in the way they see themselves and their languages. Mazrui and Mazrui (1998: 79) argued: The huge imperial prestige enjoyed by the English language distorted educational opportunities, diverted resources from indigenous cultures towards giving pre-eminence, and diluted the esteem in which indigenous African languages were held. The psychological damage to the colonised African was immense.

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While this book is not located within the study of psychology, I want to take cognisance of the psychological trauma African language speakers have endured due to English dominance. English has been held in such high regard among South Africans that English proficiency among African language speakers and a so-called Standard English accent is regularly (and often mistakenly) associated with intelligence. Also, there are African parents who are willing to risk home language attrition or even language shift among their children by not speaking an African language in the home. Speaking Standard English clearly symbolizes socio-economic mobility and professionalism, but it also smacks of elitism in some situations (where the majority of speakers share another South African language). There are many paradoxes involved in attitudes towards English and metalanguage discourse that takes place. One of the paradoxes is, for instance, that even African intellectuals and academics who vehemently oppose the dominant position of the English language at an ideological level, end up sending their children to schools that are known for their excellent English tuition (Harnischfeger 1999). But English is not entirely unchallenged as a lingua franca in South Africa. In 2020 while this book was being finalized, South African society struggled with the rest of the world through the COVID-19 pandemic. While watching the official addresses of politicians and policy-makers during the pandemic, one noticed extensive use of code-switching into African languages during official COVID-19 briefings among politicians. This use of multilingual resources marks another change in the acceptance of English as an unquestioned lingua franca in official politics. Even though South Africans speak English and other languages in lingua franca situations, there is also a variety of ways in which English is accepted or rejected on a metalanguage level. South Africans have taken ownership of English to varying degrees, and many have appropriated it to suit their needs. There is no single manner in which English is spoken in South Africa but multiple ways, and the multiple ways in which it is spoken also have variable levels of intelligibility. Many African identities are constructed through English (Kamwangamalu 2019), but this chapter showed that English assumed a hegemonic and oppressive status to Africans and Afrikaans speakers from the early years of British invasion. It also demonstrated that its current status is heavily influenced by the fact that African people largely consider Afrikaans a greater evil than English. Although the prevalence of English currently does not seem to significantly threaten the vitality of African languages (Posel et al. 2020), it nonetheless triggers the forces of discrimination against and marginalization of African language speakers and some of these will be explored in the next chapter.

Notes 1 Meierkord and Knapp’s (2002) seminal volume on lingua franca communication demonstrates the complexity of the topic. The volume also raises the “question to what extent the degree of competence in the shared language should be considered in conceptualizations of lingua franca communication” (Meierkord & Knapp 2002: 19).

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2 3 4 5

6

The Making of ELF in South Africa In this study, I carefully aimed to consider this question, as in South Africa much English lingua franca communication involves English home language speakers whose level of proficiency is accordingly higher and creates complex power dynamics. The town remains significant to Afrikaner people today as it features the massive Taalmonument (Afrikaans language monument) built in 1975 to celebrate the centenary of Afrikaans/Afrikaner linguistic nationalism. Shaka was trained in Dingiswayo’s army, who, as chief of the Mthethwa, built up a remarkable army to confront Zwide, chief of the Ndwandwe (Maartens 1998: 28). For more historical detail, please see Colenbrander 1989, Guy 1979, Laband 1992. The authenticity of this ethnic revival has been widely questioned. According to Chidester (1992: 211), the Zulu king himself had not worn traditional royal costumes, such as leopard skin, feathers, and beads, until Buthelezi motivated for it for the annual ‘Shaka Day’ celebration. Fishman’s (1972) conceptualization of domains of language usage distinguished between ‘low’ domains, e.g. the family/social setting, and ‘high’ domains, e.g. education, government.

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Introduction It was in 2004, during my ethnographic research in the Umlazi township, that Bonkhosi and I first met. He was teaching English and isiZulu at a school called Mziwamandla High in M-section of the township. Bonkhosi – obviously a pseudonym – is a proud Zulu man who loves to use isiZulu idioms and proverbs and took great joy in teaching me the language. Unlike most of his colleagues at Mziwamandla, he consciously decided to send his 8-year-old daughter to a nearby township school where he felt her isiZulu could be fostered. One of his colleagues at the time voiced great disapproval to me about this because she felt that he wasn’t doing what was best for his child (which in her view would have been to send her to a so-called ex-Model C school outside of the township where English was the only medium of instruction and teachers were likely to be English mother tongue speakers). While Bonkhosi spoke English with a strong African accent, he was fully proficient in the language. A few years later, in 2007, Bonkhosi and I found ourselves flat hunting in Durban and because we had a similar budget but very different living preferences, we exchanged the numbers of agents several times. In numerous instances, Bonkhosi told me that the agent said the flat was no longer available despite him phoning immediately after I had viewed it. After this happened the third time, my suspicion grew and to discount for a potential gender bias, I asked a male white colleague to phone. He was welcome to view the flat. Bongz was not. It was then that I realized that racism was rearing its ugly head through linguistic profiling. It was clear: Bonkhosi was denied access to these flats on the basis of his accent because his accent gave away his race. When we reflected on this injustice a few years later, Bonkhosi mentioned that his daughter was no longer going to the township school. He laconically remarked: “Perhaps it isn’t too late yet, she might still learn not to speak as black as me”. This vignette speaks for itself. I chose to start this chapter with it because it highlights in many ways the limits of empowerment through English and the systemic forces of marginalization due to racialized perceptions and stereotyping about the ways South Africans speak English. This chapter aims to tackle DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472-4

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the dynamics of marginalization and empowerment as connected to racial identity politics in South African society through a twofold lens. I start this chapter by illustrating how: 1) different ways of speaking English results in dynamics of inclusion and exclusion which are taken out of ‘everyday’ life stories of black South Africans; and 2) I shift my focus to how marginalization and empowerment is enacted through meta-language choices, e.g. choosing a language other than English in a context that is conventionally perceived to be an English lingua franca space, such as a South African court room or a parliamentary debate. While the next pages bring to the fore intersections of language, ethnicity, and race I also highlight the ambiguities of those concepts and their relationship with each other. By doing so, I am inspired by Jaspers and Madsen’s (2018) volume which shows how linguistic and social processes that appear to be on opposite sides of the coin, like fluidity and fixity, are also mutually presupposing and influence each other. And so, it is in respect of language practices that involve English as a lingua franca, as well as other languages, such as Afrikaans and isiZulu. This chapter aims to explore some of the complexities in the processes of marginalization and racialization which the English lingua franca space creates. At the same time, and in line with my main theme of ambiguity, it also portrays how the defiance of the lingua franca status of English can be used to gain empowerment in a specific political space. It critically engages with the dichotomized nature of these processes in the context of the racial politics of belonging and shows the close proximity between empowerment and marginalization, on the one hand, and the distance between these social processes, on the other hand. In order to illustrate this complexity, it is necessary to analyse across domains and social contexts but to consider as the one common denominator the ‘falsely’ presumed stability of English as a lingua franca. The ways in which many, in particular older generation white, South Africans make use of English continues to carry much fixity of neo-apartheid thinking. Upon my arrival at a guesthouse in Stellenbosch in early 2020, the female manager of the establishment came to greet me enthusiastically. Andrietta was a 53-year-old Afrikaner woman1 who, from my perspective, spoke English with native-like proficiency and no trace of an Afrikaans accent. She showed me and my children the apartment and then invited me to come back with her into the main house for coffee where I had the opportunity to meet Esihle, a young 27-year-old Zulu woman, and Babalwa, a middle-aged (40 +) Xhosa lady, who were employed as caretakers and cleaning staff at the guesthouse. Andrietta’s way of introducing the two of them took me aback: “Come, meet my girls”. I instantly remembered a compelling autobiographic piece by Ngcoya (2015: 39) where he frames what he calls ‘hyperapartheid’ by recounting a similar situation while being a tourist in St Lucia in 2014. His reflections on the use of Alex’s use of “my girls” are worth quoting at length: My girls? This possessive pronoun ‘my’ and the racialized ‘girls’ shock me. The ‘girls’ are Thobi (in her mid-thirties, I supposed) and Mama Duma

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(certainly over 50). Judging by the dates of the BMX biking awards he [the guesthouse owner] has proudly displayed on the walls, Alex must be is in his late twenties. My girls. I cringe. But I say nothing. I don’t know why. Was I too embarrassed? Or was this one of my little acts of cowardice? Or have I simply come to terms with the fact that whites like Alex will celebrate Mandela’s legacy while simultaneously guarding and enjoying the racialized privileges of apartheid? Indeed, how is it possible that aging Zulu men who work as landscapers in the garden of wealthy white people continue to be referred to as ‘garden boys’ in contemporary South Africa? In his analysis Ngcoya (2015) invoked the discourse of slavery where possessive and paternalistic language characterized relationships between masters and slaves. It matters that lingua franca communication between African people and white people has always taken place almost exclusively in an ex-colonial language and that the way it is spoken still carries much apartheid thinking. Very few, if any, African people have not had intimate experience of marginalization due to the ways English is spoken to them. Apartheid remnants in English lingua franca usage are symptomatic of a lack of transformation in, mostly white people’s, ways of thinking and being. The flawed assumption that people happily chose English as a lingua franca which characterizes much of the applied linguistics literature on ELF in the global North, does often not apply in the South African context. Although dated, De Kadt’s (1998) study of inequality in black-white communication patterns, resonates still 20 years later. Communication between white and African people continues to take place mostly in English rather than in an African language. This has consequences for the study of English as a lingua franca in the country. Although Seidlhofer (2011), who is considered to be at the forefront of ELF scholarship, has shown in great detail how ELF communication is characterized by great linguistic creativity, the focus has mainly been grammatical or lexical innovations rather than metalanguage decisions. When, where, and why English fails as a lingua franca in a conventional ELF space also requires attention. For most Zulu people and Afrikaners, English is only reluctantly chosen as a lingua because there is often no better option available. To return to the vignette above: Bonkhosi didn’t even try to speak in isiZulu to the white flat agent, he spoke in English, the so-called language of power. However, the kind of English that he spoke or rather the way it was received by his interlocutor still excluded him from what he desired. His ways of speaking English landed him ultimately in a marginalized space because the fault line was constructed along race. This English lingua franca space which creates discriminatory processes due to the currency/associations linked to different ways of speaking English constitutes an everyday reality for black South Africans who speak in a variety of BSAE. Having different first languages, Bonkhosi and I both spoke English with an accent that departs from so-called ‘native-speaker’ English, but mine (German and white accented) English brought me inclusion where his (African black accented) English

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excluded him. Raciolinguistic profiling which is precisely what happened in the above vignette “can have devastating consequences” for those who are perceived to speak with an “undesirable accent or dialect” (Baugh 2003: 155). As will be seen below, so-called Standard English continues to be associated with whiteness and it comes precisely with that racial privilege. In interviews with a male isiZulu-speaker2 who works in a Cape Town translation agency, he repeatedly referred to how his ‘’Model C’ accent was responsible for getting him the job in that company. He asserted that this accent fitted the ‘type of blackness’ the agency employed. There are many faces of inclusion and exclusion, but language plays a very significant role not only in the “persistence of race” (Jablonski 2020) but in the persistence of blatant racism. There is a part of societal and structural racism that concentrates to a large extent on physicality, but language is fundamentally entangled in this physicality. The situation described in the vignette above is by no means an isolated or dated event, I have collected 34 narratives in which isiZulu-speakers recounted their struggles to find a flat in Durban and Cape Town. There is a great deal of systemic racism but there are also individuals in the accommodation/real estate industry, as well as in the hotel/restaurant businesses who racialize and discriminate against people with African accents. And not all African accents are the same, some accents, such as Nigerian Pidgin English,3 for example, might receive more discrimination than others. A great deal of racism occurs via the telephone, for instance, by not getting access to a flat viewing, not being able to book a table at a fancy restaurant, or not being provided with whatever service one might require. One of my Zulu consultants4 in Cape Town explained with irritation that her friends always expect her to make the restaurant reservations because of her “Model C accent”. At Stellenbosch University, a student from Durban spoke about how an administrator claimed to not understand ‘his kind’ of English.5 Although the above vignette was from KwaZulu-Natal, it is well known among African language speakers that the housing market in the Western Cape is particularly racialized and discrimination is rampant.6 There are countless dimensions to linguistic profiling resulting in racial profiling and subsequent exclusion. Baugh’s (2003, 2020) work on raciolinguistic profiling practices in the USA is useful here. ‘Racial profiling’ is defined as based on visual input that results in designating a person’s racial background, while “’linguistic profiling’ is based upon auditory cues that may include racial identification, but which can also be used to identify other linguistic subgroups within a given speech community” (Baugh 2003: 158).7 Although “sociolinguistics provided a great deal of research that had either direct or indirect relevance to exposing combinations of racial and class disparities that continue to exist” (Baugh 2020: 63), a systematic focus on the interplay between linguistic and racial discrimination has only more recently been triggered through the emergence of the field of raciolinguistics (Rosa and Flores 2015). In much English lingua franca communication in South Africa the English people speak is evaluated and judged and there has been very little work done on racist practices that involve languages which are outside of the

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education system. While the above vignette illustrates the limits of empowerment through English, the next example shows how ‘linguistic profiling’ in an English lingua franca space might also be (initially) empowering but ultimately lead to re-racialization This is because in many instances perceptions of race ultimately override language as a determinant of access in certain situations. In other words, no matter how well a black person might speak the English language, perceptions of his/her race might still disempower him/her. The next encounter serves as an example. Nqobile,8 who also, at times, calls herself Bridget from her white school days in an ex-mission school in Madadeni, KwaZulu-Natal was one of my consultants in Durban from early September until December 2019. She is 32 years old and her double-named background is one of the relics of colonial education in South Africa. Accordingly, the common practice, not only in mission schools, but among white teachers in general was to give African learners additional English names. This was mostly done because teachers were either incapable or unwilling to pronounce the African names properly (Suzman 1994; Ngubane & Thabethe 2013). Nqobile, alias Bridget, recounted the following scenario from her 2017 flat hunting time in Cape Town in a narrative interview: So the problem is this: I sound white, so when I introduce myself as Bridget, white people will be nice and invite me to look at the place. But then I see their face when I show up, how they are just like “oh shit” … and then they are like “Oh – you are Bridget you look different”. You know for me those are the instances where you see how slimy English is. Sometimes they [the flat owners/agents] would still let you look at the place. Those are the kind ones. Other people would just say “Oh sorry, the place was just taken”. But how could the place have been taken if you had an appointment to view it, that’s mad. Nqobile’s account is compelling because it poignantly illustrates the insidiously double-dealing nature of Englishes in relation to race. Her description of what she calls the “slimy” nature of English encapsulates the fact that there is something inherently fake about the power English is supposed to give African language speakers. It shows how her way of speaking English was initially providing inclusion because she was perceived as white. Being ‘caught out’ or not corresponding with this racial identity and as a result being rejected leaves one with what she called “a great betrayal”. There is surprisingly no systematic research available on this topic in South Africa, but there are an increasing number of studies which flag that language must be studied as a social and racial justice issue (e.g. Mayaba, Ralarala & Angu 2018; McKinney 2015, 2017; Hurst & Mona 2017). But these studies are mostly within the educational sphere and they do not relate to the everyday linguistic practices which result in racial discrimination and Othering of ordinary South Africans. South Africa offers a wealth of examples of “uneasy communication” due to English (Dimitriu 2010: 13) and the disempowering features of its position as a lingua franca.

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While we know that English accents continue to represent powerful devices in the creation of educational boundaries (Rudwick 2008; McKinney 2015; Hunter 2019) we know very little about how much of South African reality reflects that language has its limits because ultimately it is race which is the fault line which determines access to particular resources. Alexander (2002) once warned that the power of English could undermine South Africa’s democracy. But to be clear, all languages (not only English) play a role in discrimination and subjugation – all ways of speaking have the potential to contribute to marginalization and empowerment. In the next section I would like to demonstrate how a language which is positioned in a marginalized space can be mobilized in order to empower. Esch suggests that “empowerment begins when we become aware that language is a symbolic tool for the exercise of power and influence” (2009: 2). Understanding the ambiguity of English in South Africa’s multilingual settings requires us to pay attention to fuzzy lines between marginalization and empowerment and, also, the possible entanglement of the two. In the next section I aim to demonstrate how the fine lines and, at times, crossings between English linguistic marginalization and empowerment played out during one of the most controversial trials in the post-1994 history of South Africa.

Marginalization Mobilized for Empowerment Much has been written about the 2006 rape trial of South Africa’s ex-president Jacob Zuma, not only in media outlets at the time, but also in academic scholarship in the years that followed. The majority of studies drew attention to the highly problematic culture and gender discourse, which was prevalent throughout the trial, very few studies took an interest in specific aspects of the language and discourse that emerged in the course of the trial (see e.g. Reddy & Potgieter 2006). This is surprising because the language choices and socio-cultural behaviour of Zuma during his trial marked, from my perspective, a beginning of the end of English as the unquestioned public lingua franca in South African politics. Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma, also known by his clan name Msholozi, was accused of raping the daughter of an ANC comrade who was half his age and known to be an HIV-positive AIDS activist. As part of his political strategy Jacob Zuma defied the English lingua franca communication common in court by refusing to make use of the language and by heavily emphasizing his Zulu ethnolinguistic background. In claiming, inter alia, that Kwezi (‘star’, which was the name gender activists gave the accuser) was wearing an outfit (a kanga) which signalled to him – as a Zulu man – the expectation to have sex he invoked his own creation of Zulu culture and masculinity. Zuma selfishly employed the cultural and linguistic marginalization of Zulu people in order to mobilize his support and ultimately be acquitted. Although every South African has the constitutional right to speak in his/her mother tongue in court, by doing so Zuma was entangling himself in the cultural politics of

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English, its associations with colonialism, and its failure to represent Africaness, or more specifically Zuluness. By speaking only in his first language, isiZulu, and by asking for the translations of all questions directed at him, Zuma spoke from a marginalized position, but by doing so he was also able to empower himself through the mobilization of Zulu ethnicity. The court proceedings were buzzing with ambiguities and it is not without irony that in several instances Zuma ended up correcting the translator’s use of English. While the trial brought out a very problematic discourse about culture, gender, and sexuality the metalanguage decisions of Zuma also disrupted English as an established lingua franca in court. Zuma capitalized on his knowledge of ‘deep’ isiZulu signalling his embeddedness in ‘traditional’ Zuluness (Prinsloo 2009). Although the trial showed “how culture can be misappropriated and misused in the cause of selfish interests” (Sesanti 2008: 365), it also set the stage for a linguistic rebellion against English as the common lingua franca (in court). The speaking of only isiZulu invoked cultural and ethnic belonging but Zuma’s linguistic and socio-cultural behaviour also drew attention to the fact that the courtroom was “a specific (as well as adversarial) cultural space, with Anglophone traditions, European legal origins and [in the case of this trial] an Afrikaans-speaking judge …” (Waetjen and Maré 2009: 64). Zuma is English proficient and, at the time of writing during COVID-19 in May 2020, was in an elaborate English Zoom conversation with his own son Duduzane to boost his image (Zooming with the Zumas9). English was strategically chosen as a lingua franca in this conversation between two Zulu men to appeal to a potentially worldwide audience. Zumas’ decision to suspend his English skills, for the duration of the trial in 2006, was an equally conscious choice. By speaking only isiZulu he successfully fabricated his own linguistic culture which, at the time, excluded English as a lingua franca because of its digression from Zuma/Zulu culture. Zuma also waited for all questions posed to him to be translated into isiZulu during the trial. By doing so he defied a taken-for-granted hierarchy of language which sees English on the top and other languages lower down. This “indexical iconicity” (Silverstein 2003) greatly appealed to rural Zulu people. The weekly Mail & Guardian newspaper, arguably one of South Africa’s most respectable media outlets, offered a nuanced discussion of the language used during the trial. The journalist commented on the fact that Zuma was not just speaking isiZulu, he was embracing an isiZulu esijulile (deep/traditional Zulu])spoken mostly in rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal, which is “the type of language that would have had him laughed at by KwaMashu [Durban township] youth” (Moyo 2006: 4). The kind of isiZulu Zuma used was laden with hlonipha (respect), one of the most significant linguistic and cultural codes of behaviour in Zulu society. Zuma spoke in idioms and he strategically addressed the judge respectfully as nkosi yenkantolo (literally translated as ‘king/chief of court’). He also employed elements of hlonipha language in order to respectfully and ‘traditionally’ speak about a woman’s genitals: isibhaya sika baba

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wakhe (literally translated as her father’s kraal). While his knowledge of isiZulu was strategically feeding his ‘100% Zulu boy’ imagine, he also found ways to (re)define what constitutes certain elements and aspects of Zulu culture and gendered behaviour for his own benefit. His construction of Zulu masculinity included the assertion that “there are expectations in Zulu culture that demand a man to fulfil the desires of a woman if a man interprets her being aroused” (Suttner 2009: 226). This claim lead to widespread discussions about the constituents of Zulu culture with many experts arguing that his behaviour was based on “Zuma culture” rather than “Zulu culture” (Robins 2008: 423). What is significant in the context of this study is the fact that language became a cultural weapon to fight Eurocentric dominance which was perceived as being carried in English. Mondli Makhanya (2006) who wrote for the Sunday Times during the trial (now chief editor of the City Press) compared Zuma to Buthelezi in the way that he was mobilizing ethnicity by validating Zulu language and culture throughout the trial process. The judge in the trial, Willem van der Merwe, himself an Afrikaner, made some remarks in isiZulu in closing the trial. While this could be read as a type of solidary performance (of Zuluness), it could also be read as a claim to also “know ‘Zuluness’” (Graham 2013: 31) given the essentialist entanglements in the discourse of language-culture and identity during the trial. In a discussion about his personal responsibilities towards the accuser, the topic of bridewealth (ilobolo) also featured. Ilobolo is argued to be one of the most sacrosanct traditions in Zulu society (Posel & Rudwick 2014; Rudwick & Posel 2015). Zuma acknowledged his awareness of his responsibility as a ‘Zulu man’ by suggesting that “he had his cows ready” and by saying that he valorized (his version of) ‘traditional’ Zulu masculinity in order to “normalise and redeem his sexual behaviour” (Robins 2008: 422). Zuma’s spectacle was about racial, cultural, and linguistic identity politics. Through an analysis of comments made on the “Friends of Jacob Zuma” webpage at the time of the trial, it has been shown how several of his “friends” refer to South Africa’s racist past and the pains of the history of apartheid (Waetjen & Maré 2009). Zuma has revealed his ability to flag his fluency in the cultural world of ‘traditional’ Zulu people. Rural Zulu people believe that Zuma, “as a traditionalist from a poor, rural background with little education, [he] will sympathize with their suffering and do something to ameliorate it” (Hickel 2015: 190). The trial was as much about the present as it was about the past, and it showed how claims to culture and language can signify a protest against white domination of which English is perceived to be a part. Zuma insisted on his constitutional right to speak in the official language of his choice and by doing so while being English proficient he made a conscious move to defy the structures of English power. IsiZulu was ubiquitous during the trial not only inside but also outside the court room. There were masses of both male and female Zuma supporters outside the Johannesburg High Court buildings, some in traditional Zulu

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regalia (including ibheshu (loin skirt of leopard skin) or isicoco (traditional head ring)), others wearing T-shirts bearing Zuma’s face or “100% Zulu boy” written on them. Zuma’s signature song, “Lethu umshini wami” (Give me my machine gun) was chanted and danced to, there were vuvuzelas 10 heard and impepho (ritualistic incense to communicate with ancestors) burnt. When Zuma exited the court, he paused his departure to dance with the masses. It was a cultural spectacle and street theatre. The trial was deeply troubling in terms of the ethnic chauvinism exposed and the entrenched crossracial patriarchy. It ultimately constituted a “set-back for gender equality and democratic debate” (Suttner 2009: 234), but it also fanned the flames of the politics of language, ethnicity, and race in South African politics. Culture and ethnic identity of which language is widely believed to be an essential part was made a site of struggle. Zuma chose to strategically testify only in isiZulu feeding his ‘100% Zuluboy’ image and by doing so, he also defied the status of English as a common political lingua franca in the country. In this example another language, i.e. isiZulu, was employed to politically empower an individual, Jacob Zuma. Although in the years that followed Zuma did not make much use of isiZulu during his public address, recent years have seen an increase in African language usage in parliament. Some Afrikaansspeaking ministers of parliament (MPs) have always made use of their constitutional right to speak in their language but only recently have African language speakers, especially isiZulu speakers, started to explore this option as well. Among the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), for instance, most notably MP Makoti Sibongile Khawua (also known as MaKhawula) has made a point of persistently speaking in isiZulu. In a recent interview she explained that she has promised her constituency (in KwaZulu-Natal) that she will only speak the language of the people.11 At the time of writing during COVID-19, several ministers delivered some of the public briefings by making use of code-switching into African languages, primarily isiZulu. These addresses12 have shown that there is a shift in the politics of language which give recognition to the fact that language is a social justice issue in the country.13 Although English is widely assumed to be a common South African lingua franca, a recent study argues that the dominance of English has to be distinguished from its prevalence (Posel et al. 2020). Data drawn from the 2017/ 2018 South African General Household Surveys shows that only a minority of African language speakers report English as the most frequently spoken language outside their home. In this multilingual context, defying English in its status as a lingua franca can generate empowerment. Arguably, there is no other ethnic group in South Africa who has been trying to defy English to the same extent as Afrikaners have in the post-apartheid period. In the next section I will therefore discuss how Afrikaner people have also created a platform in which they have positioned themselves as a marginalized group of people in need of being empowered, not least also by questioning the unproblematic lingua franca status of English in South Africa.

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The Claim of Afrikaner Marginalization: English, the “Oppressor” Language Various studies have portrayed (Steyn 2004; Blaser & van der Westhuizen 2012; Van der Westhuizen 2013; Marx Knoetze 2020) how Afrikaners have experienced a sense of marginalization in post-1994 South Africa. Chapter 3 showed how, historically, white Afrikaans speakers have always felt a sense of oppression by the Anglo ethnicity and English as a language. The transition to democracy after 1994, however, posed a further challenge to Afrikaners. While they were able to maintain most of their socio-economic privileges, they lost their political power. Focusing on this loss rather than the continuous benefits, many Afrikaners constructed themselves as “victims of marginalisation” which resulted, on the one hand, in a form of a retreat, described as an inwaartse migrasie (inward migration) (Blaser and van der Westhuizen 2012: 386). Afrikaners also construct what has been termed ‘subaltern whiteness’ through the claim that they have suffered and continue to suffer oppression under the English, and their language. This discourse on subaltern whiteness finds expression in much of the Afrikaans press. For most Afrikaners English fails as a lingua franca because they come from a privileged history in which their own language was a common (and at times enforced) lingua franca. I will illustrate this point by using an extract from a recent parliamentary debate in South Africa. It is surprising that relatively little research is available about current and quotidian language use in government (Hansson 2018: 337). And yet, MPs offer a wide and diverse spectrum of South Africans. In a nutshell they embody a politically and ideologically heterogenous group who represents a vast range of different ethnic, cultural, and linguistic identities. In July 2019, a parliamentary discussion brought the anti-English and the claim to a so-called subaltern whiteness to the fore.14 The extract is worth quoting at length (see below). It commences with a Freedom Front Plus (FFP) female MP, Heloise Denner, delivering her maiden speech in Afrikaans. The content is quite irrelevant to the point I am trying to make here, suffice it to say that her speech is held in Standard Afrikaans and that she is interrupted with a point of order by Makoti Sibongile Khawula (also known as MaKhawula), a member of the EFF. Her translation device, which is supposed to deliver the speech in isiZulu, is evidently not functioning. She says (in rough transcription): Ngibonge we mhlonyishwa, lapho ngaphambili. Iqalile futhi again, inkathazo. Asikho isiZulu la, alukho ulimi lomuntu omnyama la. YiAfrikaans ne English, Afrikaans ne English. Senze njani ke manje {audience murmur} Alukho ngisho UK hozi [FM] la ngisho neGagasi, no no no … I thank you, boss, there in the front. Trouble has started again. There is no isiZulu here, there is no language that belongs to a black

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person here. It’s Afrikaans and English Afrikaans and English. What should we do now? There’s no Khozi FM here not even Gagasi FM, no no no, no … At this point, Pieter Groenewald, the leader of the FFP, asks for a point of order. He evidently did not understand the concern of MP Khawula because instead of engaging with the problem that only English, not an isiZulu translation, is provided, he says: Op‘n punt van orde. [On a point of order]. I understand that there are people in South Africa who is [sic] still in love with the colonial language and they are very fond of English, it’s their constitutional right. Can I ask you …, to allow the honorable member to keep on with her process, decolonizing South Africa, to speak her indigenous language of Afrikaans, thank you. The parliamentary extract represents an apt example of the perceived failure of the lingua franca status of English in parliament. Groenewald’s comment is problematic for at least three reasons. First, he completely ignores the fact that the previous point of order was about isiZulu translation and not praising the role of English. Second, Groenewald assigns English the status of the “only” colonial language and hence, aims to dislodge Afrikaans from colonialism. And third, he boldly suggests that a general process of decolonization can occur by an Afrikaner woman speaking Standard Afrikaans in parliament while black listeners are unable to receive interpreting services in their African languages. Groenewald is victimizing Afrikaans which, in this context, is highly problematic and I frame this behaviour and metalanguage talk as sociolinguistic amnesia.

Socio-linguistic Amnesia A person suffers from amnesia when he/she is no longer able to memorize information from the past, or to extend the definition, when he/she only has a selective memory of historical events. Scholarship (Kriel 2006; Van der Waal 2012) has shown in great detail that the establishment of current, so-called Standard Afrikaans (which is precisely the way Groenewald and his female colleague speak) is inextricably linked to Afrikaner ethno-nationalism as collective racial (white) identity. This nationalism developed in the early twentieth century and has always excluded people of colour (see Chapter 3). From this perspective, the debate about Afrikaans as an African or indigenous language, which has been a common cause for Afrikaner linguists since 1994, has already become tedious but it is symptomatic of the identity politics Afrikaners have been stirring up in the post-apartheid state. Groenewald takes this discourse of Afrikaans as an African language one step further by claiming an

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Afrikaner woman could contribute to a decolonization process by speaking in Standard Afrikaans. Not only is there long-term amnesia referred to before, there is also a short-term socio-linguistic amnesia at work here. Only a few years prior to this interaction the #OpenStellenbosch collective, as well as other #AfrikaansMustFall movements demanded English tuition in line with what they perceived to be decolonial actions. Afrikaans, in this context, is perceived as a neo-colonial exclusion device rather than a decolonization tool. Against this background, there is a level of absurdity in Groenewald’s claim. It would be virtually impossible to find African language speakers in South Africa who would unreservedly express their support for decolonization strategies that foster the promotion of Standard Afrikaans. I am writing current Standard Afrikaans because this is the variety white South Africans speak rather than the Kaaps forms of Afrikaans spoken by the coloured community. Given the background of the struggle against Afrikaans and the hundreds of African youth who died during the Soweto uprisings in 1976, the argument to decolonize South Africa by speaking ‘Afrikaner Afrikaans’ flies in the face of most black South Africans. The association of Afrikaans with apartheid and oppression is very deeply anchored in the black community and this has certainly strengthened the role of English. As Makoni and Makoni (2009) aptly write, African people wanted to learn English because it was not Afrikaans. But this discussion is also about the kind of Afrikaans that most Afrikaners speak. For example, English interference in white Afrikaans circles is often not appreciated by many Afrikaners who have a purist approach to language. While the Afrikaner urban youth might think otherwise there are also strong Afrikaans student associations, such as the AdamTas society at Stellenbosch University, which aim to preserve Afrikaans as a medium of instruction.15 However, purist approaches to language cannot usefully be employed from a decolonizing perspective given the invented nature of (African) languages (Makoni 2003; Makoni & Pennycook 2012). As already mentioned above, the strategy Groenewald employed is known in the South African literature as the discourse of subaltern whiteness. Steyn (2004: 148) argues that Afrikaner identity politics have an affinity with subaltern whiteness, in that “the constellation of the victim has been highly salient in the discourses of Afrikaner whiteness” in that they always struggled against the more powerful British Empire. Afrikaners “saw themselves as besieged, having to fight for the ‘right’ to their own brand of white supremacy” and part and parcel of this undertaking was the oppression of the black majority (Steyn 2004: 148). So one might ask whether and, if so, when whiteness in South Africa can be subaltern at all? The compounding of the term subaltern and whiteness in the context of Afrikanerdom has been perceived as highly problematic and quite offensive to some African scholars (see, for instance, Kaunda 2017). In post-colonial theory the subaltern is employed with reference to those who are exploited and suppressed – those who are at the bottom of the sociopolitical and economic power hierarchy. Acknowledging European relations

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with Africa and African people as violent subjugation means marking whites as historically non-subaltern. As Snyman (2015: 287) aptly argues in the context of South African identities, “without putting race on the table, and the role of coloniality, any discussion remains futile and impotent”. Indeed, it is not without irony that an ethnic group that has been documented (see, e.g. Jansen 2009; Ntombana & Bubulu 2017) as showing extreme pride and a sense of superiority over other social and ethnolinguistic groups should claim such an underdog status for its members. In the context of South African identity politics white subalterness is strategic essentialism in its most controversial form. By focusing on the history of British hegemony in order to claim oppression Afrikaners ignore all the atrocities committed by themselves against the majority black population. This “highjacking” of the concept of subalterness (Kaunda 2017: 8) is an example of the “need to preserve the invulnerable self” (Gibson 2011: 320). Through the “refusal to recognize” the full historical context one is ignorant about race (as Groenwald is in the extract) and this “facilitates an ignorant preservation of white privilege, which is simultaneously a way of remaining ignorant about oneself and one’s share in that history” (Gibson 2011: 320). It is also an extreme case of white fragility (DiAngelo 2017) that often manifests itself in racist behaviour. Current Standard Afrikaans received extraordinary socio-political, cultural, financial, and educational support from the oppressive apartheid government, and this is the reason why the language became the ‘high Standard’ form it is today. This happened precisely because African languages (and by extension their speakers) were relegated to a very low status, just good enough for some primary education, but not developed to serve higher domain purposes. Rather than providing a decolonial alternative, Afrikaans as spoken and represented by Groenewald here must be seen as replete with coloniality. The concept of coloniality exposes the entanglement of Africa and other ex-colonies in the continuously present colonial matrix of power which manifests itself, among other things, in the hierarchization of race (Quijano 2000; Mignolo 2007, 2010). It draws attention to the fact that there continues to be a systemic and unequal distribution of power that has its legacy in colonialism and apartheid (Mignolo 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013). The idea of socio-linguistic amnesia captures the deficit memory some white South Africans (in particular Afrikaner people) appear to have when it comes to the coloniality of sociolinguistics in South Africa and apartheid language policies. Mashau (2018) has made the criticism that some white people employ Africanness and indigeneity conveniently in self-identification when a situation lends itself as such or if it personally suits them. The issue of who can claim to be an ‘African’ has been a heated debate in South Africa for many years and language has played a significant role in these profoundly contested identity politics (e.g. Matthews 2011; Rudwick 2015). Groenewald might have convinced himself that his roots reflect indigeneity and we might well be ready to accept that. Among socio-linguists in South Africa, in fact, it is widely accepted that Afrikaans should be acknowledged as an African language but arguably this is due not least to the influential nature of Afrikaner

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socio-linguists or, as some might want to call it, “the ideological positioning of our [the South African] education system which privileges the voices of white academics over and above black thinkers and academics”.16 Because of the politically elevated status of Afrikaans during apartheid, it was possible for other language speakers to empower themselves by speaking the language. Then it was much more of an established lingua franca than it is now. Since the fall of apartheid and the persistent depiction of Afrikaans as the previous ‘language of the oppressor’ using Afrikaans as a medium of communication in a multilingual or lingua franca space has become controversial. In most such settings, English is perceived as the lesser of two evils. Especially the younger generations of African language speakers react in an irritated fashion when spoken to in Afrikaans. As one of my consultants17 in Cape Town remarked: So – you know the Afrikaners in my office, they still often take it for granted to switch into Afrikaans when they feel like it. Even when we who are mostly isiXhosa and isiZulu speakers are there. In one meeting when one of them went on this rant in Afrikaans, I totally switched off. When I was then asked what I think I started speaking in isiZulu. OK, I had been absent minded but that was also because he spoke in Afrikaans. I guess it was a bit of an identity thing as well, but it came as a defence somehow … Drawing on this defensive strategy, Pitolindo positions herself as someone who, just like any other South African, has a right to make use of her mother tongue – even in a business context. The example illustrates the way that certain metalanguage choices can also emerge as a response to the linguistic behaviour of an interactional partner. Afrikaans used to enjoy great institutional recognition in South Africa but most of its prestige has faded in the post-apartheid context. Pitolindo explained that she only chose to speak isiZulu as a reaction to her colleague who spoke in Afrikaans. According to her own reflections she would not have made this language choice had everyone spoken in English. Afrikaans, if spoken by white South Africans, continues to be widely perceived by black people as representing a conservative Afrikanerdom. It is not (or is no longer) accepted as a lingua franca in urban professional spaces. Tsedu (2018) recalls an incident at work in the office of the City Press newspaper, an English publication outlet, where his colleague Khatu Mamaila contributed a comment in an Afrikaans discussion about his white colleagues in his own mother tongue, Venda. He said “Well … English is also not my language, but I’ve done my 50 per cent. So, if you are not even going to do yours, I’ll stand here, and you stand there and let’s see how far we get” (Tsedu (2018: 88). The examples above aptly illustrate that, pitted against Afrikaans, English is a reasonably accepted lingua franca among African language speakers. They also show how “language ideologies are productively used in the creation and representation of social and cultural identities” (Kroskrity 2004: 509). Pitolindo and Khatu speak in their own language (in an Afrikaans communication) in the spirit

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of the constitutionally anchored ideology that all South African languages are equal and have the potential to be employed in all contexts. In reality, however, English remains the most powerful lingua franca in the country, and it carries with it a history of the marginalization of other languages and their speakers. People can only empower themselves through the language of power if they are given proper access to it. Access to Standard English is certainly not equal in South Africa and this inequitable distribution of linguistic resources has consequences for social justice and democracy. One of the greatest ambiguities which characterizes the role of English as a lingua franca in South Africa is the fact that English proficiency empowers individuals but, at the same time, marginalizes entire communities. At the same time, many of those who are English proficient have a blind spot regarding the prevalence and significance of languages other than English in the country and believe that “English is the best way to communicate” (Jeewa & Rudwick 2020). This perpetuates a “dangerous power of English” (DeKadt 1993) which continues to create multiple situations in which non-English speakers are disempowered, hence a constant questioning of the current status quo is necessary. Some scholars have drawn attention to the paradoxical nature of English promotion vis-à-vis rejection. During the student movements in 2015–2016, English was often cushioned from protest because compared to Afrikaans it was considered a tool of decolonization at former Afrikaans universities. Against the background that the #RhodesMustFall protest initiated the call for decolonization, Dube (2017: 19) aptly remarks that the demand to replace Afrikaans with English is quite ironic in the sense that Rhodes, who is a symbol of everything colonial in South Africa, and whom the students would like to obliterate from history, is an iconic figure of the English culture in the whole of Southern Africa – a culture whose language is English. The role of English as a lingua franca is likely to continue to generate processes of inclusion and exclusion, as well as empowerment and marginalization. As long as South Africans who make use of English primarily as a communicative tool, and not as a first language, feel that their first language is an “important and constitutive factor of their individual, and at times, collective identities” (May 2005: 330), the role of English as a common lingua franca will be a sociopolitically ambiguous one. Gal (2013: 179) argued that a focus away from English grammar and lexicon in English lingua franca research to meta-communicative questions is likely to provide empirical evidence about complex social patterns and expose the hierarchy or equality of speakers and, for this reason, it is necessary to look at ELF “as a process rather than a thing” (Gal 2013: 179, emphasis in original), and consequently the next chapter engages with mobility as a procedural form of identity construction.

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Notes 1 Stellenbosch, 14 January 2020 . 2 Kaya, 28-year-old translation professional, Cape Town, 26 March 2020. 3 Nigerians in South Africa are stereotypically believed to be involved in the drug trade and other crime. I would like to thank Michel Lafon for making me aware of this point. 4 Pitolindo, 37-year-old, self-identified ‘urban (health) professional’, Cape Town, 20 January 2020. 5 Bheki, 21-year-old male Sociology student, Stellenbosch, 17 January 2020. 6 Many more examples could be mentioned from my ethnographic research in the Western Cape, the media has also picked up on it: https://www.iol.co.za/news/southafrica/western-cape/to-let-but-not-if-youre-black-1610775 (accessed 15 April 2020). 7 In the United States, there is a 1–800x hotline from the Department of Housing and Urban Development one can phone if unfair treatment and discrimination is suspected. To the best of my knowledge, no such organisation is in place in South Africa despite the fact that raciolinguistic profiling continues to be rampant. 8 Nqobile, 34-year-old Zulu student, Durban, 14 November 2019. 9 The Zoom conversation is in seven parts, the first and following episodes can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKYwEnh1cRU. Accessed 10 May 2020. 10 The vuvuzela is a plastic horn which is about 60cm long and is most commonly used at football matches in South Africa. 11 https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/meet-the-eff-mp-who-refuses-to-spea k-english-in-parliament-20151222 (accessed 24 May 2020) or https://www.econom icfreedomfighters.org/news/index.php/en/news/video/ff-plus-apologize-to-mamkha wula-over-language-problem (accessed 27 February 2020). 12 Blade Nzimande: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MssCbiM5Hk&t=554s Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gyE5nlm8W8. 13 The elderly in African communities, who are particularly susceptible to the virus, are often still monolingual in African languages (Census 2011). Not all South Africans, however, understand this reality. In reactions and comments on Youtube pages of COVID addresses, linguistic ignorance and racist comments are no rarity. It is not unusual to find someone stating that “everyone in South Africa understands English” or that the minister should be fired from her job for failing to speak English. 14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ3wCZjpsj8 (accessed 3 April 2020) 15 www.sun.ac.za/english/students/student-societies/cultural-hobby-societies/adam-tas (accessed 13 April 2020). 16 This citation is copied from a letter addressed to the President of South Africa in mid-2019 which was signed by several black academics who cannot all be mentioned. It can be found at: https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/amandla/pages/ 2272/attachments/original/1563792411/Letter_to_uMongameli_18July2019_%281% 29.pdf?1563792411 (accessed 11 April 2020). 17 Pitolindo, 37-year-old, self-identified, ‘urban (health) professional’, Skype, 25 April 2020.

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Linguistic Mobility and Racial Authenticity

Introduction The writing of Franz Fanon and Steve Biko has gained great currency among black students and the young middle class in South Africa. Fanon wrote that the speaking of a European language is linked to the appropriation of “its world and culture” and that one who “wants to be white will succeed, since he will have adopted the cultural tool of language” (Fanon [1952] 2008: 21). Fanon’s words encapsulate the idea that through language one might be able to alter one’s racial identity, or, to be more precise, he suggests that by speaking a European language an African person can ‘become’ white. In many ways, Fanon’s mid-twentieth-century writing continues to resonate with black South Africans. African people who make a total shift to English as their main medium of communication are often seen as ‘coconuts’, dark-skinned individuals who are seen as exhibiting mental whiteness (Rudwick 2008). And white racial identity continues to be linked to power and privilege. If African people adopt “beliefs or behaviours consistent with whiteness”, they are often “seen as sell-outs and race traitors” (Canham & Williams 2017: 39). Class certainly features as a significant category in the construction of racial boundaries among African people but my focus here is on language.1 In isiZulu the term umlungu which is translated as ‘white person’ is commonly employed to refer to someone who is a boss and holds professional powers. This does not mean that this person would be seen commonly as racially white but that he/she is perceived as white because of his/her position of power. In the processes of racialization, constructions of blackness and whiteness and how it is experienced in the broader politics of identity are fundamentally linked to language usage. Examining the complexity of these processes can reveal the “contestability, instability, and mutability of ways in which language ideologies and identities are linked to relations of power and political arrangements in communities and societies” (Pavlenko & Blackledge 2004: 10). Chapter 4 showed how the ‘white gaze’ in English lingua franca communication disadvantages African language speakers. In this chapter I aim to shift the focus onto the ‘black gaze’ in relation to English as a lingua franca and by doing so I intend to show how mobility and authenticity are useful conceptual metaphors DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472-5

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in the exploration of the racial identity politics linked to English language practices. As Späti (2018: 11) argues, “language appears to play an important role in identity politics” and this “expresses itself in politics of recognition and misrecognition, in which language is used as an expression of sameness and of difference, of belonging and of dissociation”. Mobility here is thought of as a conceptual metaphor and social process where people and their identities move. Through such encounters with others, “mobile people are constantly having to navigate, negotiate, accommodate or reject difference (in things, ideas, practices and relations) in an open-ended manner that makes of them a permanent work in progress” (Nyamnjoh 2020: 1). This chapter illustrates some of this “permanent work in progress” in relation to English lingua franca communication in South African identity politics. Both language and race are conceptualized as theoretically mobile categories here. It also needs to be said, however, that for most African language speakers race and their own blackness are not seen as a mobile category. Due to the persistent racism in South African society, this is completely understandable. However, in this chapter I aim to deviate somewhat from the experience of racial immobility in discriminatory practices as shown in the previous chapter in order to push the boundaries of race as an ontological category.

Language as a Mobile Tool Leading scholars in sociolinguistics have increasingly started to study language as a mobile tool (Coupland 2007; Heller 2007; Blommaert 2010; Pennycook 2010). The focus has shifted from studying linguistic features in a bound language entity to language practices in motion, as processes, and as enacting various trajectories of space, time, and context. African studies scholars have also increasingly recognized that socio-cultural, economic, and socio-political mobility are core categories in the analysis of communication and discourse in Africa. Blommaert (2010) provides us with useful conceptual tools to practise what he has termed a sociolinguistics of mobility, drawing from the pioneering work of Hymes (1996). Understanding language as a dynamic and mobile resource is “a sociolinguistics of ‘speech’, of actual language resources deployed in real sociocultural, historical and political contexts” (Blommaert 2010: 5). Authenticity has been a longstanding concept in sociolinguistics (Bucholtz 2003; Coupland 2003; Blommaert & Varis 2001; Lacoste, Leimgruber & Breyer 2014) and this study takes authenticity as an ideological construct (Bucholtz 2003). Canagarajah and Dovchin (2019) offered a comprehensive study of how multiple social meanings of authenticity are expressed in English language usage on the Internet, I aim to show in this chapter how ideologies of both authenticity and mobility impact on identity politics in English lingua franca communication in the South African setting. For most young and urban South Africans, a vital part of their repertoire is a form of English, but for the overwhelming majority of black South Africans English constitutes an additional language. If we think of language as a mobile tool, we ascribe to it agency to

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provide social movement. The term mobility can be seen as a moving trajectory in which language provides indexical identity categories for people (Blommaert 2010: 6). The ‘trajectory’ is an important analytical category here because language practices, especially translingual ones, require analysis in terms of temporal, spatial, and contextual movement (Blommaert 2010: 6). This perspective allows scholars to frame Africa in a more holistic way and as deeply embedded in the poly and translingual lifeworlds of people. Linguistic identification tools are never only mobile or immobile, rather they are located along moving scales (Blommaert 2010: 6). Polycentric contexts offer a diversity of different opportunities for speakers to navigate through life (Pietkäinen 2010: 80). An individual’s ways of negotiating sociolinguistic complexities in multilingual spaces are turbulent (Stroud 2015: 207) but they are also characterized by systematic creativity. Different types of situations in which English is spoken as a lingua franca can ‘Other’ and exclude different language speakers depending on the desired identity trajectory of the individual and the group. Conceptualizing English as a lingua franca as a mobile resource sees it operating along different scales and indexical orders. Race is located as one significant category along these scales and indexical orders and to focus on it provides insights into “what people actually do with language, what language does to them, and what language means to them, in what particular ways it matters to them” (Blommaert 2010: 188).

Racial Mobility. Really? Race can be seen as a social process in which people try to make sense of others and the world around them (Maré 2014). While variations in skin colour might be biologically rooted, the concept of race, or rather the idea that humans can be racially distinguished according to concrete criteria, is based on socio-political grounds. In South Africa, given the relatively short period since apartheid, it is not surprising that race continues to matter acutely, in particular in the struggle to decolonize the country. From a socialconstructivist perspective race and racialization are embedded in processes, they are permanently in the making. From this perspective, the concept of racial mobility also makes some sense. Perceptions of blackness and views about whiteness are mobile and they are often not (only) linked to skin colour but to power, privilege, and, not least, language. Multiple factors intersect in ideologies about language and race and it is their complex intersections which create ambiguities. On the one hand, African urban spaces are polycentric, multivocal, translingual, and hybrid. On the other hand, however, individuals hold rigid ideologies about the nature of social identities and raciolinguistic belonging and these fixed ideologies continue to contribute to contestations and identity politics. Identities are not only self-ascribed but also other ascribed, but the ascriptions of others might be restrictive and constraining, in particular for African people (Nyamnjoh & Fuh 2014: 55). After all, it has been the global North and whiteness that have been imposed as a global

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hegemonic standard from politics to culture and most constituents of social life. This global injustice is also reflected in South Africa where whiteness and blackness continue to shape quotidian social realities (Pierre 2012). During apartheid, African people were extremely limited in terms of movement and mobility. There were complex restrictions on where one could live, how, and to which place one could travel, and there was an obligation to carry a pass that provided information about permitted movement. While it is not this kind of physical immobility I am focusing on here, historical background is significant. Apartheid created for black people the lack of access to resources including the restricted access to so-called Standard English and this is why until today South African Standard English is associated with whiteness. Using mobility as a conceptual framework for how linguistic and racial fluidity can be studied in settings where English is spoken as a lingua franca can show how essentialized constructs of language and race are located in the colonial/apartheid past and contribute to contemporary inequalities. In the analysis, I focus on how linguistic and racial mobility is ascribed, negotiated, and rejected on the basis of particular linguistic and social behaviours. The concepts of linguistic and racial mobility offer, if employed with caution, a way of exposing the fact that ‘white privilege’ remains a national and global reality (Madonsela 2019). Increasingly, but only in the last few years, a number of sociologists and legal studies scholars, mostly located in the USA, have examined race as a mobile identity category. Racial mobility might sound like an oxymoron to people who still hold on to a view of race as biologically grounded (Saperstein 2017). It might also feel like a slap in the face to the many African people who experience racial discrimination on a daily basis. It could, however, also expose ways in which African people who feel trapped in a system of systemic racial oppression aim to find ways to free themselves. Given that the biological basis of race is refuted and that current science sees race as an identity category that is socio-culturally and politically constructed, the concept of mobility in relation to race makes sense and is timely. Penner and Saperstein (2008) provided a seminal study in which they traced changes in ideologies of racial classification throughout a longitudinal dataset. Their findings suggest that “race is not a fixed characteristic, but rather a flexible marker of social status” (Penner & Saperstein (2008: 19628). Similarly, the Afro-American legal sociologist Camille Gear Rich has argued (2012, 2014) that the concept of race can legitimately represent an elective self-identifying category. Her studies are “supportive of the current cultural trend encouraging greater respect for individuals’ racial self-identification decisions” (Gear Rich 2012: 4). The “elective-race framework” she provides is an analytical tool to gain a nuanced understanding of the contradictions in perceptions about race in legal processes. Her framework also draws attention to social injustices as it represents a descriptive framework to make better sense of the frequent injuries racialized individuals suffer (Gear Rich 2014).

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As mentioned, it has been primarily US researchers who have worked with ideas of mobility in relation to race, and not all their findings are applicable to the South African context, in which black racial oppression was in fact legally sanctioned until recently. The assigning of a racial category is never straightforward as far as physical characteristics go (Saperstein 2017: 27), but in South Africa it was precisely this ascription which the Apartheid Government had focused on doing. The categories of black (African), white (European), coloured (mixed-race), and Asian (Indian) were constructed as ‘defined’, measurable, and clear-cut. Even for individuals who did not fit neatly in any of the ‘invented’ racial categories, there were further ‘exams’, such as the infamous ‘pencil-test’2 which were believed to be tools for the objective racialization of individuals. It is not surprising that hair has become a highly political issue even in the post-apartheid state (Nyamnjoh & Fuh 2014; Hunter 2019). Race looms in the perceptions of most South Africans and this is typically done through discursive practices (Distiller & Steyn 2004; Matthews 2011). Race constructions, i.e. whiteness versus blackness, are not static, they are profoundly contextual, variously located on slippery grounds and all too often characterized by fuzzy and potentially controversial boundaries. But it is this ambiguity which makes the concept metaphor of mobility useful. When analysing racial classifications as socially mobile in English lingua franca discourse, we can construct a fruitful ground on which to unravel social injustices. There is, arguably, no country in the world in which people have been and are concerned with race to the extent that South Africans are.3 Given the tenacious socio-economic effects of colonialism and apartheid, race cannot and must not be seen as irrelevant. Individuals who refuse to pay attention to other people’s ‘race’ and aim at being ‘colour-blind’ as many white liberals claim to do in South Africa, they do so, with the best of intentions, from their privileged (white) position. While it is desirable to head towards a world without ‘race-thinking’, it is not realistic as long as whiteness continues to be hegemonic and oppressive. Social inequality continues to be profoundly marked by race and that is why it is by no means surprising that, as Friedman (2019a, 2019b) puts it, race continues to be South African society’s main fault line. While it might be desirable to have the category of “race transformed from common sense to nonsense” (Jablonski 2020: 8) it requires much more ‘undoing’ of the racial injustices prevalent in the hegemonic white system of the world. Saperstein (2017: 2) sees race “as a system of status categories people can move into and out of at different points in their lives, which also have implications for their mobility along other dimensions of social status”. She argues that assigning someone a racial classification … continues to be, in part, a judgment about where they stand …, into how they are likely to be perceived and treated by others. Only by asking what predicts racial mobility in particular directions can we begin to assess the role that

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Linguistic Mobility & Racial Authenticity social status has played, and continues to play, in shaping racial categorization and maintaining racial inequality. (Saperstein 2017: 28)

This idea that socio-economic status shapes ideas of race (Penner & Sapertein 2008) will be illustrated in some examples below. Anyone who has spent extended periods of time in South Africa knows that upward socio-economic mobility frequently comes with English language skills.4 One of the legacies of colonization in Africa is that most professional jobs are simply not accessible to people who do not speak the dominant European language of the country (Mazrui & Mazrui 1998: 65). The South African education system hegemonizes English (Makubalo 2007; McKinney 2015, 2017) and studies show that English skills and access to professional job opportunities are linked (Posel & Zeller 2015). Standard English or ‘white tone’ (Hunter 2019), in particular, retains authority, not only in the education domain,5 but also in many other domains of life. While African language speakers increasingly have access to prestigious English schools, which might challenge racial disadvantage to some extent, English consolidates the power of “whiteness” through the perceived link between “good English” and “whiteness” (Hunter & Hachimi 2013). Ultimately, racialization processes often influence social-class identity politics and, due to apartheid, race prevails as arguably the most volatile social variable. One way of speaking English (rather than another) in an English lingua franca communication might provide a South African with various degrees of social and racial mobility, the example of Nqobile passing as white on the phone in the previous chapter is a case in point. Speaking so-called Standard English might ascribe whiteness to an African person, but at the same time this type of racial mobility is deeply Janus-faced. While the entanglement of language, race, class, and social inequality calls for detailed analyses, it must be assumed that the overwhelming majority of people in South Africa would not accept race as a ‘mobile category’. The physicality of race, i.e. colourism, and the persistence of racism renders the term ‘mobile’ in relation to race somewhat provocative. In many instances, class and socio-economic status do not transcend the ‘reality’ of race. Again, Nqobile’s account of the flat hunt in Cape Town and the experience of outright racial discrimination – not on the basis of her English language skills, education, or socio-economic status but simply due to colourism – has illustrated this. While the white gaze results in much racism, the black gaze is also not free of racialization. Thabile,6 a Linguistics student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, described English as “snaky” to me because, on the one hand, it bestows her with a privilege associated primarily with white people (through her ex-Model C school accent), but, on the other hand, the language (alone) is not sufficiently powerful to shelter her from racial othering. We (ex-Model C school children) have some privileges because of the way we speak English but we also have our own struggles – because of

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that [the kind of English she speaks] I permanently have to fight for my Africanness. For some I am just a coconut (white inside) and they make me feel like I have betrayed my roots. Her account shows how her ways of speaking English are perceived as moving her racial identity to one that is white and no longer black ‘enough’. These socio-politics manifest because in South Africa English accents have political and class capital (Canham & Williams 2017). Ironically, however, even people who do not like to be classified themselves in terms of their accents, often classify others: “I don’t like our [South Africans] obsession with race and I think of myself as just a human being. But then again you get these arrogant coconuts with their twang …”, said Kagiso,7 a successful Zulu artist. When I asked him to elaborate on this coconuttiness further there were limits to the language aspects of the description. Rather than continuing to speak about the “twang” and language more generally, Kagiso elaborated on socio-economic issues and complained about conspicuous consumption and status symbols. Whiteness is linked to power, privilege, and elitism (Distiller & Steyn 2004) and black people who are seen as distancing themselves from what is perceived to be a black lifestyle by embracing linguistic and social behaviours associated with white people are regarded as race traitors (Canham & Williams 2017: 39). I illustrate this further below.

“Speak English like an African” In 2015, during a parliamentary debate in the South African House of Assembly an African Democratic Alliance Party (DA) representative criticized members of the EFF on account of child maintenance charges laid against them. Zakhele Mbhele spoke Standard English in an arguably highbrow fashion without a trace of an African language accent which would be widely perceived as elitist. There was substantial noise and commotion in the room, a number of disruptions and in the middle of the MP’s speech, an EFF member, Thembinkosi Rawula, stood up on a point of order and said: “Can the honourable member speak English like a black man please?” The parliamentary house chair appeared puzzled, called for order, and asked the EFF member repeatedly whether an interpretation was available. It is not quite clear whether the chair was indeed not aware of what had been said in terms of its racializing content or whether he might have wanted to detract from what evidently could have caused flames of conflictual identity politics to flare up in parliament. From the perspective of the communicative value of English as a lingua franca flagged in much of the ELF literature, this interaction quite obviously fails the script. The chair, for one, misinterprets much of the English lingua franca communication going on between parliamentary members.

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The example illustrates how the way an African person speaks English in an English lingua franca communication is associated with a range of meanings for others. Secondly, it demonstrates that raciolinguistic profiling through English is part of the black gaze in South African sociolinguistic reality. It has been argued that “contemporary raciolinguistic ideologies must be situated within colonial histories that have shaped the co-naturalization of language and race as part of the project of modernity” (Rosa & Flores 2017: 3). Rawula asking: “Can the honourable member speak English like a black man please?” echoes the coloniality of Standard English as a white English in South Africa. By fixing a specific kind of English language usage to a certain racial identity, one from which Zakhele Mbhele, in his view, departs, Rawula ironically gives expression to the coloniality of English language usage in South Africa. Social-psychological research (Giles, Bourhis & Taylor 1977: 338), although dated by now, had identified a strategy termed redefinition of negative characteristics which a person who was previously oppressed might adopt. Accordingly, it is argued that members of a group may start to redefine their ethnic or ethnolinguistic identity by turning away from devaluing their ethnic accent or specific speech style. In this context “pride is suddenly evidenced in the maintenance of the ethnic tongue and dialect” (Giles et al. 1977: 338). One could argue that there is a sense of pride inherent in Rawula’s point of order. The assertion that Mbhele’s way of speaking English is un-African questions his authenticity in this political contested space. In this particular instance, “identity politics is also based on reified notions of authenticity and romanticized understandings of community” (Besnier 2009: 168). What transpires from Rawula’s comment is an ideology of linguistic and racial authenticity that entails the idea that a person ‘should’ speak English in a particular way if this person wants to claim belonging to a certain racial group. Such raciolinguistic perceptions about ‘authenticity’ might drift into dangerous identity politics, nativism, and racism (Heller & McElhinny 2017). While such essentialism can be said to be an “ontological claim in the service of ideological contestation and identity politics” (Van der Waal 2008: 54), it also draws attention to the coloniality of the English language. Standard English retains authority in educated spaces and other powerful domains. A number of scholars have demonstrated the multiple ways in which beliefs about language (for example, about authentic ways of speaking) are linked to relations of power and positioning (Blommaert 1999; Gal 1998; Irvine & Gal, 2000; Kroskrity 2010; Woolard 1994, 2010). Kroskrity (2020) also pointed, with reference to the theorizing of linguistic racism, to the fact that social diversity constitutes an engine of language ideological diversity, raciolinguistic realities, contestation, and potentially conflict. Authenticity plays out in multiple forms in the examples I have given. African identity making in South African politics is intertwined with ideologies about racial authenticity. The DA politician in the last example, for instance, also responded to a comment in isiZulu from the audience by

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saying in isiZulu ‘Angikuzwa wena’ (I can’t hear you). He tried to reauthenticate himself as an African language speaker and, by extension, an African, more generally, by the usage of an African language. Similarly, in an altercation with Willie Madisha in a 2017 parliamentary debate Naledi Pandor,8 went to great lengths to authenticate herself by speaking in both Sesotho and isiZulu saying “Motho oe tsi sintle hore ke boa sesotho kemoheta. Uyayazi ukuba ndithetha isiXhosa, ndisikhuluma nesiZulu” (This person [Madisha] knows well that I speak Sesotho. You know that I speak isiXhosa and I speak isiZulu). But claiming authenticity by using an African language does not necessarily shelter an African person from ridicule because of a perceived white English language usage. In 2009, Julius Malema, then still leader of the African National Congress Youth Language (ANCYL), caused a furore by speaking about Naledi Pandor, then Minister of Education, at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) saying, “She must use that fake accent and address our problems”.9 Accusing something of being fake is taking issue with its authenticity. There has also been widespread criticism regarding the English language practices of the former leader of the DA, Mmusi Maimane.10 His persona serves as an apt example of a South African political personality who has been affected by language ideological frameworks of ideas about race. There are numerous instances in parliamentary debates where other black politicians take issue with the way Mmusi Maimane communicates in English. The ex-president Jacob Zuma, for example, once told Maimane, “Do not feed me your English from London” (Methope 2017). Furthermore, there was an incident from the state of the nation debate in February 2017 where Bongani Mkongi referred to Maimane as “a white man in a black skin”. The ex-leader of the DA has widely been seen as not appealing to the majority black population because he has been framed as “white owned” (Dawjee 2015). Maimane has repeatedly been accused of “putting on an accent for whites” (Madia 2016). In the words of one of my interviewees,11 “it is totally undermining when Mmusi switches from his proper English to black English”. While discussing Maimane’s politics, an academic colleague in Durban said to me in late 2019, “it [the accent switching] makes one want to cringe”.12 Social media platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook are also replete with comments where the politician is ridiculed for his English language practices and his different accents. One Twitter user, for instance, stated: “the only thing more ambiguous than the ANC’s economic policies is Mmusi Maimane’s accents”.13 On one of South Africa’s major media outlets, Mathabo Sekhonyana discussed the politics of language and racial identity and said Maimane’s accent serves as an example of an inauthentic black person who is wanting to please whites. Her considerations are given below: Everyone knows that white people-ing while black is an extreme sport. I often think of the many times I have left parts of myself in the drafts folder trying to be the better black, trying to get ahead, trying

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Linguistic Mobility & Racial Authenticity desperately to be accepted. As time has gone on and I have engaged with my blackness I am more and more ashamed of the person who chose to call herself Priscilla and not Mmathabo and why she made that choice. It is with the same shame and grandmother’s shake of the head that Mmathabo looks at Mmusi Maimane and each and every one of his accents. The evolution of blackness and trying desperately to kick down doors and get a seat at the table often means compromising ourselves. It means playing the “better black” character, not taking the problematic jokes too seriously, biting your tongue and, for some, like Maimane, changing your accent. (Sekhonyana 2018)

While Sekhonyana highlights the very real struggle of black people to gain recognition and upward mobility in a white privileged world, she does not consider the possibility that individuals might have more than one language variety available to express who they are. It is evident that many African people see in Maimane’s switching of accents an example for a person with a colonized mind who is not authentic. The quote below serves to illustrate this point further: We all mock DA leader Mmusi Maimane’s many accents, but the way he switches from one to another speaks to the racist way we have been judged for how we speak. This leads to our being psychologically wired to believe that our accents influence the perception of others of our intelligence. (Marshall 2018) Indeed, there is a widespread erroneous assumption in South Africa that people who speak Standard English are competent or intelligent. Maimane’s English language critics, however, do not consider that the switching of accents need not necessarily entail a lack of authenticity. People might be authentic by speaking in various different ways. But for Maimane, who is the former leader of a mostly white party, and who is married to a white woman, it seems difficult to assert authentic blackness. After all, the DA is widely perceived to be white and while it is, in fact, not reflective of the country’s demography, it is also significant that several influential leaders in the party have been criticized for their racist comments in the past. Consequently it is not surprising that few African people seem to believe in the party’s commitment to transformation in South Africa. However, when it comes to language, who can really judge other than Maimane himself whether or not he feels ‘at home’ with both African and white spaces and communities, as might be the case when he is speaking different kinds of Englishes? The perception of language practices being inextricably linked to certain identities is one of the major inheritances of colonial linguistics (Rudwick & Bing 2019) and they enforce ethnolinguistic assumptions (Blommaert et al. 2012). In this context, it is believed that people speak

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in certain ways because of their social/ethnic background and it is this background that people negotiate in identity politics. But this does not take into account the fact that one might want to change one’s ways of speaking English for a variety of reasons. Individuals are not necessarily inauthentic because they flag one particular identity of themselves. People embrace all kinds of linguistic innovations in discourse to (de)construct identities (Lacoste et al. 2014). What Coupland called “the discursive construction of authenticity and inauthenticity” (2010: 6) constitutes the basis for such ambiguous linguistic and racial identity dynamics. Authenticity must not be understood as a condition but rather a creation of social meaning (Coupland 2007: 26) and in English lingua franca discursive contexts speakers and listeners create this meaning in dialogue. If a local linguistic variety stands to index an authentic local or racial identity, the “lack of control of such a variety can indicate that one does not share an essential identity (Woolard 2016: 24). Maimane’s ethnolinguistic identity trajectory is likely to be a complex mix of cross-racial, multicultural, and polylingual belongings. In the eyes of many black South Africans, however, his accent switching between what is considered to be white English and what is perceived to be an African variety of the language is considered non-genuine. Maimane’s attempt to authenticate blackness has failed dismally if one observes the social media outrage. The fact that Maimane apparently speaks several African languages14 and is a ‘kasi-boy’ [from the township] has not saved him from criticism about the ways he changes his ways of speaking English. A News24 reporter (Mbindwane 2016)15 even called Maimane’s changing of English accents as an embarrassment. Woolard (2016: 23) argued that: it is within this logic of authenticity that the acquisition of a second language is so often imagined necessitating the loss of a first, so that the speaker’s desired identity won’t be contaminated and spoiled by linguistic traces of another identity. While this holds true in many language acquisition contexts, in South Africa and in relation to English the logic of authenticity also operates in an oppositional fashion. As described above, a black speaker whose English has no longer any linguistic trace of an African way of speaking is questioned in terms of his authentic blackness. Authenticity, it seems, is a matter of perspective, influenced by personal intent and subject to individual evaluation. There is a disturbing essentialism underlying the thinking that one accent stands for one identity. In such a view, language and identity are viewed as fixed social categories: ‘black people speak black English’ and ‘white people speak white English’. What transpires from this is an ideology of linguistic and racial authenticity which entails the idea that a person has to speak English in a particular way if he/she wants to claim membership of a certain group. International scholarship offers much insight into the concept of

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linguistic authenticity (Bucholtz 2003; Bucholtz & Hall 2004; Blommaert 2007, 2010; Coupland 2003; Lacoste et al. 2014; Woolard 2016) but, to the best of my knowledge, this has hardly been linked to racial dynamics and certainly not in the South African context. This is surprising as in Africa particularly there is a “competitive market” of English accents that contests normative perceptions of accent in the production of authenticity (Blommaert 2010: 48). The politics of who can claim to be ‘African’ are profoundly contested (Rudwick 2015, 2018). A columnist for the Daily Maverick remarked recently that “in a political climate where race continues to loom hauntingly, questions about who is or isn’t African can appear as a divisive exercise in race-baiting” (Zulu 2019). Canham and Williams (2017) argue that racialized discourse is marked by a white and a black gaze, both of which pay close attention to the ways African people use language and, in particular, how they speak English. The “white gaze controls and inferiorises, [and] it simultaneously denies and protects white privilege” (Canham & Williams 2017: 28). The black gaze, in contrast, is a “form of surveillance and disciplining that seeks to marshal certain forms of blackness” (Canham & Williams 2017: 29). Both gazes are mobile and can construct different scales of linguistic and racial authenticity. An ethnographic anecdote might further illustrate the points I am trying to make here. During the teaching of a sociolinguistics module at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2013, we discussed the status and politics of language, dialects, and sociolects. While making examples of specific linguistic features of BSAE, two Zulu students started giggling. Another black student who was seated next to the two amused ones, got visibly annoyed about the giggling and a discussion emerged about the actual varieties of English students bring to class. It was an exhilarating debate in which students, regardless of race and home language, engaged. Essentially, two quite polarized lobbies formed of which one, most simply described, was making an argument in favour of the importance of Standard English, while the other student group took on the World Englishes/ELF paradigm and argued for the legitimacy of African forms of English. At some stage, the derogatory label ‘coconut’ was thrown into the discussion and one male Zulu student turned to another male student who happened to be from Zimbabwe, saying, “Hayi wena [Oh you], if you think Zunglish is so great, why do you talk so white then?”. Here, a racial identity category was assigned to the English language usage of the Zimbabwean student. And in this case, a paradox emerged: the student who made the remark about Zunglish spoke a Zulu variety of BSAE and he took issue with the fact that someone who himself spoke a variety much closer to Standard English argues in favour of African varieties of English. But it is not surprising that such complex raciolinguistic identity dynamics continue to emerge in South Africa. During apartheid the variables language, ethnicity, and race served as the primary identifiers in a fundamentally warped and oppressive political system. People were ascribed and prescribed certain identities in order to serve the injustices of the system. Saperstein

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(2017: 20) suggests that people “have shared scripts for what an ‘authentic’ racial performance looks like” and the use of articulate Standard English by a black South African seems to fail the script for authenticity in certain contexts. The ways in which English is spoken as a lingua franca carves out conceptual spaces where both the fixity and the fluidity of language manifest. And it is indeed significant that Othering, as it takes place and unfolds here, occurs among members of the same racial group, i.e. black South Africans. This situation is deeply troubling; it constitutes an instance of how the black gaze surveils and disciplines (Canham & Williams 2017: 29). The examples above also illustrate the significance of the concept of coloniality again. Through the propagation of a static view of the relationship between language, culture, ethnicity, and race, colonialism and apartheid colonized the minds of South Africans (Herbert 1992; Makoni 1996), and, as a result, many people continue to have essentialized ideas of raciolinguistic belonging. The neutrality of English in lingua franca situations that scholars have flagged in some of the ELF literature (e.g. House 2014) does not hold in the South African context. Neutral attitudes in which English features “without ethnolinguistic sentiments” (Blommaert 2010: 98) stand in contrast to the racial identity politics described above. There is a further irony to this context. It has recently been suggested that the increasing adoption of Standard English by black South Africans has created de-racializing dynamics among black youths in South Africa (Mesthrie 2017a, 2017b). While this is one way of looking at the relationship between linguistic forms and race from a formal linguistic perspective, a more socially grounded view allows for different interpretations. The opposite, in fact, could be said as well. Rather than de-racializing each other, black South Africans are re-racializing each other by perceiving English language usage as white or black African. In other words, Standard English rather than an African language inflected English in lingua franca interactions can be seen as a hermeneutic as well as a social barrier to mutual understanding of what it means to be black and African. The crucial point to be made here is that the ambiguous nature of English as a lingua franca creates multiple racial meanings in South Africa and mobility and authenticity are useful concept metaphors through which people’s raciolinguistic realities might be better understood. There are people who might be perceived as (im)mobile or in(authentic) from one perspective and in one context and as the opposite in another (Salazar & Smart 2011). The ways in which identities of whiteness and blackness are variously constructed in English lingua franca discourse are often based on fuzzy linguistic boundary work. Race and language thinking is fundamentally entangled with thinking about socio-economic and educational status and perceptions of privilege or disadvantage. Seekings and Nattrass (2005: 369) showed that “new patterns of stratification (in terms of opportunities for mobility as well as current position) only slowly led to the emergence of social attitudes or political responses that were clearly

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differentiated along class rather than racial lines”. After all, it is only a small proportion of African people who have been able to become socially upwardly mobile to the extent that they now constitute members of an upper class (Seekings & Nattrass 2005: 369). English language usage is often perceived as a proxy for race and class, but these intersections are never static, they move around on platforms of identity politics. In order to understand their shifting meanings, we need to think of language and race as characterized by movement. One Zulu interviewee explained to me that “there is nothing wrong with being rich, that alone does not make you white, but it is what you do with your wealth”.16 Engaging with linguistic and racial (im)mobility as conceptual metaphors might advance our thinking about how all social identification processes are on the move and how they change throughout time and space. Gear Rich (2014: 1571) even suggests that what is needed is “a broader philosophical discussion about what it means, as a normative matter, to recognize autonomy and privacy interests related to race”. For many individuals it is harmful to be racially labelled, particularly if the racial label does not overlap with one’s selfidentification. The concept of mobility allows a focus on fluidity, ambiguity, and context-dependability of perceptions about language and race and it might assist in thinking beyond pregiven and institutionalized categories. While the above examples have illustrated much fixity in people’s thinking about English in lingua franca interactions and has shown how interlocutors evaluate other people’s English along a grid of ideological perceptions, at the same time, fluid English language practices also show perceptions of racial ambiguity. In certain instances, racial identities are being perceived along quite essentialist lines, in other circumstances identities are hybrid and negotiated. Importantly also, some of the examples demonstrate that there are certainly spaces when African accented English is perceived to have sociopolitical currency. If a person fails to come across as authentic in a perceived African way of speaking English, the authentication of blackness fails (as in the narrated case of Zakhele Mbhele and Mmusi Maimane). English language usage in lingua franca interaction can function as a powerful exclusionary device and this can be affected by the white gaze as well as by a black gaze.

Concluding Thoughts The legacies of English imperialism continue to haunt African people in multiple and complex ways (Pennycook 1998; Kadenge & Nkomo 2011). Through a critical analysis of how the different ways in which English is spoken in various South African lingua franca contexts we can see how linguistic and racial identity politics manifest. It is fundamental to acknowledge the discrepancies between our own theorizing and the voices of people we are writing about. Even if, as scholars, we detest essentialism and argue that views about language as bound and fixed are flawed, we still need to acknowledge and aim to understand where such views come from. If we fail to give agency to the people we study and want to empower it would imply

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that “we know what is best for them, and that they do not” (Parmegiani 2008: 112). Language ideological frameworks and ideas about authenticity can show how in South Africa people’s realities are marked by racialized subjectivities that have linguistic aspects. Aiming to think beyond race (Maré 2014; Turner 2019) remains desirable but is encumbered by the fact that social inequality continues to be profoundly marked by race in the country as is the case elsewhere in the world. While the initial part of the previous chapter illustrated how the white gaze discriminates against black people in South Africa, this chapter has shown how the black gaze can also exclude those who are not considered black enough. There is an ironic twist when it comes to the relationship between language and race which is in between the lines here. While in the process of white gazing there are limits to language when it comes to the power of race. Nqobile’s rejection on site after previous acceptance on the phone illustrated this dynamic in the previous chapter. Within the processes of black gazing, however, race at times subsides and yields to the power of language where a black person has to reassert his/her blackness by speaking in what is perceived to be an African way. As Canham and Williams (2017: 39) aptly put it: “the use of the correct lingo and linguistic code-switching required in different spaces accomplishes a number of tasks including the need to authenticate blackness in ways that pigmentation alone can no longer accomplish”. Such “correct lingo” is also the various ways in which English is spoken in lingua franca interaction. And yet, English as such and at a meta-pragmatic level provides an access no other language in the country renders possible. In the higher education sphere, for example, English has gained substantial ground since the end of apartheid and the increasing abandonment of Afrikaans. In the next chapter I explore a particular university town in South Africa, and a space which is delightful and horrifying at the same time: Stellenbosch. It is in this town and its surroundings that I couch the ambiguity examined in the next chapter: Cosmopolitanism vis-à-vis parochialism.

Notes 1 While for reasons of scope I cannot focus on class in this chapter, I would like to refer to a recent anthology edited by Niq Mhlongo (2019). Black Tax – Burden or Ubuntu? provides insights into the difficulties of navigating a middle or upper-middle-class lifestyle for black people in face of the financial struggles of extended family members and close friends. 2 A pencil was placed in a person’s hair, and if it fell out, he/she was classified as white. If it stayed put, the person was regarded as black. 3 In her paper, Horáková (2018) argues that rather than a deracialization process taking place, there is increasing racialized political discourse in South Africa. 4 While it is not impossible to be wealthy in South Africa without knowledge of the English language, it is safe to say that this constitutes an exception. 5 In higher education, Standard English rather than other English varieties, such as South African Indian English, is seen as a desired norm (Wiebesiek, Rudwick & Zeller 2011).

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6 Thabile, 24-year-old, female Linguistics student, Durban, 29 November 2019. 7 Kagiso, 42-year-old female Zulu artist, KwaMashu, 3 January 2018. 8 Pondor, Naledi (2017). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=94RGsTvipXs&feature= youtu.be (accessed 12 April 2020). 9 https://mg.co.za/article/2009-02-17-malema-to-meet-pandor-following-fake-a ccent-spat (accessed 8 January 2020). 10 Alim and Smitherman (2012) have shown how the combination of Barak Obama’s skilful white ways of speaking and black cultural articulations provided much appeal to the American people. In South Africa, such style shifting seems to be regarded in a more negative light. 11 Thuli, 23-year-old female isiZulu-speaking Linguistics student, Durban, 5 October 2019. 12 Dumisani, 46-year-old male Zulu lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, 28 September 2019. 13 https://twitter.com/chestermissing/status/524906832075436032?ref_src=twsrc% 5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E524906832075436032&ref_ url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thedailyvox.co.za%2Fmmusi-maimane-on-ourbroken-country-that-accent-and-being-obamalite%2F. 14 See https://www.politicsweb.co.za/iservice/about-mmusi-maimane (accessed 30 January 2020). 15 https://www.news24.com/xArchive/Voices/maimanes-multiple-accents-20180719 (accessed 10 January 2020). 16 Brian, 46-year-old Zulu journalist, Durban, 24 November 2019.

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Introduction In early March 2017, a young Xhosa student who was one of the leaders in the #OpenStellenbosch (OS) student movement at Stellenbosch University (SU) was interviewed for my project and in talking about English he said, “Well … English, of course, has colonial baggage but English also provides access to the entire world, it is the cosmopolitan tongue”.1 The comment echoes sentiments many young black South Africans would share. English as the academic and global lingua franca and ideas about cosmopolitanism are often seen as synonymous. In South Africa, the term cosmopolitan and its derivative Afropolitan play a significant role in public discourse and there is often some sort of association with English. At the same time, calls for decolonization also interrogate the hegemonic role English holds in the country, especially in education, and the resulting low positioning of African languages in teaching and learning (Dube 2017). In this chapter I aim to describe how a shift towards English as the primary academic lingua franca has been associated with cosmopolitanism at Stellenbosch University, and how, on the other hand, this development has run parallel to a local metalanguage discourse that constructs English as an oppressive language. It has been argued that “policies of language and education are inherently political, but nowhere more so than in South Africa where language has been closely bound up in the system of ethnic and racial division” (Murray 2002: 435). As I explore how certain linguistic and ethnic politics are deployed to produce cosmopolitan and parochial identities, racial divisions also come to the fore. The discussion I offer here does not claim to describe in any comprehensive manner the taalstreyd (language battle) or all the ways in which language and ethnic politics play out in a town such as Stellenbosch. Instead, it aims to describe how the ambiguities of English as a lingua franca trigger specific strategies that are used to produce particular forms of politics of language, ethnicity, and race.

Is English Cosmopolitan? It is arguably not necessary to speak English in order to be a cosmopolitan person. Conversely, many English speakers are far from having cosmopolitan DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472-6

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identities. It is the context in which English is a lingua franca which frequently marks its status as cosmopolitan because it is assumed that it fosters communication between people with different backgrounds. Appiah (1997: 639) suggests: the cosmopolitan will remind us that what we share with others is not always an ethno-national culture: sometimes it will just be that you and I a Peruvian and a Slovak-both like to fish, or have read and admired Goethe in translation … That is, so to speak, the anglophone voice of cosmopolitanism. Although Appiah’s more recent work critically extended the concept of cosmopolitanism, I found this extract valuable for its specific reference to the English language as defining the described context as an anglophone cosmopolitanism.2 Arguably, the dual status of English as the ‘global/international language’ and one that is spoken by far more people as an additional language than a first language marks it as somewhat prototypically cosmopolitan. And this is precisely one of the platforms on which many – not all –ELF scholars have positioned themselves. However, if cosmopolitanism is primarily reflecting the extension of “oneself to the other, … about reflecting the heterogeneity of the universe in the small spaces we occupy” (Ramanathan 2012: 79), then any kind of language could qualify as a cosmopolitan tongue because openness is not about any particular language.3 Eze (2017) appeals for an empathetic cosmopolitanism through universally shared ethics and, with specific reference to South Africa, by drawing from the legacy of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu (Eze 2018). Of course, the openness and respectfulness towards the “Other” which is inherent in cosmopolitanism also must be combined with the struggle for socio-economic justice, and this is where the status of English becomes problematic. Its global spread as a lingua franca and so-called cosmopolitan tongue has been linked to Anglo-American dominance which brings profound social injustices (Phillipson 1992). Holliday (2009: 28) warned that ELF scholarship could fall in the ‘global cosmopolitan trap’ which fails to see these global injustices and cultural politics of English. This is, indeed, a crucial point to consider in the South African context, as romanticized ideas about cosmopolitanism as linked to English can lead to an irresponsible apathy that runs the danger of allowing the ‘Centre’ to project a world in which injustice and inequality are non-existent (Canagarajah, 1999, 2013). Arguably, there has been a tendency to portray the benign status of cosmopolitanism in the literature, or rather there has been a refusal to see the “danger of fusing the ideal with the real” (Beck & Sznaider 2006: 384). This benignity has also often been assigned to English but as Ives (2010: 530) aptly states “a ‘global language’ like English can never fulfil the role cosmopolitanism sets for it, that of helping those marginalised and oppressed by ‘globalisation’ to be heard”. The issue is that cosmopolitan ideals are often trapped in a ‘bubble’ (Petriglieri 2016, Stornaiuolo & Nichols 2019). This is equally applicable to

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English as a lingua franca or English as a global language. Jenkins (2015) has reflected on the ‘ELF bubble’ and sees a multilingual reorientation of ELF as a ‘way out’. Acknowledging multiple languages in English lingua franca discourse is an important step but other social variables also demand consideration. Holliday (2009: 21), for instance, cautioned that “although it [ELF] searches for a cosmopolitan solution to the hegemony of ‘native speaker’ English” the call for tolerance in linguistic diversity is not sufficient to counteract discrimination. ELF scholarship does not adequately consider realities such as racialization processes, which characterize the experiences of so-called ‘non-native speaker’ English educators. Employing Centre vis-àvis Periphery similarly to how other scholars employ the notions of global North vis-à-vis the global South, Holliday compellingly shows how ‘nonnative’ speakers and educators might not want to embrace ELF as a ‘norm’ for themselves for socio-political reasons. He also shows the dangerously racializing patterns of the way people’s English is perceived. While ELF researchers embrace diversity in ways of speaking English and propagate acceptance of these various forms in which English is spoken as a lingua franca, a paradigmatic shift in the ways English ‘competence’ and ‘proficiency’ is perceived in most parts of the world has not happened. The association between Standard English and whiteness continue to be inextricable. As I have tried to demonstrate in Chapter 4, there are limits to the power of language in relation to race. Language sadly does not have the power to dispose of racism. In the South African context, Afropolitanism rather than cosmopolitanism has become a common concept which has been thoroughly commercialized with a magazine bearing its name.4 In the academic literature, Afropolitanism proposes an ‘interweaving of worlds’ (Mbembe 2007: 28) and it understands the conditions of (South) African (urban) life and identities as fluid, heterogeneous, and hybrid. Afropolitan thinking includes “The Ability to Recognise One’s Face in That of a Foreigner and make the most of the traces of remoteness in closeness, to domesticate the unfamiliar, to work with what seem to be opposites …” (Mbembe 2007: 27). Evoking Bhabha (1994), an Afropolitan could be characterized as “that human being on the African continent or of African descent who has realized that her identity can no longer be explained in purist, essentialist, and oppositional terms or by reference only to Africa” (Eze, 2014: 240, emphasis added). Taken from the opposite perspective, an Afropolitan is a cosmopolitan who has some sort of grounding in Africa or at least an emotional affinity to the continent. However, the term has received quite extensive criticism in recent years, in particular by African literature scholars who see the dominant understanding of Afropolitanism as problematic due to its promotion of “Western ideology by holding in high esteem the experiences of cultural hybridity, immigration and mobility in the West” (Gourgem 2017: 293). In 2017, numerous scholars evaluated the vitality of the concept of ‘Afropolitan’ while aiming to offer alternative ways to the advancement of African and Afrodiasporic studies in a special issue of the European Journal of

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English Studies (Durán-Almarza, Kabir & González, 2017). It is, from my perspective, not without irony that an English Studies journal in the global North served as the platform for the discussion of Afropolitanism and not, for instance, English in Africa or an African Studies journal. The large body of scholarship engaging with cosmopolitanism or Afropolitanism in Africa (Appiah 2006; Balakrishnan 2017; Eze 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017; Bentley & Habib 2008; Mbembe 2007; Mbembe & Balakrishan 2016) provides conceptual tools for embracing diversity and difference. While these are valuable given the prevalence of essentialist thought and “nativism” in South Africa (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009), they often operate alongside idealized ideas of society. In the context of studies on ELF its cosmopolitan status has often been implicit, and some ELF studies (House 2003, 2014) have also operated along idealized ideas of English as ‘neutral’ in lingua franca communication. It is, of course, preposterous to think that knowledge of English per se is synonymous with a cosmopolitan life or identity. Many people who are proficient in English are far from being (able to be) cosmopolitans. For someone whose first language is English it might be easier to have access to cosmopolitan thoughts and lifeworlds, but to assume that a person necessarily embraces cosmopolitan values just because he/she speaks English is, of course, fundamentally flawed. One has only to think of the English paroles of xenophobic British hooligans or the racist rants of US white supremacists which could not be further from the description of cosmopolitan citizens. However, the fact that English is the lingua franca of the world, privileges English speakers, to some extent, in a quest for cosmopolitanism. Piller (2001), for instance, has shown how in German advertisements, English is employed to link the product with cosmopolitan values implying that one could become a member of the global (elitist) community by buying the item. In the German context, it has also been shown, however, that cosmopolitanism and a strong sense of local belonging are by no means exclusive.5 In South Africa one of the prime factors that distinguishes English lingua franca spaces from those in the global North is the fact that in many contexts, and mostly those that involve white (and Indian/coloured) people, African language speakers employ English not because it is their choice but because it is a necessity. Part of the legacy of apartheid and one of the continuous institutional sociolinguistic ironies is that the overwhelming majority of white (and Indian/coloured) people have not become proficient in an African language. As a result of the failure of non-African people to learn African languages it is primarily English which is the common lingua franca during communication involving white people.6 The use of English is therefore functional, it is employed for lack of other communicative possibilities. This, however, is not to say that in some contexts English might be a choice. An isiZulu-speaker, for instance, might want to flag a particular urban, educated, and/or socially mobile persona in a certain context. English is linked to a certain prestige in most language communities. Due to its high status as both a national and a global lingua franca there are multiple

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associations between Standard English and elitism and those run deep and through practically all communities in South Africa. The language ideologies of English are seated in the widespread perception of its superior status and these sentiments cut across class and race. Whether one speaks an African language as a first language, Kaaps, or Afrikaans, excessive use of English, especially Standard English, in a predominantly other language context, will in many instances be regarded as ‘snobbish’. These perceptions are often based on essentialist notions that such a person believes him/herself to be ‘better than others’. As a global process English has increasingly been promoted in higher education under the auspices of strategic cosmopolitan ambitions in the sense that a shared academic lingua franca provides for shared knowledge production and dissemination. I will discuss the ambiguity of these ideas by illustrating developments in South African higher education. The University of Cape Town (UCT) popularized its institutional culture and mission as Afropolitanism in 2011 under the chancellorship of Max Price.7 While this notion of ‘Afropolitaness’ at UCT aimed at acknowledging that excellent scholarship is produced in Africa by African people, there was also a clear orientation towards the world, especially the global North.8 While officially and on paper UCT’s vision might have appeared progressive (Banda & Mafofo 2016), the #RhodesMustFall9 campaign unfolding in early 2015 pointed to a different reality for black students and staff. As the statue of Rhodes was removed from the premises of UCT, it became clear that most black students and staff have felt ‘out of place’ and alienated for a long time at UCT (Kapp & Bangeni 2011). While student protests were initiated at UCT, they quickly gained support from various sides and stimulated further protests across the country’s universities. At Stellenbosch University10 the protests had language matters as one of their core concerns. Language politics have a long and complicated history at the university, and I can only provide a glimpse into these for the purpose of this book. Although the institution that preceded the current SU was an English college, it developed into a solidly Afrikaans university which was inextricably linked toAfrikaner nationalism and white racistsupremacist politics in the twentieth century. From 1930, the institution virtually represented the academic engine behind much of Afrikaner apartheid ideology and some of the most ruthless leaders of the apartheid state are alumni of SU. Between 1919 and 1978 each South African prime minister had been involved with SU, the list includes Jan Smuts, J.B.M. Herzog, D.F. Malan, J.G. Strijdom, H.F. Verwoerd, and B.J. Vorster. SU did not open its doors to all South African students until the early 1990s (when it was forced to).11 Afrikaans continued to be the default language in the university and its ‘pretty’ town both of which had seen massive financial investment by Afrikaners over the decades. Although English was made a second language of instruction (Giliomee 2001, 2003a; Giliomee & Schlemmer 2006), Afrikaans remained dominant on and around the campus, as well as in the town. On 29 May 1997, the South African Minister of

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Education Dr Sibusiso Bengu stated that SU could not persist in being an exclusively Afrikaans medium university, particularly given new governance on inclusivity across tertiary education.12 Importantly also, white Afrikaans and Afrikaner culture (not Kaaps/Afrikaaps) remained pervasive as the modus vivendi at the university and in the town, which made for a racially problematic climate. In the early 2000s, however, and more markedly from 2002 when Christopher Brink took over as vice-chancellor of SU, the largely monolingual institution started to transform into one that also offered extensive English tuition.13 It was during those years that what became known as the first taalstreyd (language battle) unfolded. A protest petition fighting to protect Afrikaans against English at the institution signed by 3,500 SU staff and students, as well as a letter signed by 143 prominent Afrikaans authors, was presented to the SU Council in 2005 in an attempt to safeguard the language. Afrikaans became the symbol of Afrikaner identity politics in the still ‘fresh’ new South Africa and Stellenbosch was arguably its most contested battleground. Afrikaans speaking people have, more than any other ethnolinguistics group in South Africa, complained about the lack of support for their language in the press, to PanSALB and on various other platforms (Orman 2008). The renowned historian Herman Giliomee has used dramatic metaphors such as the ‘lamb’ (Afrikaans) being eaten by the ‘lion’ (English) (2009) in one of his media pieces. Many other Afrikaners saw the loss of Afrikaans as the primary medium at SU not only as a sign of the demise of the Afrikaans language in higher education but as a direct attack on their identities. As Bosch put it succinctly: Afrikaans “acts as a creator and definer” of Afrikanerdom (Bosch 2000: 52). In 2007, the university was led, for the first time, by a coloured Afrikaansspeaking vice-chancellor. The reconciliatory Russel Botman tried mediating between the polarized lobbies within the institution and beyond and SU’s language policy revisions under his leadership showed an emphasis on multilingualism with a clause that stipulated that Afrikaans would be ‘safeguarded’. Despite this clause, conservative Afrikaners and the so-called taalstreyders (language fighters) regarded the language policy developments as having a further negative impact on Afrikaans. Botman tragically died in 2014, and it has been alleged in the media that emotional and psychological pressure (not least due to the polarized language and racial politics at the university) might have contributed to his untimely and sad death.14 In the absence of hard evidence relating to Botman’s passing we can only make assumptions about the devastating nature of the taalstreyd on Botman’s life. Language is a sensitive issue for most South Africans, but it is an exceptionally emotive issue for many Afrikaners who see a threat to their language as a threat to their very existence.

#OpenStellenbosch Student Movement In 2015, during the wake of the #RhodesMustFall campaign, a student movement called #OpenStellenbosch (OS) was formed at SU. The student body of

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SU had diversified since the early 2000s, with increasing numbers of isiXhosa, Kaaps, English, and other language speaking students attending the institution. In late February the following year (2016) my fieldwork took me to the Western Cape for several months and over a period of six weeks I interviewed a number of students who had made a name for themselves in the wake of the protests at SU and UCT. On 3 March 2016, a meeting organized by the South African Student Council Organization (SASCO) took place in one of the largest lecture halls at SU and a large number of students and some staff members attended. There were very few white, coloured, and Indian students in the audience and not a single non-black individual on the podium. Initiating the meeting, one of the student leaders said: Black children are brought here [to the University of Stellenbosch] to be educated, coming with the dreams of their families, so that they can have a good education, but when they get here, there are obstacles in their way. Those obstacles, first and foremost, is being taught in a language that they do not understand. But let’s get this clear, we never said that we hate or dislike Afrikaans, it is one of the languages of this country, but never must a language be enforced onto people. Never in this country. (Emphasis added) The emphatic speech evidently resonated with the crowd of students who cheered loudly in response. The student’s message and the broader South African sociolinguistic realities inherent in it also resonated with me. Why would students have to study in a third language when they had already compromised to learn in a second (English)? The speech contained a twofold message: first, Afrikaans, unlike English (which was the language in which the speech was delivered), is not widely understood by African (at SU mostly isiXhosa) students and, secondly, it is seen as politically illegitimate to force students to learn (in) Afrikaans or any other language for that matter. Implicit in the comment was also the overall complaint of the OS collective: Afrikaans was used as a ‘tool of exclusion’. In the press, the #OpenStellenbosch student group was sometimes portrayed as radical, but neither the interviews I conducted nor the public statements of the group seemed to justify these portrayals. For instance, the Open Stellenbosch Memorandum of Demands 15 published on 13 May 2015 read as follows: 1 2

3

All classes must be available in English. The use of translators and translation-devices must be discontinued, as they are ineffective, inaudible and highlight the place of non-Afrikaans speaking students at Stellenbosch as those who do not belong. All official and unofficial communication from management, faculty and university departments must be available in English. This includes communication between faculty and staff, and not simply the communique from management.

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4

All residence, faculty, departmental and administrative meetings and correspondence must be conducted in English. Afrikaans must not be a requirement for employment or appointment to leadership positions. The University must stop using isiXhosa as a front for multilingualism when it has clearly invested minimal resources in its development on campus. Alternatively, significant investment must be directed at developing isiXhosa on campus. All signage on campus must be available in English.

5 6

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Ironically, shortly after the collective was formed, the University management came under further pressure in August 2015. A student documentary portraying the racially charged climate and discriminatory practices at SU went viral on social networks. Based on very personal interviews, Luister 16 (Listen) provided a shocking account of racist-linguistic discriminatory and oppressive practices that black students were experiencing in Stellenbosch. As Stroud and Williams (2017: 173, emphasis in original) state, the documentary “highlights the subtle and complex ways in which language ‘produces’ black bodies in white spaces for whites, forming the racialised experience of black students who suffer under the white oppression with epidermal differentiation”. It rightly outraged not only South Africans but international viewers. While much of the film’s narrative is not about language but violent racism of a diverse nature, some students describe specifically how Afrikaans is “killing”17 African students at SU because they cannot follow the lectures. One student, in particular, provides a powerful narrative about how the language remains the “language of the oppressor” for him. Many sentiments brought forward in the film echo what Mabokela (2001: 72) had argued more than a decade prior to Luister: that “for African students, using Afrikaans as a medium of instruction is like pouring salt into an open wound”. The video reflected a “construct of multilingualism typical of a colonial governmentality” in which immense pain is inflicted on black bodies through a systematic hierarchization of languages (Stroud & Williams 2017: 184). Between early 2015 and midway through 2016, the #Open Stellenbosch group organized several demonstrations and demanded, inter alia, a change in the language policy from Afrikaans medium to English medium. Over a period of more than a year, the language coalition of the OS group met repeatedly with the acting vice-chancellor and various university executive members. As a result of the Luister documentary and the concrete demands of #OpenStellenbosch, the University executive knew that concessions were necessary to pacify the toxic raciolinguistic climate that had spread in the institution. In mid-2016, the executive management agreed that a new language policy would be drafted, one in which English (and not Afrikaans) would become the primary language of learning and teaching. Given the stigma of Afrikaans as a “language of the oppressor”, its perceived status as a “language of exclusion” and the strong international value of English, it was, after all, not surprising

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that Afrikaans could not be maintained as the dominant medium of instruction at Stellenbosch.18 And yet, it is not without irony that one ex-colonial language replaced another. On 22 June 2016, the US council approved a new language policy reflecting a change in the role of Afrikaans at the institution. While the 2014 language policy had stated that “the University is committed to the use and sustained development of Afrikaans as an academic language in a multilingual context …”, this passage was entirely omitted in the revised 2016 version. Instead, the new document reads: “we commit ourselves to multilingualism by using the province’s three official languages, namely Afrikaans, English and isiXhosa”. Importantly also, the revised Stellenbosch University Language Policy states: “During each lecture, all information is conveyed at least in English and summaries or emphasis of content are also repeated in Afrikaans”. Virtually all clauses referring exclusively to Afrikaans in the 2014 Language Policy document are omitted or include English and isiXhosa in the 2016 version. The lobby group Gelyke Kanse (Equal Opportunities) went to the High Court to dispute the legitimacy of the 2016 language policy but on 10 October 2019, the Constitutional Court judgement ruled in favour of SU. As a result, three convocation members (alumni of SU) resigned, including the president of the convocation, advocate Jan Heunis – who had represented Gelyke Kanse in the court case against the SU language policy.19 Arguably, this victory over Afrikaans at the public University of Stellenbosch can be seen as a victory over ‘linguo-ethnified’ university language politics (Beck 2018). Ironically, however, the process also perpetuated an artificially depoliticized perspective of English (Painter 2015) and the “assumption that English is an innocent and benign language” (Dube 2017: 19). Indeed, English emerged and positioned itself as the common and cosmopolitan lingua franca. There was no cosmopolitan value attached to Afrikaans and the local/parochial politics associated with it worked against it. One of my #OpenStellenbosch consultants poignantly remarked in an informal talk in 2016: “English is simply the lesser one of the two evils”.20 Throughout the twentieth century and especially in the post-1994 period, the role of English as the academic lingua franca in South African higher education not only prevailed but strengthened. The late Neville Alexander, who was, first and foremost, a promoter of multilingualism, emphasized the value of English as a linking language in the country. However, Alexander (2013: 84) also cautioned that “the use of English as a language of tuition at tertiary level because of its lingua franca function … is no guarantee of educational equity”. At the University of KwaZulu-Natal this statement resonated with Zulu students who felt they were at a disadvantage compared to the mostly white and Indian English L1 speaking students (Rudwick & Parmegiani 2013, Parmegiani & Rudwick 2014). At SU, however, where the majority of students are Afrikaans or isiXhosa speaking, English is a compromise, a second language (rather than a first) for most students. This suggests that vibrant multilingualism is a fruitful ground for a ‘healthy’ English lingua franca set-up.

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Interestingly, on an academic online platform on which South African language politics were discussed, one white female academic called the demands of the #OpenStellenbosch collective “short-sighted” as it is not supportive of multilingualism. However, one has to acknowledge that until isiXhosa is established as a language of learning and teaching at SU, multilingualism effectively means English/Afrikaans bilingualism. Several members of the #OpenStellenbosch group said in interviews that the University’s Afrikaans/ English bilingualism had posed unjustly as multilingualism.21 When, in 2016, I also interviewed two managerial staff members, and a translator in SU’s Taalsentrum [Language Centre], I learned that only two staff members at the Center were isiXhosa speaking, while 10 out of 14 staff at the Centre were Afrikaans speakers. These figures speak for themselves. The lack of Xhosa staff and translators was symptomatic of the kind of ‘multilingualism’ the institution had fostered. It is problematic when those who claim to be for the preservation of multilingualism are “trapped within the bounds of their own Enlightenment epistemologies” (De Souza 2017: 206). Pennycook and Makoni (2020: 80) emphasize the importance of examining single contexts and how “different relations of language exist locally and how they relate to economic opportunities”. Clearly, for Xhosa students English was and continues to be key to economic opportunities and it would be absurd to discourage them from concentrating on it. Besides, when it came to teaching and learning, the OS members prioritized access to a language of learning they understood. Afrikaans was no such language and isiXhosa was and is (not yet) established as a medium at SU.22 The discussion showed that SU has provided a fruitful climate in which the academic lingua franca status of English and its associations with cosmopolitanism could strive. There is an abundance of multilingual practices and usage of localized Englishes at the institution, as is the case elsewhere in urban South Africa. Multifaceted ELF discourse in which Kaaps, Afrikaans, Afrikaaps, isiXhosa, and other language interference takes place on a daily basis is arguably conducive to a linguistically dynamic cosmopolitan climate. However, there are ambiguities in the fact that English has gained this position and the socio-cultural politics and identity endowing processes that have been at work in Stellenbosch reflect this. English, as I keep reiterating, does not have a ‘benign’ status as a lingua franca, either in Stellenbosch or elsewhere in the country. Ethno and raciolinguistic identity politics bedevil English and they continue to loom particularly high in a place such as Stellenbosch.

Ethnolinguistic Politics and Parochialism Many Afrikaners (white Afrikaans speakers) have felt disillusioned about the increasing status of English vis-à-vis their language in the post-1994 period, and this pertains in particular to its position in higher education. The melodramatic article referred to earlier and written by the prominent Afrikaner historian and

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Stellenbosch resident, Herman Giliomee in which he likened Afrikaans to a lamb which was eaten by the lion (English) was symptomatic of the kind of ethnolinguistic politics which were at play. Many taalstreyders who are involved in the language debate at Stellenbosch, see English as a predator that is killing the Afrikaans language. As a response to Giliomee, several academics from SU wrote a nuanced article which argued against Afrikaner ethnolinguistic identity politics and makes a point about the internationalization of the institution implicitly voting for English.24 Afrikaners have been the most vocal in their complaints about what has been perceived as the demise of their language. English certainly does not represent a ‘neutral’ lingua franca for most Afrikaners. When I interviewed Herman Giliomee in early 2015, he was fatalistic about the future of Afrikaans but was still committed to his own linguistic nationalism. By referring to an Afrikaner friend in Stellenbosch who originally made a conscious decision to send his children to an English school but then later regretted his decision, he flagged the importance of ethnic identity. Apparently, his friend’s son “never developed any sort of ethnic identity” and his friend felt that ultimately this was working against his son. “If you don’t have an ethnic identity, just this sort of cosmopolitan identity, you are lacking something, you lose your moorings to some extent”. Afrikaans represents what Giliomee referred to as “a social commitment” and he sees coloured people as being included in this commitment. During an interview with a young female Afrikaner student25 in early 2016, at the time when Open Stellenbosch was pressuring the University to change its language policy, she recounted a most embarrassing situation with her father. They had gone for dinner at a prominent Afrikaner restaurant in Stellenbosch and Nadine’s father spoke in Afrikaans with the black waitress. When she responded in English that she couldn’t speak Afrikaans, her father apparently bristled with indignation and demanded to be served by someone who was Afrikaans speaking. Nadine recounted that a middle-aged male Afrikaner manager came to explain – in Afrikaans – that the table was assigned to the waitress who was already serving them and that a change would complicate the store management. Nadine recollected the anger in her father’s eyes. He got up from his chair and stormed out of the restaurant. Apparently, her father had often said in a joking manner “My geld praat Afrikaans” (My money speaks Afrikaans), but in this instance he was proven wrong. Although Nadine seemed to feel embarrassed about the incident, she also expressed sympathy for her father’s reaction: “he felt as if he was robbed of his home ground”, she said. The link to territory in this comment shows that the town continues to be conceived as the ‘home’ of Afrikaners. A similar type of loss of privilege was expressed by Francois,26 a coffee entrepreneur who I coincidently met during the COVID lockdown in Stellenbosch: Ek moet nou heeltyd Engels praat, want die Xhosas wil nou nie meer Afrikaans praat nie (I now have to speak English with Xhosa people all the time because they don’t like speaking Afrikaans anymore). Although in the past African language speakers who could speak

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Afrikaans accommodated Afrikaners by using their language as a lingua franca, this is decreasingly the case. The examples above suggest that English is not acknowledged as a ‘neutral’ lingua franca by the Afrikaners referred to above but rather as a language which pushed aside Afrikaans as a potential lingua franca. During a different interview, Johan27 described how his mother got annoyed with an employee who refused to speak Afrikaans at a drugstore in the Eikestad mall located next to the campus of the university. He showed, however, little sympathy for his own mother as he frustratingly declared: “the worst is you know that her English is perfect”. Many young white Afrikaans students whom I met during the fieldwork in Stellenbosch felt that the type of ethnolinguistic identity politics described above were not a part of their own social agenda.28 And yet, there were some29 who did voice annoyance that according to them some people now refuse to speak Afrikaans even though they are proficient in the language. A few male Afrikaner students30 also expressed regret for the fading status of Afrikaans. A Stellenbosch shop owner31 in his late twenties who used to work in a corporation said in an interview: “Die irriterende ding is dat vyfen-twintig Afrikaners en‚ enkele Engels persoon, ons nog steeds na Engels moet oorskakel. Dit lei tot frustrasie”. (The annoying thing is that if there are 25 Afrikaners and just one single English person, we still have to switch to English. It leads to frustration.) A retired teacher32 reflected on the situation at SU in fatalistic terms by saying, “You see, it’s hard when all of the sudden your language and your place is taken away from you”. To critically situate these comments is to recount how white South Africans occupied a highly privileged, socio-political, and institutional structural position in the country’s past. The post-1994 period triggered Afrikaans-Afrikaner ethnolinguistic politics of alleged marginalization. Narratives of victimhood among Afrikaners are nothing new (Jansen 2009; Steyn 2004), they manifest also through popular Afrikaans cultural expression and social media (Marx Knoetze 2020). While there are generational differences and much diversity generally among Afrikaners today and Afrikaans certainly is not equally important to everyone, it is remarkable that within the white Afrikaansspeaking population there has been no shift from Afrikaans to English, but rather a strengthening of the language (see Posel & Zeller 2015 for census data). There are multiple “ways of being” white and Afrikaans speaking and there are many, especially young, Afrikaners who have certainly “moved beyond the ethnic and nationalist mobilisation which supported Afrikaner nationalism and the apartheid state” (Blaser 2012: 18). And yet some Afrikaner ethnolinguistic nationalism has been exclusionary and deep-seated (Kriel 2006). This has not worked in favour of Afrikaans post-1994. A retired Afrikaansspeaking Stellenbosch academic33 expressed frustration about what she termed Afrikaner parochialism. She explained that it was not uncommon among Afrikaner nationalists to link the demise of Afrikaans at SU to a demise of standards. Many Afrikaner nationalists also do not accept that (Afri)Kaaps is as valuable a variety as is current Standard Afrikaans and some ridicule

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suggestions to restandardize for educational purposes. (Afri)Kaaps continues to be widely constructed as inferior dialects ‘appropriate only for certain situations’, or in an Adam Small poem.34 Qualitative research has shown (Van der Westhuizen 2013) that, for instance, middle-aged Afrikaner women embrace Afrikaans as one way of asserting their belonging and their ways of being. One interviewee (Nerina) in this study spoke about her mother in the following way: “My mom [says] ‘Afrikaans is our language and … if somebody can’t help you, they should go and find someone that’s Afrikaans because we have a right to be here” (Van der Westhuizen 2013: 178). It is argued that demonstrating direct opposition to English continues to have “intergenerational significance” and that it brings with it a sense of entitlement after having fought against English oppression throughout history. The insistence on speaking Afrikaans is a rejection of English as representing “an existential attack” (Van der Westhuizen 2013: 179). The “right to be here” is a common sentiment to claim space and belonging in the post-apartheid dispensation and language is one of the most immediate and powerful tools through which this claim can be observed in the behaviour of some Afrikaners. Van der Westhuizen (2013: 178) writes how some of her female Afrikaner interviewees “resist concession of space, reporting ‘anger’, with the source of the resistance” against “the displacement of Afrikaans by English identity”. Similarly, a male interviewee in my study, a 56-year-old self-identified female Afrikaner professional35 said, “Ek praat Afrikaans (I speak Afrikaans) and, you know – I sometimes make it a conscious point not to speak English, for example on the phone. I have a right to be here.” This right to be here, as native citizens of South Africa, features particularly strongly in a place such as Stellenbosch where Afrikaner wealth and capital is ubiquitous. Another young male Afrikaner,36 who I interviewed in early 2018 in a fashionable Stellenbosch café, spoke about a generational shift which distinguished him from his parents. In his narrative, perceptions about race featured in quite essentialist terms but when it came to language usage, his attitude was more flexible. He was, in his own claim “100% bilingual”, equally comfortable in Afrikaans and English. But because he recently started dating a woman who, in his own words, was of “solid Afrikaner” background, he spoke more Afrikaans than English at home. He continued saying that “in restaurants, mostly I speak English, even here [in Stellenbosch], but Elize [his girlfriend] insists on Afrikaans. And when we are with the ‘old folks’ [parents] – you know, we only ever use Afrikaans …”. During my many months of fieldwork in Stellenbosch between 2014 and 2020, there were numerous encounters which I interpreted as parochial thinking, ethnolinguistic identity politics, and racist incidences. A father of one of the children who played in the soccer club with my son told me during a practice lesson: “We were always oppressed by the English, but black people think they were the only ones who were oppressed”.37 Similarly, another parent claimed that “Afrikaners are pushed to the periphery in South Africa now and

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that’s why we try to stay among our people here in Stellenbosch”.38 The reference to “our people” implied ‘only’ the Afrikaner community and was elaborated on in further detail, explaining how coloured people had a different culture. Individual Afrikaners are engaged with the deeply parochial politics of identity which feeds on the feeling of marginality expressed in the previous chapter. How might we explain the parochialism evident in places such as Stellenbosch? One way might be to draw from critical whiteness studies (Distiller and Steyn 2004; Verwey and Quayle 2012; Van der Westhuizen 2013, 2016) which have argued that ‘traditional’ Afrikaner identity is largely constructed, first as a racial identity and, secondly, as a linguistic identity. Within the logic of subaltern whiteness (Chapter 4) both blackness and Englishness are seen as tools which exclude and oppress. Although many of the Afrikaner interviewees in Stellenbosch acknowledged their socio-economic privilege, they perceived it as well deserved and several of them felt a sense of strong dissatisfaction with their overall position in the country. And yet, in Stellenbosch, Afrikaans continues to serve, to a certain extent, as the default language in the town. Afrikaners continue to be able to contest the power of English in various spaces in Stellenbosch. At the same time, however, as the student interviews above illustrate, Afrikaans seems to be decreasingly able to disrupt the hegemony of English as a lingua franca in the country. Unlike pre-1994, there are only certain domains in which Afrikaans can maintain itself as a common lingua franca. A strong sentiment of entitlement to speaking Afrikaans persists, especially among the older generation, and this leads to parochial identity politics. And these are partly the reason why Stellenbosch remains a rather hostile place for many black people. Afrikaner coloniality lingers as a material and psychological legacy in the life experience of people in this town. As one of my consultants put it bluntly: “this is not a place for black people”.39 A Xhosa student40 described how he was attacked by a neighbour’s dog in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods of the town and how the owner, an elderly Afrikaner woman, only reluctantly apologized for the incident. Justifying her dog’s misbehaviour, she suggested that there were “many black thugs” around and her own position was very vulnerable. The Luister documentary provides ample examples of the racist abuse and exclusion black students experience. Although five years have passed since it was made, several of my black and coloured interviewees provided narratives which were replete with experiences of racial discrimination. The scope of this monograph does not allow for a more detailed discussion of the racial and linguistic politics at SU and its town. The literature on the topic is extensive and an analysis of the media publications in the Afrikaans press alone could make for an entire monograph with a focus on subaltern whiteness. My focus remains English and suffice it to say here that even in a place such as Stellenbosch, which continues to be a stronghold of Afrikaans and Afrikaner culture, English is receiving both recognition and disruption as a common lingua franca.

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Among the diverse coloured communities around Stellenbosch, linguistic identity politics in relation to English are constituted in very different ways from those among Afrikaners. Not that English might not also contribute to a feeling of marginalization, but the language does not seem to carry the ‘oppressor’ stigma it is tainted with in some segments of the Afrikaner community. Kim, the coloured student consultant41 whom I worked with over a period of five years, was adamant that it is mostly the “Afrikaners [who] have a problem with English”. Several other coloured interviewees echoed a similar statement, Loraine42 and Riana43 both indicated that they would rather opt for an English medium school for their potential future child than a white Afrikaans school. Kim, who is now registered for PhD studies at SU, emphatically stated: “if, as a coloured you speak with ‘that’ [white/Afrikaner] accent, you’re gonna be a sellout”. The comment suggests that speaking what is perceived as white Afrikaans creates a social boundary in the coloured community, analogue to the boundaries that Standard English creates in African language speaking communities. But this is not to say that the ‘wrong’ English might not also create power dynamics in the coloured community. In the words of Kim again, “having ownership of English is much more acceptable [in the coloured community] than speaking with a white Afrikaans accent”. According to her, “that just does not go down well”. Speaking in what is perceived as white Afrikaans is associated with elitist behaviour. But so-called white Afrikaans is not the only language perceived as elitist: Kim also reflected on a recent situation in which she herself was called out among peers in her hometown for speaking excessive English. She self-reflectively conceded that she must have come across as ‘snobbish’ among the friends and acquaintances in her hometown George. It must have been received, she explained, as just “way more English than necessary”. The role English carries as a lingua franca in urban environments of the Western Cape is quite different from that in rural areas of the province and country and Chapter 8 will deal in further detail with language matters in the coloured community. Departing from understandings of language inextricably linked to a community or place is useful in reorientating towards a more cosmopolitan outlook (Canagarajah 2013).44 By referring to Neville Alexander and Adam Small, Van der Waal (2012: 446) argues that “their [Small’s and Alexander’s] support of Afrikaans/Kaaps was based on a commitment to empowerment, far removed from the ethno-nationalism so apparent in the contestation about Afrikaans in higher education”. Coloured varieties of Afrikaans have been stigmatized across nearly all social domains related to power and upward mobility (Williams 2016a, 2016b). Kaaps has been “tainted with historically produced class and race-based associations that intersect with powerful language ideologies” (Cooper 2018: 31). Indeed, a dominant feature of the Afrikaans language development was the “seamless connection between Standard Afrikaans and the racist hubris of the ‘white’ man” (Alexander 2004: 116). As a result, the coloured Afrikaans community has continued to be marginalized in efforts to develop Afrikaans. If Afrikaans is to contribute to decolonization in South

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Africa then Kaaps, the variety of the language spoken by the coloured community, has to gain a more powerful linguistic, cultural, and political influence. If “commonalities between the speakers of Afrikaans in formal and informal communication” can be found, there could be a way “towards a more cosmopolitanism-orientated South African society” (Van der Waal 2012: 460). Afrikaans can only rid itself of its stigma (as language of oppression) by being inclusive of all influences. Until this happens, however, Afrikaans is likely not to shed its stigma. It is also for these reasons that I have chosen in this monograph not to include Afrikaans as an ‘African’ language, but to refer to it as one of the two excolonial ones. One (assumedly) Afrikaner reviewer criticized and took issue with my usage of ‘African languages’ including only the nine official Sintu languages in South Africa (and therefore excluding Afrikaans) in a recent publication for a prestigious outlet. I felt compelled to write to the editor explaining that the ideological nature of this issue needed to be recognized and, that my own ontological perspective is one where I distinguish between the ‘African’ nature of African languages and that of Afrikaans. Definitions of what a language is largely depends on socio- and cultural politics, and Weinreich’s overquoted statement that “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy” is an apt reminder of the fact that what we understand a language to be is largely dependent on politics. To recognize a language with West Germanic roots and a brutal social history of development as an African language means it must have had an army and a navy in place. One could also argue that the claim to African status is symptomatic of the influence of Afrikaner linguists. If the argument is substantiated on linguistic grounds as is often the case for Afrikaans (by tracing Khoi roots, for example), one could also argue that South African English deserves the same recognition. Kamwangamalu (2019) makes the case for English as a “naturalized African language” by identifying several linguistic (phonetic, syntactic, semantic, lexical) features from African languages which English has adopted in South Africa as a result of the long and intense multilingual contact situation. But again, this is not to say that black South Africans are necessarily comfortably referring to English as a “naturalized African language”. One of the University of KwaZulu-Natal Zulu students in my Honours class in 2019, for instance, said emphatically, “hell no, it’s not an African language”.

Concluding Thoughts The construction of vernaculars and local languages as ‘parochial’ and linked to insularity and backwardness, and English as ‘worldly’, ‘sophisticated’, and ‘cosmopolitan’ is a problematic simplistic binary (Ramanathan 2012). And yet, within the higher education system of South Africa, English is widely perceived as the cosmopolitan tongue while Afrikaans is seen as the ethnic language. At the same time, and following my focus on ambiguity, the above discussion demonstrated that English is not necessarily accepted as the only

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academic lingua franca in South Africa. There are now several universities in the country that have formulated language policies that promote African languages as languages of learning and teaching. The University of KwaZuluNatal, for instance, has implemented a mandatory isiZulu module for all undergraduate students and lecturers and tutors make increasing usage of isiZulu in class. But there are practical and ideological challenges involved in the language policy. As I have argued elsewhere (Rudwick 2017, 2018), the compulsory learning of isiZulu in higher education is not uncontroversial and has contributed to problematic identity politics at UKZN.45 The ambiguity of English as an academic lingua franca in Zulu society deserves further attention in future studies but for the purpose of this book, I have chosen to give attention to the role of gender in the complex interplay between isiZulu and English in Zulu society. Thus, the next chapter provides an exploration of the role of English as a gendered lingua franca in Zulu society.

Notes 1 Sphandle, 23-year-old male student, Stellenbosch, 5 December 2017 2 More generally, scholars such as Gilroy (2000, 2005) and Appiah (1997, 2006) have conceptualized people’s humanity as the glue to construct a better and more just world, a socio-political philosophy of a common cosmopolitanism or global humanism. 3 Ramanathan (2012) has demonstrated in the Indian context how this binarism can easily be questioned by the constant flux of power in multilingual situations and contexts. 4 For more detail, see www.afropolitan.co.za. 5 Helbling and Teney (2015) illustrate that some of the cosmopolitan elite in Germany are even more grounded in locality than ordinary citizens. 6 Afrikaans also serves as a lingua franca in certain parts of South Africa but in most urban spaces it is English which is predominant. 7 https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2012-03-26-afropolitanism-ndash-naturally (accessed 6 April 2020). 8 The aim of internationalization was put under the responsibility of Professor Thandabantu Nhlapo, https://www.news.uct.ac.za/article/-2011-06-06-synergiesbetween-afropolitanism-and-ucts-strategic-theme (accessed 5 June 2020). 9 Initiated at the University of Cape Town, the year 2015 marked a watershed in South African higher education history. Predominantly black student movements all over the country emerged in order to decolonize the higher education sector. In October 2015 the “Fees Must Fall” campaign closed several campuses and achieved its primary objective – a government commitment to a 0 percent fee increment at all South African universities in 2016. This was a campaign unprecedented in South Africa’s recent history of social movements and service delivery protests. 10 On the current webpage of SU there is explicit reference to cosmopolitanism. On the Timeline, for instance, it reads “Stellenbosch University today is home to 10 faculties, a vibrant and cosmopolitan community of more than 30,000 students and 3,000 staff members, spread over five campuses”. For more detail, see: www0.sun.ac.za/100/en/timeline (accessed 5 June 2020). 11 This involved a whole range of complicated socio-political dynamics that for reasons of scope cannot be elaborated on here (for more detail, see Giliomee 2001, 2003a).

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12 https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/education-minister-sibusiso-bengu-warnsstellenbosch-university-it-cant-be-0. 13 All South African universities that were so-called ‘Afrikaans universities’ converted, more or less, into bilingual models during the first decade or two after apartheid, implementing English as the second Language of Learning and Teaching (Du Plessis 2003, 2006; Webb 2010). 14 https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-07-02-revealed-professor-botmans-tor rid-final-week/#.WvqtbS-B1Bw (accessed 3 April 2019). 15 www.sun.ac.za/english/management/wim-de-villiers/Documents/Open%20Stellen bosch%20Memo%2020150513.pdf. 16 The documentary is a compelling and quite personal account of 32 students and one lecturer at SU, available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= sF3rTBQTQk4 (accessed 17 March 2020). 17 Quote from one of the interviewees featured in the Luister video. 18 SU was not the only institution at which protests against Afrikaans as the medium of instruction took place and which revised their language policies towards more bilingualism or English-only instruction. Afriforum, an Afrikaans interest group, filed a court case against these language policy changes, but “on 29 December 2017 the Constitutional Court ruled in favour of the University of the Free State’s decision to shift to English” (Hill 2019). 19 https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2019-12-13-stellenbosch-university-rock ed-by-disputes-over-language-policy (accessed 3 October 2020). 20 Nandi, 25-year-old Master’s student, Stellenbosch University, 7 March 2016. 21 The issue also came up in several interviews with #OpenStellenbosch members in 2016. There was consensus that until 2015, the promotion of multilingualism was a de facto promotion of Afrikaans. While it has to be acknowledged that some isiXhosa development had taken place, the Language Centre at SU had been primarily staffed by Afrikaans speakers. In January 2015, I also interviewed two individuals in the Centre. 22 Besides, a focus on the promotion of African languages is not uncontroversial either. It draws rejection from at least two lobbies: those who regard English as the future and see vernacular promotion counter-productive to national progress and those who object to the involvement of non-Africans in African language and cultural matters (Makoni & Makoni 2009: 116). 23 https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/mail-guardian/20091002/281685430895853. (accessed 17 October 2020). 24 https://mg.co.za/article/2009-10-13-language-of-division-and-diversion (accessed 17 October 2020). 25 Nadine, a 27-year-old male Afrikaner Sociology student, Stellenbosch, 4 March 2016. 26 Francois, a 53-year-old male Afrikaner coffee entrepreneur, Stellenbosch, 6 April 2020. 27 Johan, a 28-year-old male Chemistry student, Stellenbosch University, 3 February 2020. 28 Several interviewees also referred to Steve Hofmeyer as a counter-example to their own Afrikaans identities. 29 Stellenbosch students, informal group interview, Stellenbosch, 20 January 2015. 30 Stellenbosch students, 16 February 2020. 31 Dennis, 29-year-old Afrikaner shop owner, Stellenbosch, 26 February 2020. 32 Theodor, 72-year-old retired teacher, Stellenbosch, 20 January 2015. 33 69-year-old Afrikaner academic, Stellenbosch, March 2016. 34 https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2019-07-07-decolonise-education-by-in cluding-afrikaans (accessed 1 March 2020). 35 Johan, 56-year-old self-identified “proud” Afrikaner, 4 May 2020. 36 Tom, 36-year-old self-identified “modern Afrikaner”, 10 May 2020. 37 Karl, 40+-year-old Afrikaans farmer and entrepreneur, Stellenbosch, 1 February 2020.

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Luise, 53-year-old Afrikaans shop owner, Stellenbosch, 6 March 2016. Cynthia, 43-year-old black female academic from Kenya, Stellenbosch, 1 March 2020. Aphiwe, 26-year-old Zulu student, Stellenbosch, 4 June 2020. Kim, 27year-old coloured consultant, Stellenbosch, 2014–2020. Loraine, 26-year-old coloured student, Stellenbosch, 16 January 2018. Riana, 30+-year=old hotel receptionist, Stellenbosch, 5 March 2016. Bamgbose (1991, 2003) has long argued that the ‘one-language-one nation’ model, for instance, has no relevance in the African context. 45 It has also been argued that African language learning (also per decree) makes sense at primary and secondary level and would contribute to social justice (Lafon 2008, 2010). It is an ironic twist that the majority of white and Indian learners currently enrolled in KwaZulu-Natal schools choose Afrikaans over isiZulu as a first additional language.

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Introduction Language has been recognized as one of the primary markers of ethnicity and one of the most powerful means of signifying and expressing ethnic belonging. My focus on Afrikaans and isiZulu speakers is the result of tracing this entanglement ethnographically over many years and in relation to English as a lingua franca. When it comes to gender and gendered linguistic choices, however, I can only draw with confidence from ethnographic findings in KwaZulu-Natal and with reference to Zulu society. One of my colleagues from the University of Zululand, once took me aside at a discussion forum about the status of English as academic lingua franca. Mr Shezi said, “You know Stephanie, if Soweto had not been Soweto but Umlazi, we would not have given into English as quick as they did there”. While I was still trying to make sense of what he had said, he continued, “We all speak Zulu here, in Soweto they speak all kinds of languages, for us it would have been easy to choose Zulu”. Years later, what he said often resonated with me in interviews with other people, especially Zulu men. The province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) is more homogenous than all the other South African provinces when it comes to African languages as almost 80 percent of the residents speak isiZulu as a first language (Census 2011). This background is significant for this chapter as I aim to capture some of the lived realities of the constructions and performances of femininities, masculinities, and other-gendered identities through juxtaposing isiZulu and English more broadly, and Standard English vis-à-vis a lingua franca form of English. In doing so, I carefully formulate the argument that female isiZulu speakers find it easier to embrace English and to aim not for an ELF variety but rather for a more native-like proficiency in English while Zulu males appear to hold on to an isiZulu inflected English. While my argument is located, to some extent, within the binaristic thinking of previous language and gender studies in South Africa, I also aim to dismantle much of this thinking in order to allow for a more nuanced perspective of isiZulu speakers by drawing on the experience of men who have sex with other men (MSM). The gendering of English vis-à-vis isiZulu has epistemological consequences as it also affects how we think of the relationship between language and gender DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472-7

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more generally in African society. In fact, “women worldwide continue to suffer the consequences of long-standing power disparities that are frequently reflected in language usage” (Baugh 2020: 64) and, if anything, this is even more pronounced in Zulu society. Patriarchy is a feature all South Africans, irrespective of race, class, and culture, are affected by (Sachs 1993). Moreover, the interrelated structures of heteronormativity, patriarchy, and sexism play out in complex ways through language, but this chapter will only be able to discuss one facet of this matrix. The study of African ways of being is essential in order to make sense of how gender plays an active role in the ambiguities of English as a lingua franca among African language speakers, and in Zulu society more specifically. I demonstrate this by discussing how a politeness regime in isiZulu, i.e. the linguistic and social custom1 of hlonipha fundamentally influences the relationship of male/female isiZulu speakers with English and how this is further complicated by dichotomized power relations between ideas of what constitutes ‘urban’ vis-à-vis ‘rural’ and ‘modern’ vis-à-vis ‘traditional’ identities. As in previous chapters I draw on these binaries and polarities only to deconstruct them again and to show that there is also much fluidity, fuzziness, and movement between seemingly contradictory poles. Zulu people have a reputation for being proud ethnic people and many other African language speakers see them as the dominant ethnic group in the country. IsiZulu is, after all, the most widely spoken language with the majority of speakers living in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. A study by Posel et al. (2020) shows that isiZulu speakers are the least likely among all African language speakers to speak a language other than their home language outside the home. Further, it shows that, after English, isiZulu is the most widely spoken language outside of the home in South Africa.2 This also suggests that isiZulu not only stands as a proxy for identification with the Zulu ethnic group but that the language acts as one of South Africa’s primary lingua francas. While language and ethnicity are entangled in complex ways in African societies, some educated African language speakers tend to reject ethnicity as a colonial import and artificial construction to divide Africans, whereas others see it as a welcome and positive alternative to what is perceived as white culture. My many years of ethnographic fieldwork in KwaZulu-Natal lead me to argue that the latter scenario is more common among Zulu people. To say the least, ethnic identities continue to have socio-political saliency in the country and the following reflections from fieldwork in 2019/2020 serve to illustrate this point. In November 2019, the South African rugby team, led by the isiXhosaspeaking captain Siya Kolisi, won the World Cup. Subsequent to the victory, a satirical text went viral on social media which had the heading: “An open letter ‘from the Xhosa people to the nation’” which also made it into the mainstream media. One part of the letter read: “We as the Xhosa people would like to state that we’re tired of carrying this country on our backs. Year by year we work tirelessly for this country, while the rest of the nation relaxes …”. Although the text was arguably satirical, several media outlets lamented an “ethnic rivalry”

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triggered by the victory. Cebelihle Bhengu, for instance, entitled his article in the TimesLIVE3 “Tribalism and ‘bitterness’ mar Springboks’ Rugby World Cup Victory”. Needless to say, the social media was replete with verbal ethnic warfare. One of my Zulu colleagues at the University of KwaZulu-Natal commented with irritation, “Xhosas always think they are the clever ones”.4 Several months later, when attending a poetry slam event in Khayamandi Township near Stellenbosch, I was reminded of the issue of ethnicity once again. One of the poets made his theme the linguistic versatility of Xhosa people. Switching comfortably back and forth between isiXhosa, English, township codes, and isiZulu he compellingly referred to numerous situations which, from his perspective, demonstrated the potent multilingualism of isiXhosa speakers vis-à-vis the non-accommodating nature of isiZulu and English speakers. According to him, isiXhosa people were linguistically flexible and able to understand and even speak isiZulu while the opposite was simply not the case. I recalled a now rather dated article by Finlayson and Slabbert (1997) showing conversational data in a Gauteng township setting where most interlocutors met each other ‘half-way’ in terms of language, except for male isiZulu speakers, many of whom were found to be reluctant to accommodate other African language speakers. English is, as mentioned earlier, often portrayed as ‘neutral’ and its lingua franca status flagged. However, as I show below, it is not always perceived as a ‘neutrally’ useful and communicative tool in Zulu society, and gender plays a complex role in the divisive nature the language carries at times.

Women and ‘Prestigious’ Language Gal’s (1979) seminal study laid the foundation for a sociolinguistic argument that young women might play a greater role than men in cases of language shift. In Gal’s study Hungarian women were the initiators of adopting German as the socio-economically powerful language representative of ‘modernity’ at the time. Further sociolinguistic research (Trudgill 1972; Cameron 1992) reasserted an argument that women tend to be more likely to embrace or even adopt prestigious ways of speaking than men. In South African Zulu society, the situation seems yet more complicated, however, as previous studies also show contradictory developments in urban and rural communities (compare, for instance, Appalraju 1999, Appalraju & de Kadt 2002; Ige & de Kadt 2002; de Kadt 2004). English, both as a lingua franca and primary medium, plays a much more significant role in urban communities than in rural ones as there is far more cultural heterogeneity in terms of linguistic and social criteria. Interestingly, Appalraju & de Kadt (2002) observed in a rural KwaZulu-Natal setting that “females are expected to continue speaking predominantly in Zulu” because there was a dominant expectation that they would stay in the community as agriculturists and caretakers of children (Appalraju & de Kadt 2002: 143). This was in contrast to men, who wanted to be mobile

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and speak English for employment purposes. In contrast to this rural study, de Kadt’s (2004) further research at the University of KwaZuluNatal suggested that there was a common perception among her student interviewees, both male and female, that isiZulu speaking women students made “much more” use of English than men. In most of the English lingua franca literature, it seems, gender has not been studied as a significant variable. The Routledge Handbook (Jenkins et al. 2018) includes not a single chapter on how gender might affect English lingua franca communication in different contexts or throughout space and time. The global spread of English and the fact that it is the first foreign language choice of most students in Europe have resulted in the argument that it is relatively ‘gender neutral’ (Dörnyei & Clement 2001; Dörnyei, Csizér & Németh 2006). Similarly, in the US context, it has been argued that students from Asia contribute to the development of English as a gender-neutral language (Brutt-Griffler & Kim 2018). From the perspective of linguistic anthropology and aiming to contribute to decolonizing language studies in Africa, one cannot regard any linguistic tool as neutral in terms of the constructions and performances of any social identity, and certainly not gender. Language as a non-neutral medium is the paradigmatic basis on which linguistic anthropology rests (Duranti 2011). The social dynamics of language are far too complex to align any language with an ‘objectivity’ that indexes ‘neutrality’ and the argument that English acts as a gender-neutral lingua franca is, hence, in itself heavily ideologically grounded. In South Africa, both linguistic and gender inequalities manifest themselves in various ways (Parmegiani 2008, 2017), the latter being influenced by the often toxic combination of colonial and apartheid legacies, racism, ethnic chauvinism, and patriarchy. As written earlier (Chapter 3), colonial linguistics has shown how missionaries and linguists constructed rather than ‘objectively’ described linguistic forms in the colonies. The literature repeatedly demonstrates that ideas about language were fundamentally shaped by colonialists’ ideas about what constituted a language, a nation, race and ethnicity, and, not least gender(ed) behaviour (Bauman & Briggs 2003; Makoni 2003; Errington 2007; Irvine & Gal 2000). European ideas about manhood, womanhood, gender roles, and relations pervade colonial descriptions about language and gender in Africa. Coloniality continues to influence Western ways of thinking as they are fundamentally based on an unequal distribution of power which, to a large extent, has its legacy in colonialism and a patriarchal world order (Connell 2007; Grosfoguel 2011; Mignolo 2007). The global North bias in language studies (Smakman & Heinrich 2015; Pennycook & Makoni 2020) calls for an epistemological shift by drawing attention to the ontologies and theories generated in the global South. African gender dynamics cannot be captured by mainstream sociolinguistic paradigms (Atanga et al. 2013), they point to a need to generate theories based on African experiences. It is an ironic twist that given that the orthographies of the African languages are colonial

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‘inventions’, African language speakers have often linked ‘modernity’ primarily to the proficiency in ex-colonial languages, e.g. English, which also have gender(ed) aspects. For instance, in Tsitsi Dangarembga’s (1988) compelling novel Nervous Condition the monolithic construct of English as modern and emancipatory is captured and deconstructed at the same time. More recent studies on language and gender in South Africa (Parmegiani 2017, Mesthrie 2017a, 2017b) suggest that when it comes to students at South Africa’s elite tertiary institutions, it seems to be women who are at the forefront of adopting English ‘native-like’ proficiency and embracing what has been termed an ‘anglo-normativity’ (McKinney 2017). ‘Excessive’ usage of English might also lead to language attrition in isiZulu and this has an impact on the role of English as a lingua franca as a potential language shift would obviously destroy its lingua franca status. Currently, however, census and other quantitative data sources (Census 2011; General Household Data 2017, 20185) do not suggest a language shift from South African indigenous languages to English.6 There are power disparities between Zulu women and men, and some of these have been codified by various forms of linguistic behaviour. The concept of style is rather useful in this regard. Coupland (2007) showed how variationist research was “successful in revealing broad patterns of linguistic diversity and change”, but it has “not encouraged us to understand what people meaningfully achieve through linguistic variation” (Coupland 2007: 5). Style as performed discursive practice raises two primary questions in relation to ELF in South Africa and with reference to Zulu society more specifically. How and when do gendered styles impact African English lingua franca communication, and how do styles of ELF communication index, project, and (de)construct gendered subjectivities? As Coupland reminds us “discursive social action is where culture and identities ‘live’ and where we can see them taking shape. The styling of social identities and ‘collective memories’ is the heart of the process” (2007: 108). The concept of style, as a “Multidimensional Resource for Shared Identity Creation” (Moore 2004) can be fruitfully applied to gender(ed) identities which are in themselves plural, multifaceted, flexible, and very context bound. Speakers have agency in the sense that they have the ability “to control what they do [with language] and to make conscious choices” (Van Herk 2012: 85). Zulu men and women’s choices of English vis-à-vis isiZulu, their complex ways of speaking, and their relationship with English as a lingua franca is entangled with gender as something, they ‘do’ as will be seen below. When Judith Butler (1990) laid the foundation for understanding the behaviour that creates gender as ‘performatively constituted’, femininities and masculinities began to be studied not as ‘existing’ but as constructed and performed. The ‘post-modern’ shift in language and gender research further guaranteed that both variables and their relationships began to be studied as something in motion, fluid, and context dependent. Rigid binaries and essentialism are deconstructed and there is an opening of the field to the

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flexibilities between male, female, ‘gay’, or other gendered ways of speaking and their link to masculinities, femininities, queerness, and various forms of sexual or gendered otherness. In South Africa, the study of language and gender has received some attention (see Dubbeld, de Kadt & Reddy 2006) but it has not been an area of primary interest among sociolinguists. As mentioned, de Kadt undertook a number of studies into language and gender in Zulu society during the early 2000s in both urban and rural contexts. Her study drawn from the KwaZulu-Natal University context claims that by selecting English as a common lingua franca, women tended “to signal that they are no longer willing to accept the patriarchal gender relations associated with Zulu language and Zulu culture” (de Kadt 2004: 520). English has socio-economic empowering functions and against this background it is not surprising that African women who desire to be independent from men aim for high proficiency in it (Appalraju & de Kadt 2002; Ige & de Kadt 2002; de Kadt 2004). However, the relationship between the lingua franca status of English and the perception of isiZulu as the language of culture and belonging is substantially more complex. To understand at least some of these complexities I will draw from selected narratives collected among Zulu women and men in the eThekwini region of KwaZuluNatal. Thobeka,7 who was in her mid-twenties when we first met in Durban in 2012, had successfully graduated with a BA degree in Drama and Dance from the University of KwaZulu-Natal. When we met in 2016 again, she explained that her mother had sent her to an ‘ex-Model C’8 school outside the township despite great financial difficulties because she felt that her child’s future greatly depended on the type of schooling she received. When I visited Thobeka a couple of years later at her mother’s house, she complained that she found it difficult to find a partner: “I am just too clever for them”, she said. “Seriously, I don’t fit the grid of Zulu men’s desires”, she frustratingly proclaimed. When I spoke to her mother, MaKhumalo, alone later, she told me she felt that “too much of English” as she put it, had made her daughter intimidating to many Zulu men. But MaKhumalo9 also felt certain that Thobeka would eventually find “the right man” to marry. And then the good education Thobeka had received would ultimately “pay out” as she put it, referring to the likelihood of receiving a high ilobolo 10 (bridewealth). Ilobolo is considered one of the most integral and sacrosanct Zulu traditions, delivered from the prospective groom to the family of the bride, increasingly in goods or cash rather than cattle. It is initiated before the wedding and often continues to be paid for many years throughout the marriage, whether based on a customary, church, or civil union. There is a perceived interrelation between a Zulu woman’s virtue and personal qualities and the size of the ilobolo which results in some believing that the better the education, the better the ilobolo (Posel & Rudwick 2014, Rudwick & Posel 2015). And high educational status and socio-economic mobility is inextricably linked to a high proficiency in English.

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One might assume that a woman who spoke what is perceived to be excellent English and was highly educated and independent would make a desirable marriage partner in Zulu society.11 However, this is not necessarily the case, as sought after and desired Zulu femininity is linked to the behavioural codex of hlonipha (respect) rather than what is perceived as English ways of being. In Zulu society, one of the most integral symbols of femininity remains women showing linguistic as well as social submissiveness. Literally translated, the noun inhlonipho means ‘respect’ in isiZulu. The verb ukuhlonipha (to respect) implies specific social behaviour which incorporates a rather complex value system based on age, status, and gender. Hlonipha regulates linguistic and social actions, it can manifest in controlled posture, gesture, a certain dress code, and other behavioural patterns, but it also closely aligns with status-based privileges of a material nature. Raum’s (1973) study is arguably the most detailed account of the hlonipha custom in Zulu society but a number of other studies appeared much later with specific reference to the linguistic aspect of hlonipha. IsiHlonipho, 12 also termed the ‘language of respect’ is essentially based on verbal taboo and forms of linguistic avoidance. It has been researched primarily with reference to Xhosa (Finlayson (1978, 1995, 2002; Dowling 1988) and Zulu women (Zungu 1995; Rudwick & Shange 2006; Rudwick 2009) and to some extent in Sotho society (Fandrych 2012; Thetela 2003). Male linguistic hlonipha practices have been neglected in sociolinguistic studies which Irvine and Gal (2000) aptly relate to the semiotic process of erasure. This “erasure occurred when some European observers, writing about hlonipha after the precolonial kingdoms and chiefdoms had declined, describing it as ‘women’s speech’ – ignoring its political dimension and its use by men” (Irvine & Gal 2000: 47). Indeed, several of the above cited studies focus on women only despite the fact that hlonipha is a more general cultural tradition in Zulu society. Social practices and cultural customs in Zulu societies are based on persistent patriarchy and seniority principles and women are expected to perform a deferential role in hlonipha practice in most situations. Specific ways of speaking isiZulu, avoiding direct address and names, and language practice more generally are all integral to social gender dynamics. There is a perceived link between the English language or communication in English and lack of hlonipha (disrespect). So, the ambiguity in English as a lingua franca vis-à-vis isiZulu (and hlonipha forms of the language) manifests itself in the status of both languages as tools of empowerment and disempowerment. A Zulu woman can assert her high educational status and empower herself through English. At the same time, however, “too much of English” in MaKhumalo’s words “scares men away”. Ongezwa,13 who was 34 and a widow when I interviewed her on several occasions during 2015/2016, lived with her 9-year-old daughter Mbali and her 14-year-old son Mbusu in an umjondolo (informal settlement) in the north of eThekwini. Despite having been employed as a domestic worker by a Durban

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family for 12 years at the time we met, she had had been having great difficulty in making ends meet on her meagre salary. However, when we met, her financial situation had improved due to her employer offering to pay the school fees for her children at the ‘good’, predominately ‘Indian’ school, which her children were attending. She told me that her deceased partner and father of the children would have never allowed this to happen because the ‘Indian’ school did not offer anything in terms of Zulu cultural knowledge. Knowing that this school was offering a better education than the badly resourced township schools many Zulu children attend, I was puzzled and asked her why. Her response is worth quoting at length: Mina [I] want what’s best for my children. Even if they school with Indians and learn only English, still good English. Ubaba [the father] hayi [no way], he [would have] never agreed. He tell me [sic. would have told me] there is no respect in English, abantwana lapha abafundi ukuhlonipha [children who go to these schools, they don’t know how to hlonipha]. When I saw Ongezwa again in 2019, she had moved into an RDP14 house, Mbusu had already moved out and was studying at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape. Mbali was attending Grade 11 and while we were sitting outside the house sharing some scones and tea, chatting along in both English and isiZulu, I realized that Mbali – unlike her mother – was fully proficient in English and that she spoke with quite a distinct Indian South African English accent.15 Reflecting on this later, when Ongezwa and I were on our own, she once again referred to her deceased partner and said, “It’s good he doesn’t see this”. She explained to me that ‘their English’ would have alienated him from his children, also his English proficiency had been very poor. But then she continued speaking about the benefits of ‘good English’ and how her daughter had embraced the language to a higher degree than her son, who has now signed up for isiXhosa as a subject at Rhodes University. Towards the end of our conversation Ongezwa conceded that she didn’t mind raising her children alone, she said, “my own way” unlike, for example her sister, Nomusa. Implicit in her statement was a sense of freedom in terms of unilateral decision-making which many married women would not have. Nomusa16 had always been able to live a much more financially comfortable life with her husband Sipho,17 who owns a small but well-run logistics company in the area of Newlands about 20km from Durban. Despite their more middle-class life style and financial access to multi-racial Englishdominant schools, Nomusa and Sipho’s son Thabo went to a nearby government school where isiZulu was the first language of pupils and teachers. When I visited this family in late 2015, Thabo had just graduated, and I enquired about his future plans. He told me that he wanted to study but that he was worried that his English would not be good enough. He referred to his cousins saying that for some people switching to university was much easier because they were what he called “more English”, i.e. they had attended ‘ex-

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Model C’ schools. Watching Nomusa while he said this, I sensed some discomfort. Thabo quickly conceded, however, that he was happy about the school he attended. When I was leaving, Thabo showed me to the door and said (as if to make sure that I understood), “It’s good we can also speak English, your Zulu is not so great. But I am happy I speak English like an African – for me it is still better that I grew up in Zulu tradition.” Speaking at a later date with Nomusa I enquired further about the issue of schooling and she admitted to me that there had been a heated debate in the family. She would have liked to see her son going to an exModel C school but her husband was strictly against it and put his foot down. At the same time, there are many Zulu fathers who pay exorbitant fees for their children’s English schooling in order for them to have native-like proficiency in the language. But there is clearly also value attached to retaining an African way of speaking English, a Zulu ethnolinguistic marker. Driving away from Newlands that hot and sweaty Durban day in 2015, I remembered situations from my doctoral research in 2005 when I regularly took over as a substitute teacher at an Umlazi township school in M-section, surrounded by amajondolo (informal settlements). In English class, I often discussed with Grade 11 and 12s the potential role of “English as a unifier” among South African people. Although many learners were then in agreement that English played an important role in the country, boys in particular had very critical attitudes towards the language and highlighted the significant role of isiZulu in the maintenance of their culture and spirituality (Rudwick 2004). Many referred to their parents and grandparents as non-English speakers, others spoke of the importance of language for the maintenance of their tradition and what they perceived as the ‘evils’ of English Westernization and the impossibility of communicating with amadlozi (ancestors) in English (Rudwick 2004).18 And I encountered similar sentiments among students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Jabu19, for example, said, “English has been forced down my throat – how can I love it?” Many young Zulu men seemed to feel strongly about their ethnolinguistic belonging. And yet, older Zulu interviewees in my research often lamented that the younger generations do not know ‘their culture’ and no longer upheld the traditions. Zulu society is largely based on strong seniority principles and the youth are expected not to disagree with older family members. Among older interviewees I encountered feelings of loss of respect among children and a sense of nostalgia, as is not uncommon with the elderly. In Jacob Dlamini’s (2009) Native Nostalgia, this feeling is articulated as “Akusenamthetho. Abantu bazenzel umathanda” (there is no order anymore. People do as they please)” (Dlamini 2009: 6). Part of this perceived ‘chaos’ is that old(er) and, in particular, more rural Zulu people often lament the fact that youths speak what was seen as “too much of English” or an impure and English replete isiZulu. To say the least, to speak ‘unaccented’ or so-called Standard English can certainly trigger negative responses within their own community (Rudwick 2008).20

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Several of my consultants, not only the elderly and certainly not only males, have expressed the opinion that excessive use of English brings “too much of white culture” and is disloyal to isiZulu, Zulu culture, heritage, and tradition. Decrying the decreasing value of hlonipha in the context of ‘anglicization’ was much more pronounced among male interviewees than among females. While, as a linguistic anthropologist, I struggle to conceptually accept the often very rigidly expressed essentialism inherent in much of the ethnographic data, I also try to recognize that the essentialist ethnic notions about a discrepancy between the Zulu value systems and the expressive power of the English language is very real to Zulu people and men in particular. While the motives and reasons for choosing isiZulu and/or English in the Zulu community are complex and multifaceted, the increasing support for isiZulu among men in contrast to women’s embracing of English has already been noted in several studies (Dlamini 2005; Rudwick & Shange 2006; 2009; Parmegiani 2017; Hunter 2019), and this study reasserts these findings. Parmegiani’s study on language ownership at the University of KwaZuluNatal suggests that there was a distinct gender difference when it came to English. He argued that female Zulu students appeared to speak more extensive English than Zulu male students as they used isiZulu in conversations with each other to a much greater extent on and around the campus (Parmegiani 2017). His findings also confirm de Kadt’s earlier studies and what she referred to as an “immediate consensus” about the “fact” that urban Zulu women students employ more English than male students. To an extent, this is also linked to an argument recently put forward by Mesthrie (2017a, 2017b) that there is a tendency among African females to adopt speaking English in a less African language accented way than men. This suggests that it is not only about the extent of English and it being chosen on a meta-language level in different situations, but also about the type of English being spoken. The native-like proficiency among female speakers in particular adds a new dimension. There must be a space here to the South African English lingua franca context where, arguably, those who speak an African language inflected English which could be seen as an ELF variety, reassert also their Africanness (Chapter 5). As the narrative about Thobeka above suggests, women who adopt English as one of their main communication tools, not only for lingua franca communication but for internal conversations among Zulu people, can run the risk of being perceived as what she termed “too clever” or disrespectful. While both English as a lingua franca and as primary medium of communication might well be embraced by Zulu women to a greater extent than men, there are further subjectivities which complicate any strong claims in terms of gendered dynamics. By speaking in a particular way, a man can comport himself as a model of male/masculine identity and by doing so his way of speaking can become a symbol of masculinity. An example of this kind of masculine way of speaking in South Africa is a cluster of urban mixed languages which are considered part of African Urban Youth Languages (AUYLs) spoken in South Africa (Rudwick 2005; Hurst 2009; Hurst

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& Buthelezi 2014). As has been argued, the majority of AUYL speakers remain “primarily male – and define themselves in the sense of a particular masculinity” (Hurst 2009: 250). At another level, however, these multiple AUYL varieties can also be thought of as lingua francas or contributing to the lingua franca status of English because, as will be shown in Chapter 8, they seem to be playing an increasingly important role in media texts where English is employed as a lingua franca . English is always a significant lexifier of South African urban youth varieties, but the extent of African language usage and/or Afrikaans varies greatly from one geographical area to another. In Zulu society and in KwaZulu-Natal townships, isiTsotsi, which is how these linguistic tools are referred to there (Rudwick 2005, Hurst & Buthelezi 2014), is based on isiZulu but it includes many recontextualized English lexical items and, only to a marginal extent, Afrikaans. Because these forms of speaking are employed primarily by men and they are associated with an urban hip streetwise masculine identity and ‘coolness’, their appropriation among Zulu women is interpreted as a counter-normative language choice (Rudwick 2013).21 Young Zulu women who consciously choose to make use of isiTsotsi do so as a subtle act of rebellion against patriarchy and they index an urban Zulu womanhood associated with a rejection of what is perceived as ‘traditional’ hlonipha behaviour and Zulu submissiveness towards men ((Rudwick 2013).22 But English induced isiTsotsi can also be a linguistic tool to negotiate ‘new’ Zulu femininities that are breaking out of a patriarchal order. While doing language and gender in this way, young Zulu women empower themselves in (urban hip) contexts. At the same time, however, women in Zulu society who make extensive use of isiTsotsi might diminish their ‘value’ as potential wives and disadvantage themselves in traditional contexts. Sfiso23 was 21 when we met in 2012 and my attempt to speak in isiZulu was discouraged by him. He responded to me after our first meeting “I am not THAT kind of isiZulu speaker. I love English”. He was also, according to him, a “perfect” isiTsotsi speaker and he talked in an interview about an increasing number of girls who want to speak this urban mixed-code: “there are many of them now”. He conceded that several of his friends were not in favour of ‘this’ development but claimed that he found it to be a rather pleasant trend because he enjoyed the presence of women, even “those types” who, in his opinion and those of his friends, were not the ‘girlfriend types’. Sfiso picked up on my bewilderment at his comment and he quickly added, “Well you know I could never take someone like that home”. He said his parents would expect a more ‘proper’ Zulu woman. Hence, the female usage of the urban mixed-code isiTsotsi evokes ambivalent feelings in Zulu men: young men might respect a woman for her street-wisdom and ‘cool-ness’ and accept her as an equal in some settings, however, they might regard her linguistic and social behaviour as ‘improper’ in another (Rudwick 2013). Many of the ‘rules’ for African gendered ways of being and sexualities were ‘invented’ by colonialists and missionaries and this is the root of the

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myth that homosexuality is un-African (Sigamoney & Epprecht 2013). This whole field needs disinventing and decolonizing, and some South African scholars (most notably Msibi 2013) have already started to expose the deficiencies in European views on African gender and sexuality. For example, the phrase ‘men who have sex with men’ or the acronym MSM, is mostly utilized in South African LGBT studies because English language concepts such as ‘homosexual’ and ‘gay’ do not necessarily resonate with African people, or might have specific localized meanings (Msibi 2013, Sigamoney & Epprecht 2013). Nonkhuleleko24 (Nkule) was a 28-year-old MSM who lived in the Durban CBD area in December 2014 when we first met. One of my University of KwaZulu-Natal students had referred me to him as he was in that student’s estimation “very English” and “super-modern”. Nkule came from a middleclass family where both parents were teachers and lived in a suburban, predominately white, upmarket area of Durban, he had travelled to both Europe and the USA and he had received a number of artist’s awards by the time we met. When I went to visit him as a stranger and for the first time, he was exceptionally welcoming and immediately opened a bottle of red wine to celebrate our acquaintance although it was only 11am. Nkule was one of the few Zulu creatives that I got to know in Durban who was able to make a living from his art and I was fascinated by the ease with which he spoke about his multiple identities. At one stage, we spoke about how travelling had changed us and how it shaped our current ideas and ways of being. He was articulate by any type of English standard and he spoke a great deal about love and the open relationship he had with an ‘English guy’. It didn’t take long to figure out that this person was from the UK and not a South African of English stock. Sipping on his wine, he dreamt about spending time in London with this person. He later emphatically announced: I need to get away from here again, yes, I am Zulu but you know, English is so much more who I really am, I feel free when I speak English – I am queer – most Zulus don’t even know what that means. Nkule wet on to tell me that he was repeatedly negatively approached or even reprimanded by isiZulu speakers for his manner of speaking which was perceived as ‘coconutty’ English. Some people had used expletives and called him names that indicated either his sexual orientation (e.g. istabane) or perceived ‘non-Africanness’ (e.g. coconut, cheeseboy). When I asked him whether this was not hurtful and disappointing to him, Nkule brushed it off as a lack of education. He saw English as a distinct empowerment tool for himself and was critical of his own ethnolinguistic background. The black gaze often positioned him as Other, not only because of his ways of speaking English but also because of his sexual identity. He embraced English not only as a lingua franca but as a language which could better express his personal identity than the language he learned first in life, isiZulu. But Nkule is not representative of

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the majority of Zulu men who engage in same sex relations. His socio-economic status, education, and well-travelled trajectory render him as someone who has privileges which the vast majority of Zulu people are deprived of. Consider Lebo below. Lebo25 was only 21 years old when I visited him together with Mluleki26 on a hot summer day in the small township of Hambanathi in the north of Durban in 2012. They lived with their mother and two sisters in a small brick house and identified as skesana.27 Lebo’s excitement about my visit was palpable, apparently, I was the first umlungu (white person) to come to the house and my white privilege started to make me feel uncomfortable when Mluleki started asking Lebo about ‘his’ family, ‘his’ mom, and the absence of another male. Lebo was quick to correct him about his assertion that he was male by saying, “I am a girl sweetie”. Her mother and sisters also referred to her as a “girl”. Lebo never met her father but feels that the close relationship to her mother and sisters provided sufficient family bond. MaDlamini,28 her mother, was present in the house and catching bits of our conversation, she chipped in a comment which strongly resonated with Lebo’s narrative: “She is always been my sweetest girl” she said and there was a twinkle in her her eyes. We spoke about the forthcoming weekend, and Lebo said she would do what she always does on Saturday night which is meet her skesana friends and together going to nightclubs, mostly in the Durban CBD. It is mostly in conversations with whites and Indians that she makes use of English as a lingua franca but she and her Zulu friends also speak isiNgqumo29 which, in her opinion, she uses eloquently, “We love to gossip, you know”, and she went on to say how talking about a “straight” man worked very well in isiNgqumo because, even if he is Zulu, he would probably not understand what it meant. Although isiNgqumo has mostly been characterized by an archaic isiZulu lexicon,30 the younger generation also coins new lexical items or recontextualizes English terms to give them new meanings. For example, Nkule referred to windela which he says is borrowed from the English ‘window’ and ukuwindela as a verb meaning to “window shop [men]”, i.e. to look at men with the intention of observing but not pursuing. To windela, she explained, was one of her “best pastime activities”. When asked about hlonipha, Lebo asserted that without showing hlonipha towards her partners, she would not be able to “score”: “They [the kind of men she dates] like to be served, you know, so we do everything to please them”, she said and giggled. Lebo claimed to only speak English with white guys and that she had only dated a non-Zulu man once. Mluleki31, who had introduced me to Lebo, had been a student of mine and we are still in contact today. When we met in a Durban restaurant in October 2019, he told me how Lebo had undergone a gender reassignment. The three of us ended up meeting again a couple of weeks later. While I was talking about my current research and the ambiguities of English as a lingua franca in the country, Lebo interrupted me and said excitedly that now that she was a “proper girl” it was “so much easier now to get away with speaking English”. When I asked to explain what she meant, she went into great

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detail. Mluleki felt that Zulu masculinity is tied to isiZulu in the sense that the language also indexes authority, authenticity, and pride. Mluleki’s gender reassignment provided her with a ‘normal’ gender that allowed her to be a “full woman” as she expressed it. According to her, speaking English was considered more ‘normal’ among Zulu women than men. In a number of interviews I conducted at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2014, several male Zulu students had voiced the stereotype that Zulu guys who spoke English around campus were “mostly gay”. In a literary analysis of Zulu’s novel Bengithi lizokuna (I said it would rain), there is a description of how a young Zulu man comes out to his father. Despite normally conversing in isiZulu with him, he makes his announcement in English: “I am gay”. Zulu (2016: 45) suggests that had the announcement been in isiZulu it “would perhaps have been even more painful and difficult”. English can provide a distance between isiZulu speakers in ways that isiZulu doesn’t. The English term ‘gay’ also provides a more positive term while the isiZulu term used commonly when referring to homosexuals (istabane) has a derogatory meaning.

Concluding Thoughts At the beginning of this chapter I wondered how and when gender and gendered styles impact on the role of English as a lingua franca and ELF communication more generally. My research supports previous findings that some urban Zulu women embrace English, not only as lingua franca communication but also as a primary medium of expression while men retain isiZulu to a large extent. The study also confirms the common stereotyping of excessive use of English by Zulu people as a ‘feminine’ or ‘gay’ characteristic. Zulu masculinity is largely constructed through isiZulu and other masculine performed speech styles such as isiTsotsi. Research in this field requires much further attention, ideally by African language speaking female scholars. There is an urgent need for African scholars to reflect upon their own experiences. There is a need to problematize the dangers of the ‘single story’32 and find ways of talking about women, men, and people of other genders in their complex linguistic and social ways (Makama et al. 2019). Despite the binary construction it entails, I suggest in line with previous sociolinguistic research that Zulu women appear to aim for a high and ‘native-like’ standard of English in ELF communication. Several ways of speaking English and isiZulu play a role in gendered and sexual dynamics and there is much scope for future research. The above is not to say that the use of Standard English and other languages cannot take place simultaneously. In the next chapter, I illustrate how a young Zulu woman carves out a space for translingual writing practices among other artists. Translingual choices function as boundary work in order to challenge normative and conventional writing in ‘traditional’ English settings. The text provided is representative of a new generation of African

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English writers who reclaim their voice through innovative translingualism and by demonstrating linguistic citizenship (Stroud 2001; Stroud & Kerfoot 2020) seen as transformative action for epistemic justice. The status of Standard English in South African English lingua franca discourse is further contested here.

Notes 1 Hlonipha or a variant of the custom is not an exclusively Zulu tradition but prevalent in most Nguni and Sotho-speaking communities in Southern Africa. 2 For more detailed discussion, see Posel et al. 2020. 3 https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-11-04-tribalism-and-bitter ness-mar-springboks-rugby-world-cup-victory (accessed 4 November 2019). 4 During Mandela’s and Mbeki’s presidencies, the political dominance of Xhosa people was accused by some of being characterized by nepotism which was referred to as Xhosa Nostra. 5 www.statssa.gov.za/?p=12180. 6 Also, see Posel and Zeller (2015, 2020) for a comprehensive discussion of recent dynamics of language shift and bilingualism in South Africa. 7 Thobeka, consultant in Durban, from November 2012–January 2018. 8 The so-called ‘ex-Model C’ schools were white-only schools during the apartheid era, and they continued to be state schools with high resources post-1994. 9 53-year-old domestic worker, Umlazi, 17 November 2016. 10 The practice of ilobolo (bridewealth) has been widely researched recently (Posel & Rudwick 2014). 11 Of course, however, contemporary Zulu society is highly heterogenous and there are many educated Zulu women with a high proficiency in English who are married to men who are less educated and less articulate in English than themselves. 12 IsiHlonipho is a term coined by Herbert (1990a, 1990b) who used it in conjunction with sabafazi (women): IsiHlonipho sabafazi (women’s language of respect)]. This conjunction is, however, to some extent, misleading as hlonipha linguistic practice also takes place extensively among males. 13 Ongezwa, 34-year-old female isiZulu-speaking domestic worker, Kwa-Mashu, 9 January 2016. 14 RDP stands for Reconstruction and Development Programme. These houses are subsidized by the government for low-income families. 15 For a succinct early overview on the variety of South African Indian English, see Mesthrie 1995. 16 Newlands, 17 December 2016. 17 Newlands, 17 December 2016. 18 Interestingly, even in the US and diaspora context, African migrants have been shown to give similar reasons for learning African languages (Makoni 2018). 19 Linguistics student, November 2014. 20 This dynamic is nicely captured in humorous ways by Trevor Noah who is a South African of Xhosa-Swiss/German descent and has been the host of the US American The Daily Show since 2015. In one of the 2019 ‘behind the scenes’, he spoke about the different accents and proficiency in English that African language speakers have who attended so-called ex-Model C schools which had previously been reserved for white people and where Standard English was taught. The African English accent is italicized below. He said: “So, your parents were happy to send you there – that was the funny thing – so they were like you must go to that school and you must learn to speak good English. Then you go to the school

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22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

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and then you’ll learn the English and then you’ll come home and then you would be sitting with your parents, like watching TV or something and then your dad would be like: “Put volume, put volume” and you’ll be like “Ahem, you mean increase the volume?”, and your dad would be like “Hey…I’ll increase or decrease your life, don’t act smart here, put volume!” (see at about minute 9:15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldZJx5irpiQ&t=608s). One of the common stereotypes of Zulu women who make use of extensive isiTsotsi is that they are lesbians (Rudwick, Shange & Nkomo 2006) but although black male youth talk is employed (Maribe & Brookes 2014) it cannot be said to be characteristic of most lesbians. The social styles and identity performances of isiTsotsi speaking women resemble, to some extent, those of macha women in Latina youth gangs, see MendozaDenton (2008) for more detail. Student in Development Studies, Durban, 10 January 2012. Durban CBD, 5 December 2014. A part of Lebo’s narrative has also been recounted in Msibi and Rudwick 2015, November 2014, Hambanathi. Mluleki is a self-identified Zulu gay man who worked with me, on and off, as a research assistant between 2008–2013. A skesana identity is constructed on the basis of ‘fixed’ femininity (McLean & Ngcobo 1995: 164) but more recent work (Msibi & Rudwick 2015) shows that besides this fixity there is also fluidity and debunking of gender categories. MaDlamini, Lebo’s mother, 47-year-old domestic lady, November 2014, Hambanathi. IsiNgqumo is a socio and genderlect employed by men who have sex with men, primarily in the KwaZulu-Natal region. It is a strong in-group marker among township effeminate men (Msibi & Rudwick 2015, Rudwick & Msibi 2016). For more detail on the lexicon of isiNgqumo, see Rudwick and Ntuli 2008 or Msibi and Rudwick 2015 Nov 2010–January 2015. Adichie Chimamanda Ngozi (2009) ‘The Danger of a Single Story’ [Video file], available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/ chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_ single_ story?language=en (accessed 10 February 2020).

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Introduction Contemporary South Africa offers many examples of where English is disrupted in its lingua franca status. Whether it is the increasing usage of isiZulu in the higher domains, such as at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Rudwick 2017, 2018), in official meetings held in isiZulu at the eThekwini Municipality,1 or in recent COVID-19 briefings by the South African Government (Rudwick, Sijadu & Turner 2021). There is evidence that African language speakers have increasingly asserted their right to speak in their first language and have disrupted the putative lingua franca status of English in powerful domains. Sometimes this has led to an actual shift from English to another language, such as isiZulu, but at other times this is characterized by an English lingua franca communication which is heavily intersected by the first languages of users. What South Africans do with language in English lingua franca discourse is extremely innovative and practices shift throughout interactions and contexts. Ordinary black South Africans are able to access a wide range of diverse linguistic codes, varieties, genres, registers, accents, and styles and English is only one of many of these sources. This chapter gives examples of where language choices create disruption, and other languages demand recognition and disrupt the coloniality of language in South Africa. The fundamental paradigm underlying this chapter is that all language and linguistic practices are complex, hybrid, multi-scaled, and unpredictable (Blommaert 2015). South African lingua franca English is, as has been seen, replete with ambiguity where fixed and fluid imaginations create a tension between the local, global, glocal, and the many in-betweens. As a result, there are many processes in such encounters which lead to racialization, discrimination, and toxic identity politics. As previous chapters have shown, language politics in the South Africa society frequently offers rather polarized perceptions of English as primarily an imperial and oppressive tool, on the one hand, and the perception of it as both a local/global empowerment and expressive tool, on the other hand. As a lingua franca and not a language that replaces other languages but coexists as an option in a multilingual environment, English has significant potential to blur the lines between this dualism and binary thinking. This is the case DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472-8

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especially within the paradigmatic frame of ELF because it represents the conscious attempts to depart from the Standard versions of the English language towards greater recognition of hybrid and multilingual versions of the language. ELF studies (Pölzl & Seidlhofer 2006; Cogo & Dewey 2012; Pitzl 2012) have demonstrated that the ELF platform provides insight into multiple identities being formed between first languages and Englishes. While I have considered the examination of conflict-ridden identity politics with reference to English and race as productive because it can encourage deeper understanding and foster conversations around racial injustices, I aim to provide a different lens in this chapter by focusing on English as a translingual practice (Canagarajah 2018) with its own potential to contribute to decolonial thought. I aim to pay tribute to the creativity of English lingua franca translingualism in the South African cultural context by showing that this translingualism does not rely “on linguistic norms to account for communicative success”, rather it “considers the ways in which linguistic differences and multimodality might contribute to meaning making endeavors” (Canagarajah 2018: 297). To this end, I draw from translingual English lingua franca sources in the arts to demonstrate an “ontological refashioning” (Soudien 2014). Also, I intend to show how this ontological refashioning is non-binary, non-dualistic, non-fixed but fluid, hybrid, and always in the making. Thirdly, I argue that English as a multi and translingua franca searches, either by virtue of its multiple-language make-up or its content, for more social and racial justice and might have the potential to provide a linguistic tool that can contribute to more non-racialism and decolonization. In mid-2020, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)2 included 29 Nigerian English terms as acknowledgement of English as a global language. The overwhelming majority of first and international English speakers are not familiar with these terms but they are certainly encouraged to learn them to understand more about English in the world. As a result of English having been spoken as a lingua franca in South Africa for multiple generations and by many different ethnolinguistic groups, the OED also includes a wealth of lexical items from South African languages. Such South African examples include babelaas/ibhabhalazi (from isiZulu, meaning hangover), and dorp (from Afrikaans, meaning village).3 In much of the colonial and apartheid writing in English, African terms, such as, for instance, isangoma, were translated in bigoted and racist fashion, as in the case of ‘witch doctor’. Today, however, South Africans are familiar with the traditional healing persona whom a sangoma represents and hence the term largely remains untranslated in most sources. And if it is necessary to translate for a nonSouth African audience the translation ‘traditional healer’ is used. The extent to which Englishes have been nativized or even ‘naturalized’ (Kamwangamalu 2019) in South Africa has focused to a great extent on linguistic processes, such as lexical and syntactic transfers. But there are also social African forms of knowledge which have enriched Englishes all over Africa. As multilingua franca users of English, African artists and writers

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have a fruitful linguistic repertoire at hand with which to express their creativity. The African literature scene offers many examples of English which distinctly differs from any standard usage, both in the present and in the past. But writing in English as an African person has always been a tightrope endeavour. One of the pioneers of an Africanized and lingua franca textual form of English, Amos Tutuola, was both celebrated and criticized. The Palm Wine Drinkard (Tutuola 1952), published halfway through the twentieth century, ironically was dismissed by many of the Nigerian elite; even seen as an “embarrassment to the Nigerian intellectual establishment” at the time due to its non-Standard English form of writing (Tobias 1999: 66). Authors such as Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Tsitsi Dangaremgba, Buchi Emecheta, Zakes Mda, Niq Mhlongo, Gcina Mhlophe, Es’kia Mphahlele, Wole Soyinka, Amos Tutuola and Makhosazana Xaba, and the list could go on – can all be considered ambassadors of African English multilingua franca forms, either by drawing from African oral tradition, idiom, and lifeworlds or by injecting their English writing with the terminology or grammatical constructions of their African languages. In the next pages I will illustrate how recent South African English multilingua franca work is constituted and how African artists (poets, writers, and musicians) demonstrate English as a lingua franca in African making. I ignore, for the purpose of this book, English language purists, by quoting the powerful lines in Nyamnjoh’s (2017: 78) recent tribute to Amos Tutuola’s work: insistence on complete mastery of English to qualify for poetic license in the language disqualifies any creativity short of that by the colonised or postcolonial elite whose anglophilia is not in question or to be questioned. It denies the unlettered incomplete masses any pretensions to the colonial language as a lingua franca on their own terms, even as they are claimed by that colonial language and its elected elite speakers and writers. English multilingua franca ways of speaking and writing which are addressed to South Africans of various backgrounds find expression on multiple platforms and, for the purposes of this chapter, I select three which draw from a multitude of linguistic, cultural, and racial associations. These multilingua franca forms are not addressed to just one ethnolinguistic group but rather represent language forms which implicitly address all South Africans and ask them to learn from each other and each other’s languages. The first example is an English lingua franca conversation between a Sesotho and isiZulu speaker. Such types of conversations are nothing special, but part and parcel of African urban living and they have been documented in the code-switching and translanguaging literature, but they have found little analysis in terms of their English lingua franca constitution. The second example is a type of journalistic translingual English writing form in a traditional English-only journalistic outlet, and the third draws from a development in the Afrikaans language community, the Afrikaaps movement.

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Given the fact that African English lingua franca speakers mostly have several other languages at their disposal, their linguistic creativity is arguably more sophisticated than that of their monolingual English counterparts. We recently argued (Rudwick & Makoni 2021) that what is known as English might no longer provide the necessary flexibility to meaningfully participate in metropolitan English lingua franca communication in (South) Africa. The language usage among young urban Africans is fluid and hybrid so that English monolinguals would be unlikely to understand. In order to successfully communicate in such contexts, access to multilingual sources is necessary. The short extract below shows a conversation embedded in English as a lingua franca with extensive lexical borrowing and switches from English to isiZulu and Tsotsitaal. In this conversation, knowledge of only international Standard English does not provide mobility and comprehensibility. Rather it is a skilful translingualism, a mixing and switching to other linguistic resources, and the knowledge of English recontextualized lexical items which create the mobility here:4 1 JP: Have you 2 BONGZ: Yes.

been to Table Mountain?

Ah cool, you actually went and saw the whole …? Yey [chuckles] … went to Table Mountain, but I didn’t take a ride of, icable work (cable car). 6 JP: Oh ok, but you went up Table Mountain? 7 BONGZ: Yey mfowethu [brother]. 8 JP: Cool man. 9 BONGZ: Ye …. levels [the high/good life]. 10 JP: [chuckles] Amalevels ayi ngiyabona amalevels [I can see that(the good life) with you]. 11 BONGZ: Sure man, thatha leflight urelaxe ubemnandi [Sure, you take the flight and relax – it’s nice]. 3 JP:

4 BONGZ:

In this short extract, recorded in a Durban private residence, the conversation between JP and Bongz begins entirely in English but after an initial exchange of sentences Bongz and JP engage in translingual practice. Bongz responds by saying “Ye, … levels”. The term levels or amalevels is an English lexical borrowing but it is recontextualized among African language speakers as meaning ‘high/good life’. Among urban African language speakers this term is relatively widely known but among English first language speakers this is not the case. As seen above, employing “levels” triggered JP to continue speaking in isiZulu. Multiple more similar conversational extracts could be offered, but for reasons of space this will suffice. The point I am trying to make is that this short extract illustrates that a conversation in which there is English, isiZulu, and urban mixed language, also known as Tsotsitaal and the ways in which English is employed in this conversation renders it embedded in the young urban African linguistic lifestyle to which most monolingual

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English people would not have access. In oral communication code-switching and translanguaging have long been the norm in African urban communication, but there is a change to literacy forms which are linguistically constituted in ways which I will illustrate below. What is significant is that the ways in which some traditional English ‘only’ outlets are read by diverse English lingua franca readers in South Africa are beginning to move towards a more translingual literacy form which crosses both linguistic and cultural boundaries. African female artists and writers, In particular, have championed this path for many years. Makhosazana Xaba clarifies her experience as an African user of English as a lingua franca in her writing with powerful words. Her deliberations are worth quoting at length (Xaba & du Preez 2005: 137): I wrote this sentence in a short story: “She was so angry she didn’t care, she told the whole story right there, during the people,” an editor whose mother-tongue and only language of fluency is English would most likely tell me to change this sentence with a comment on grammar; the grammatically correct version for “during the people” being “in front of everyone”. If, however, you know enough about your characters using the language, “during the people” would not only make the point, it would likely induce a smile on the readers whose positionality you enter and portray as a writer. There is a fascinating dynamic that unfolds when embracing a second language and depending on and because of one’s first language. As a writer, you need to understand this well enough and/or research it extensively if you are to write stories on such characters and render them believable. It is the lived reality of African lifeworlds which advances writing in English as a multilingua franca and these Africanized forms of the language also represent a political stance, one that gives substance to African identities as culturally complex and linguistically hybrid. Notions of ideology, power, and hierarchy need to be considered together with variables such as race and gender in interpreting the language choices of a text (Wodak & Meyer, 2001). Even those who do not think of their writing as explicitly political, move into the realm of politics by using English in particular African or idiosyncratic ways.5 In 2020, a doctoral candidate in Historical Science at Witwatersrand University, Kholeka Shange6 wrote three articles for the Mail & Guardian, a weekly English outlet in South Africa founded in 1985 which is considered part of the country’s “elite news media” (Worthington 2010). Arguably, this weekly newspaper is one of the most intellectual outlets in the South African media landscape, and it has been strictly English only. And yet, all three of Shange’s texts are laced with complex translingualism: a) Sixosh’ abathakathi: Ukuthwebula and the photographic image; b) Thath’i sgubhu usfak’ es’ketchini: (Re)making theatre with Jefferson Tshabalala; and c) Ngibambeni, ngibambeni bomama refiguring princess magogo. As the titles

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already show Shange’s English writing is replete with African language terminology drawn mostly from isiZulu and urban-mixed languages and expresses concepts and ideas which are difficult or perhaps impossible to describe in English. In some sentences, there is translation into English, in others she allows just the African language terms and titles to resonate with the reader. The extract below serves as an example for this: In consideration of Peterson’s reflection on the pathologisation of kwaito in the early 1990s, it becomes critical to politicise this assertion by KingTha found in Bongo Maffin’s acclaimed single Thath’ iSgubhu (from the album The Concerto), “Ubekad’ engayazi ukuthi ishaywa kanjani lengoma. Ubekad’ engayazi ukuthi ishaywa ngebhes’… ngesgubhu … Thath’ isgubhu, isgubhu us’fak’ ezozweni.” In the universe created by Bongo Maffin and their kwaito contemporaries, isgubhu is not solely “into esamphongolo evalwe ngezikhumba nxazombili” [a cylindrical object enclosed in hide on either end] – as seen in Sibusiso Nyembezi and O. E. H. Nxumalo’s book, Inqolobane YeSizwe – but it may also be understood as resonant sound that hits you in the gut as you are seated in the back of a thunderous Zola Budd. It is in this same space that kwaito is at the centre. It is here that Bongo Maffin orientates the listener and locates them right inside izozo – a place that epitomises the day-to-day struggles of Black, working-class people in South Africa. And it is in this marginalised place where isgubhu and ingoma meet. The extract above demonstrates how references to a particular isiZulu song and literary work are employed to explain a very particular Zulu cultural space that resonates with marginalized African people – in both isiZulu and English multilingua franca. For reasons of scope, I refrain from a detailed analysis here, I am merely using it as an example to make my point. All three of Shange’s (2020) articles are representative of an innovative type of Africanized English lingua franca journalistic writing which challenges the normative, conventional, and monoglottal English style of the ‘usually’ English-only traditional journalistic outlet Mail & Guardian. Explaining her hybrid language usage, Shange said in a presentation at Rhodes University: “I use concepts from isiZulu because they are imbued with particularities and context that English does not have”.7 Through these translingual and multivocal (Higgins 2009) texts, Shange is forging a multilingua franca English which carries diverse linguistic and cultural cues and this allows for “the turbulent emergence of a ‘hybrid’ language” (Williams & Stroud 2017: 178) There is disruption to the norm, complex multivocality, and translingualism in Shange’s texts and it is significant that they are published in a traditional Englishonly outlet. It shows that spaces and platforms which might count as English, colonial, linguistically Western, and culturally hegemonic are increasingly transgressed through the creative means of African languages. At a socio-political level, these steps disrupt the coloniality of language and they also put the issue of race on the table. Mazrui and Mazrui (1998: 29) long argued that Africanizing

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English “must definitely include the deracialization of English”. The translingual character of the English Shange employs has the potential to do this because her writing could be regarded as transracial. At the same time, there remains the question, how does English become Africanized and trans or non-racial in a society where the vast majority of non-Africans have not (yet) made an effort to learn African languages? Indeed, readers who do not have any knowledge of Nguni languages will struggle to understand the texts. Shange communicates her positionality and establishes a relationship between her own identity, expressed in English, African languages, and Tsotsitaal(s), multiple cultural and linguistic references and other urban (South) African identities of her potential readers. Her texts stand for a new generation of African English writers and readers who have reclaimed their voices and their audiences through innovative translingualism and by showing a multilingual linguistic citizenship (Stroud 2001, Stroud & Kerfoot 2020). In a telephone interview during the COVID-19 lockdown in South Africa, Shange reflected on her writing with me. The politics of voice, African languages, urban forms, and English, as well the topic of ‘belonging’ dominated much of our conversation. When asked whether she thinks that her writing can be understood by the average Mail & Guardian reader, Shange replied that she wasn’t certain but that she received a lot of positive feedback after publication of these texts. She also added quite emphatically: “If you don’t understand my writing, I am probably not writing for you”. These words are to some extent reminiscent of Biko’s I write what I like but unlike in Biko’s case they refer not merely to the content, but the actual language use and linguistic choices with which the story is being told. It is the kind of English lingua franca discourse and text which appeals to the establishment of sociolinguistic justice by multi and translingualizing English. Shange insists that no italics are to be used for the isiZulu words employed in the English text which makes the translinguality of the texts even more real. Such writing also implicitly urges South Africans to learn each other’s languages, or, perhaps more specifically, it should inspire non-African language speakers to embrace the learning of an African language. Shange’s writing is also an apt illustration of the multilingua franca status of the English language in South Africa. Kamwangamalu (2007: 273) argued that “the identities that the black community assigns to English are a product of the social history and political changes experienced by South Africa over the past four centuries”. The current decolonial turn allows ‘new identities’ to be assigned to the English language in its function as a multilingua franca. In the next section, I turn to a rap poem which also capitalizes on the lingua franca status of English but merely by using it as a platform for the promotion of another language, in this case Afrikaaps.

Reclaiming Linguistic Belonging – in English but for Afrikaaps English, it seems, has a significant role to play in the moving away from the current version of a pure Standard Afrikaans. The process of Afrikaner

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linguistic ethno-nationalism constructed not only a boundary between Afrikaans and oppressively perceived English, but also formed a racial boundary between different Afrikaans speakers (Van der Waal 2012). Illusionary monolithic ‘one language – one culture – one identity’ perceptions were enforced through a ‘pure’ language in which anglisismes (English lexical borrowings into Afrikaans) were unwelcome. Kriel’s work (2006) shows how a ‘pure’ Standard Afrikaans, “uncontaminated” by English, became the main and most immediate ethnic identity marker of Afrikaners during the twentieth century. The Afrikaans of the white population had always been designated the Standard while coloured people’s varieties of the language were constructed as merely dialectal (Hendricks 2016; Dyers 2008, 2016; Alexander 2013). While a restandardization could help Afrikaans out of its stigmatized position, many white Afrikaans stakeholders do not appear to be ready for such a move. While there is an increasing emphasis on the creole roots of Afrikaans, the Afrikaner white elite also persistently prescribe their ‘standard variety’ (Van der Waal 2012). It is in the educational domain in particular that a persistent hierarchization of Standard Afrikaans versus Kaaps varieties is prevalent. A recent article demonstrates how the current Standard Afrikaans continues to be seen as “pure, high, proper and real” as opposed to the “low, deficient and slang” nature of Kaaps Afrikaans varieties in education (Cooper 2018: 30). Research in the South African coloured community (Dyers 2004, 2008) has long argued that Kaaps is a strong marker of identity. At the same time, it has been argued that Afrikaans-English code-switching and English usage has continuously and steadily increased in the young Afrikaans-speaking community in general and among coloured people in particular (Stell 2010). It has also been argued that it does not carry as disaffiliated a function in the coloured community as it does in the white community where Suiwer Afrikaans (pure Afrikaans) is still valued by many people ((Stell 2010). The term Afrikaaps, as a particular style of Kaaps, which includes a great deal of English has been popularized through an iconic protest theatre (termed a hiphopera) and documentary. The play constitutes a musical tribute to the valorization of local Kaaps varieties and deconstructs the idea that white Afrikaans is better. It “recaptures the voices of the excluded, re-immerses, and entangles those voices, and generates a representation of language associated to pride and confidence” (Stroud & William 2017: 177). It also demonstrates precisely what Erasmus and Pieterse argued more than two decades ago (1999: 184): “that more open-ended and empowering conceptualisations of coloured identities are possible”. The play and documentary stand for a reclaiming of coloured Afrikaans ways of speaking and being and they demonstrate the cultural vibrancy outside the Standard Afrikaans public sphere (Van Heerden 2016). But not only do they show the linguistic and cultural vibrancy of the coloured Afrikaans ways of speaking, they dismantle Standard, so-called white Afrikaans as a superior variety and at the same time embrace English as an additional lingua franca. Rap and hip hop are two of the genres in popular culture that are characterized by hybrid and multivocal forms of language which are dominated

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by the use of English and other local inflections (Alim & Pennycook 2009). In South Africa, hip hop is also characterized by extensive use of English (as a common lingua franca) and diverse local languages depending on which community the artist belongs to. Late in 2019, a rap poem entitled ‘R.I.P.’.8 Kaaps went viral on social media, in this case R.I.P. does not stand for ‘Rest in Peace’ but ‘Rise in Power’, and the poem is indeed an extraordinary and quite powerfully crafted rap accompanied by dramatic violin playing which pays tribute to the love and passion for (Afri)Kaaps among brown/coloured South Africans, but it does so through English as a multilingua franca. It is quoted in its entirety below because it raises a number of issues which are relevant to this chapter, i. e. the ambiguity of disruption and innovation. I would like to urge the reader to take the time to listen to the rap9 as it can best be appreciated in its multimodal form. The poem provides examples of specific words which highlight the difference between Standard Afrikaans and (Afri)Kaaps and it includes specific Kaaps expressions which are culturally rooted in Cape coloured life. It was posted on YouTube by the company Vannie Kaap in early 2019. 1 Afrikaaps is not slang, Afrikaaps is not broken, 2 Afrikaaps is not a lesser version of anything spoken 3 It’s rich in history, it’s diverse in structure, it’s the linguistic identity of an entire culture 4 It apologizes to no one, it stands up to anyone, it’s a mix of words 5 But it’s a mix of everyone 6 It’s always evolving, it’s always intriguing, it’s the heart of a slave 7 Whose heart is still beating 8 (You see) I spoke it at home, but not in the classroom 9 I still speak it at home, now not in the boardroom 10 Yet – I was raised by Kaaps 11 I was loved by Kaaps 12 I felt free in Kaaps 13 I found me in Kaaps 14 But I stabbed Kaaps in the back when I became ashamed of Kaaps 15 So Saloot to Adam Small who in voice stood tall 16 Saloot Youngster CPP, globalising you and me 17 Ekse Bruin ou, bruin vrou [I am a brown man, a brown woman] 18 Getuig Saam, Met my nou [Testify together, with me now] 19 Kombuis? [Kitchen?] 20 Watse Kombuis? [What kitchen?] 21 Dji’tie Hele Blerrie HuisGebou! [The whole house was built] 22 Elf tale en joune is gek? [Eleven languages and yours is a joke?] 23 Rek oep jou bek [Open your mouth and be vocal] 24 En wie vou jou lag, se … [And to whoever laughs at you, say …] 25 Tsek [Get lost/fxxx off] 26 Jy – djy [You] 27 Rerig – rerag [Really]

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28 Wiet nie – wietie [Not knowing] 29 Middag – mirrag [Noon] 30 Serit sou it is – mean is soes djy lis [Say it like it is and mean it like you want to] 31 Muslim of Kris [Muslim or Christian] 32 Osse taal is oek wie os is [Our language is also how we are] 33 Miniete vi boet en saartjie [Disregard of Boetie and Saartjie 10] 34 Ek het gelee war ekkie vestaanie [I learned but I did not understand] 35 Marit Baatie ek raak kwaadie [But it doesn’t matter if I get angry] 36 Kwaad raakens Speel Mossie Saamie [Getting mad isn’t a part of the game] 37 (So) whether you are overseas or live in the Cape Flats 38 Support the Springboks – or support the All Blacks 39 Whether you work in an office – or work in a factory 40 Travel by train – or travel by taxi 41 Whether you’re bietjie gham [a bit ghetto] – or a bietjie sturvy [a bit bourgeois] 42 Whether you are lekker maer [nicely skinny] – or lekker curvy [nicely curvaceous] 43 Whether you like gatsbys [a sandwich] – or smaak breyani [a spicy rice dish] 44 Whether you live off SAASA (South African Social Support grant) 45 Or live like a laanie [rich guy, or business person/employer] 46 Whether you are a bossie kop or have glade hare [afro – or straight hair] 47 Whether you are a bleskop or have grys hare [bald – grey hair] 48 Whether you’re Liverpool or support Man U 49 Skud in dubs [Drive a Volkswagen] – Hondas or BMWs 50 Whether you Jazz to Boucher (reference to Judy Boucher – the Caribbean singer) 51 Or jol to Beyonce 52 Vote ANC, DA – or just vote no way 53 Whether your nickname is – Koeppe, Boere, Pang or Lange 54 Or your nicknames Lippe, Tanee, Holle or Wange 55 Whether you fit in by changing your accent to suit your work 56 or by changing your actions to suit your worth 57 Understand one thing 58 If it’s RIP to Kaaps, it is not rest in peace to Kaaps 59 If it’s RIP to Kaaps, it’s rise in power to Kaaps 60 Rise in power – to Kaaps The poem captures much of the oppressive language politics around Afrikaans and Kaaps. It skillfully juxtaposes so-called Standard Afrikaans lexical items with Kaaps ones and it gives voice to a struggle and the desire to rectify the language politics of oppression and it does so by using English as a multilingua franca. If one understands texts as the products of discourse and also

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defines texts “as materially durable products of linguistic actions” (Wodak 2001: 66), then this poem acts as a manifestation of both the love for Afrikaaps and an appreciation of English as a lingua franca. The first 16 lines of the poem are in English only, but its content very much captures that of In Praise of the Beloved Language (Fishman 1996). Although expressed in English the commitment to Afrikaans is embedded in emotive word choices and suggests a mutually constituting relationship between language, i.e. Afrikaans, and belonging to the coloured community. The first two lines directly engage with the misconception that Kaaps is less of a language than so-called Standard Afrikaans. The lines capture an emotionally charged commitment to the language. The next 20 lines are in Afrikaaps; lines 17 to 25 have strong interpellative functions in the way that the artist establishes his own identity and calls upon his in-group (brown/coloured people) to be vocal and reject any negative perceptions of Kaaps. From line 26 to line 29, Afrikaaps lexical items are contrasted with Standard Afrikaans ones, re-evaluated and emphasized as perfectly legitimate. Lines 30–32 are again strongly interpellative, as the artist writes in line 32, Osse taal is oek wie os is [our language is also how we are], which evokes a type of strategic essentialism (Spivak 1988, 1996) which gives voice to the significance of Kaaps in the construction of coloured cultural identities. Lines 33/34 refer to an apartheid school textbook that all Afrikaans children had to read entitled Boetie and Saartjie. This book narrates normative white Afrikaner life which had little relevance to coloured children: Ek het gelee war ekkie vestaanie (I learned but I did not understand). In lines 38–60, the poem is again primarily in English but fluid usage and translanguaging continues in the sense that Afrikaaps lexical items are merged into the otherwise English text. Between line 38 and line 56, the artist invokes the diversity in the coloured community in terms of socioeconomic standing and multiple lifestyles but aims at stressing the common denominator Kaaps as uniting coloured identity. The message is conveyed, however, in English, capitalizing on the fact that it is one of South Africa’s primary lingua francas. During my fieldwork in 2020 in the Cape I discussed the lyrics and language choices of the poem and, more broadly, the situation of Kaaps/Afrikaaps/English with various people in the coloured communities. Several individuals whom I played the poem to had never heard it before and they were visibly moved. In one instance the recording brought tears to the eyes of a young male Muizenberg resident.11 Several of my coloured interviewees12 pointed out, however, that the poem cannot claim to resonate with all coloured people, simply because not all have access to English. The choice of English as the main language of the poem is ideologically driven and value laden. This is an important point to consider. While increased usage of English as a multi and translingua franca arguably has the potential to transform power relations between standard and multivocal forms and to contribute to decolonization, it also has its limits. Not all South Africans have unrestricted access to acquiring English skills. In many remote areas of the country, e.g. the Karoo or northern areas of the Western Cape, the influence of English is marginal. When I interviewed a young

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coloured woman in a Graaff-Reinett guesthouse in January 2020, she did not understand the English I spoke to her. She explained to me in Kaaps that she only learned English for a couple of years in school and never really made use of it. A recent census-based study shows that in the Western Cape, in particular, there is “a larger increase in Afrikaans–English bilingualism” (Posel & Zeller 2020: 306) than in the rest of the country. So again, English as a lingua franca acts not only as a tool through which disruption and innovation can take place; it is also, once again, a mean device that marginalizes. The primary message of the rap poem is that Afrikaaps is “not a lesser version of anything” but the fact that the message is conveyed primarily in English does not reach all Afrikaans speakers in the brown/coloured community. Although this poem is a strong manifestation of Kaaps being reclaimed by Cape coloured people it is paradoxical that its message is primarily in English. The poem might not even resonate with all the coloured people in the Cape who are less upwardly mobile.14 Some might even argue that the mere fact that the poem is in English works against it to a certain extent. When interviewing two coloured families15 in their Mitchell’s Plain homes a few days before the South African COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, all of the interviewees, across three generations, appeared to identify to some extent with the message of the poem. And yet, one older interviewee,16 pointed out that she believed her generation (60+) cannot relate to the message the same way that the younger population can because “English is much more important to them [the younger people]”. In March 2020, Kim, my coloured consultant, and I met with two well-known coloured hip hop artists (one of whom had featured in the documentary Afrikaaps mentioned above). Hendrik17 spoke about how most Cape coloured people today move comfortably between Kaaps and English with no sense of purism attached to either language but a new sense of pride in Kaaps. When I raised the issue that the poem was primarily in English and not in Kaaps, Hendrik spoke at length about the power attached to English through its prevalence in the white, Indian, and upwardly mobile black community. “As an artist you do want to have this exposure,” he said, “but it won’t be a clean English, it will be full of Kaaps and our world.” These words are, to some extent, reminiscent of Achebe’s (1965: 349) famous statement that, for him, English can “carry the weight” of his “African experience” but that it “will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings”. The way Hendrick and DJMac spoke of their use of English mixed with Kaaps suggested that for these hip hop artists English’s multilingual and translingual franca status offers a more creative platform than just their first languages. Not only are multiple languages including urban mixed speech forms employed but there is also much transfer between the languages which is what marks its multivocality. This multivocality, translanguaging, and translingual practices are vital in maintaining what are considered authentic identities among young, urban, African, and coloured people. But it is also not considered wise for a coloured hip hop artist to employ so-called Standard

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English only because to embrace only English “at the expense of local languages and styles—can cause an emcee to lose a freestyle rap battle” (Williams 2016a: 113). Hendrik also spoke more broadly about English in the Cape coloured community, and he explained to me, “When upper-class [coloured] people shift to English at home, and no longer Kaaps, there are many of us who shake heads, they are often just snobs”. As is the case in most South African communities in which English is not the first language, a shift towards English as the language of the home is associated with an elitism that alienates ‘ordinary’ people. Hendrick’s comment also recaptured what has been said before in this book with reference to isiZulu speakers: that the total shift to English as primary language smacks of a renunciation of cultural values and traditions. In other words, it is the loss of the lingua franca status of English and the adoption of it as the primary and only medium which triggers a strong Othering from the members of one’s in-group. There is little doubt that Kaaps is seen as a significant part of the culture among coloured people. Dyers (2008: 55), has long argued that Kaaps might be “the main marker of a ‘Cape Coloured’ identity, particularly in the absence of a clear group culture and identity” (emphasis in original). While some scholars have observed a language shift from Kaaps to English in some sections of the coloured community (Anthonissen 2009, 2013; Stell 2010), a recent quantitative study drawing from nationally representative data does not support these findings (Posel & Zeller 2020). Analysing the 1996, 2001, and 2011 censuses, it is argued that the trend “is a dramatic increase in the reporting of a second home language” which is mostly, but not exclusively, English. Hence, it is English as an additional language rather than a language which replaces Kaaps/ Afrikaans which marks South African sociolinguistic reality. During a lengthy interview with four female coloured women aged between 22 and 27 in Idas Valley at the end of February 2020, there was consensus among the ladies that Kaaps was an important element of how belonging in the Western Cape coloured community was constructed.18 DJMac19 also commented on the vibrancy of Kaaps and what he called the “sterk [strong] emotional attachment” coloured people have to their ways of speaking, even those who choose to speak, in their professional lives, Standard Afrikaans/English. The poem captures this in line 14, where the poet speaks about stabbing Kaaps in the back by not speaking it in the boardroom. According to Bernie Fabing, who is the owner of the brand Vannie Kaap, there has been a waka (wake-up) moment in the coloured community.20 Coloured people, especially the young, in metropolitan areas increasingly embrace their mixed heritage and repertoires and with Kaaps they create a “new convivial community with transformative implications for the dignity, visibility, and material benefit of its speakers” (Stroud & Kerfoot 2020: 22). But Afrikaaps seems to be based more on the Cape variety of Kaaps, and although Faber claims in a recent interview that the language snippets on his products and his brand more broadly are representative of the coloured community, it has to be said: 1) that not all coloured people feel as comfortable in English as those in Cape Town and other urban centres; and 2) that many coloured people simply

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cannot afford the company’s products. Skimming through the product range in the e-shop, one is not only struck by the extent of English in the memes written on cups, T-shirts, hats, and other accessories but also by their price which only middle-class people could afford. Two coloured doctoral student interviewees22 reflected critically on the ways ‘good’ English was linked to class in their communities, but they themselves also asserted they were totally comfortable with the language, as long as it did not replace Kaaps. A coloured student at Stellenbosch University who has worked with me for a number of years, once suggested that when English is spoken in the Cape coloured community it usually has an Afrikaaps filter put over it in order to get the message across. And also in order “not to appear too snobby”.23 Although feelings of ownership of English vary greatly among members of the coloured community, middle-class people seem to prefer the language when communicating with white people. I collected several powerful stories of how English was perceived as the ‘better’ medium when speaking to Afrikaners, because my interviewees felt that Kaaps ‘inferior-ized’ and racialized coloured people in ways that English did not. Narratives about these matters often became quickly replete with discourses about “we/us” versus “they/them” (brown/ coloured Kaaps speakers vis-à-vis Afrikaners) which indicates the rift between white and coloured Afrikaans speakers highlighted in other studies (e.g. Stell 2010). Among the majority of coloured students whom I interviewed, there was definitely a sense of the waka moment Fabing referred to in his interview. There was a confident dismissal of the alleged superiority of white Afrikaans and a critical engagement with educational standards. The translingualism and multivocality of the ‘R.I.P. Afrikaaps’ poem is representative of the polycentric and translingual practices among coloured hip hop artists discussed in a series of recent papers (Williams & Stroud 2010, 2013, 2014). And yet, sociolinguistic reality suggests that ideologies of language purism and language hierarchies are nonetheless persistent, in particular when it comes to Afrikaans speakers. In a group interview with three coloured domestic ladies24 in the Stellenbosch area of Idas Valley, one lady also devalued her own ways of speaking Afrikaans and explained how she wants her child to learn to speak “proper”. Highly educated coloured individuals, while speaking Kaaps as a home language, are often reluctant to speak in Kaaps to white Afrikaans speakers precisely for the reason that Kaaps is not on equal terms with Standard Afrikaans. Even 25 years after apartheid, there are many Afrikaner people who look down on the ways Afrikaans is spoken in the coloured community. During an interviewee with a middle-aged Afrikaner woman at an upmarket café on the outskirts of Stellenbosch in early 2020, she said, “the way they [coloured people] speak it’s just not proper, they drop syllables and do strange things to our [Afrikaner] language, it’s just a lazy way of speaking”.25 This comment is reminiscent of what Veronelli (2015: 119) described as “coloniality of language” where the colonizers “came to think linguistically and expressively of colonized peoples as inferior beings, and of their languages as inferior languages …”. In and around Stellenbosch much of this coloniality persists.

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Concluding Thoughts Makoni & Pennycook (2012: 447) have described lingua franca multilingualism as the intertwining of various languages to a degree where it becomes difficult “to determine any boundaries that may indicate that there are different languages involved”. The fluid ways in which English and Kaaps are entangled in Afrikaaps ways of speaking suggests there is a possibility that South African multilingua franca English to reach such a point in the future. There is disruption to conventional English usage, a forging of a new notion of ‘language’, and the potential for ‘secondary’ language learning. This kind of English multilingua franca communication is multivocal (Higgins 2009) and it creates and recreates new meanings across different communicative situations (Canagarajah 2006). This chapter showed how African language and Afrikaaps speakers employ English as a lingua franca in order to get themselves and their cultures and identities heard. Nevertheless, young, urban, black, and coloured South Africans have a degree of ownership of English which allows them to use the language in combination with their first languages. Through extensive innovations derived from their first languages and urban mixed-codes, English as a multi and translingua franca comes to the fore. Although it has been shown that much colonial logic persists in the minds of South Africans there are also disruptions to this logic and the artistic translingualism described above bears witness to this. An Africanized version of lingua franca English can also allow the relationship between language and race to get disrupted and become more turbulent. The linguistic, social, and cultural creativity of multilingual English users, writers, artists, and musicians can make progress in conversations in which the colonial logics of language and race can be dismantled. Stroud and Williams (2017) have argued that the Afrikaaps ‘movement’ might provide spaces for non-racial identities to be refashioned. From my perspective, these practices might at least open up a space where race can mean freedom and creative existence rather than burden. If multilingualism starts constituting the fundamental basis of ELF/EMF communications in South Africa and multiple languages can permanently interfere with English, then we might also be able to create English communication as a platform upon which colonial logic and unequal power dynamics are troubled. In such a space one can work on dismantling the dynamics of coloniality and contribute to new linguistic and racial encounters where the common denominator could become human multilingualism and cultural hybridity rather than the significance of one’s first language, ethnicity, culture, or race. Looking at ELF as a one-dimensional, e.g. only ‘communicative’, entity does not provide a fruitful ground on which to push the epistemological and ontological aspects of ELF studies. English lingua franca dynamics shift and turn, they are created in relation to non-linguistic variables such as ethnicity, race, and gender, and they are negotiated, deconstructed, and reconstructed by actors in the lingua franca space. In hybrid urban South African contexts

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many ideas that have already emerged from the British Cultural Studies paradigms, such as the notion of hybridity and the “in-between” spaces (Hall 1990, 1996; Bhabha 1994) continue to find much resonance. Some scholars (Kecskes 2007; Fiedler 2011) have conceptualized the English lingua franca context as a “third space” invoking the work of Homi Bhabha. This provides some impetus for seeing non-standard ways of using hybrid English to disrupt artificial dichotomies and allow much greater acceptance of linguistic, social, and cultural ‘deviations’. At the same time, however, one needs to remember that languages live in hierarchical spaces and that even ‘third’ and ‘in-between’ spaces are characterized by unequal racial power relations. In the South African context this is characterized predominantly by the fact that access to what is widely considered as ‘good’ English is restricted by class for most African learners (Hunter 2019). This means that narrow conceptualizations based on the ‘positive’, ‘communicative’, and ‘hybrid’ nature of English lingua franca communication can also lead to the simplified conception that actors in this imagined “third space” are horizontally related. In a chapter entitled “Translingual practice and ELF”, Canagarajah (2018: 295) argues that in the move “beyond the notion of multilingualism as a collection of discrete language systems, the translingual orientation offers a more integrated and nuanced way of understanding how people communicate”. One of the shared theoretical premises of ELF and translingual practice studies is their reliance on multilingualism, and South Africa offers a plethora of multilingual communication patterns in which ELF and translingual communication overlap. It also offers a multifaceted platform of ideological constructions which involve English as a lingua franca as well as translingualism. If English can become the second language of all South Africans and African language and Kaaps speakers continue to find ways of using English to suit their African surrounding (to invoke Achebe), there can be a flux between African lifeworlds and the English medium. But much work remains to be done, as most conservative English speakers and outlets simply are not ready for the kind of English translingualism that was illustrated above by Shange’s pieces. But as long as speakers continue to transgress the mainstream monoglottal English and push the linguistic boundaries of acceptance, there will be a future for translingual ways of using the English language in the creation of multiple local, global, glocal, and in-between spaces and identities. South Africa and, by extension, Africa can be considered an ontological laboratory for the doing and undoing of linguistic and racial identity politics and a trans-racialized form of English lingua franca discourse.

Notes 1 Devarashi, 46-year-old, Indian South African woman, and Richard, 53-year-old, male English South African are non-Zulu speaking employees at the eThekwini

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Disruption & Innovation Municipality. They indicated to me in Skype interviews that staff meetings with higher officials were increasingly conducted in isiZulu. Apparently Devarashi filed a complaint about this matter in 2018 as she felt English should be maintained as the official lingua franca. Subsequently, it was agreed that the Minutes of Meetings were to be written and sent around in English but that participants in the meeting were free to speak isiZulu if they preferred to do so. https://qz.com/africa/1789168/nigerian-english-words-added-to-oxford-dictionary For a more comprehensive list of lexical items from African languages and Afrikaans into English, see Khokhlova (2015). Elmes (2001: 85) went as far as to claim that about half of the words in the South African English lexicon are borrowed from Afrikaans. Naturally occurring conversation, 24 September 2019, Durban Glenwood. Xaba (2018) recently published an anthology of the writings of specifically women poets (Our Words, Our Worlds) which “disrupt the shattering silence that threatens to erase their [the women’s] many dynamic lived experiences”. https://ilisozine.wix site.com/ilisomagazine/post/a-reflection-on-our-words-our-worlds-writing-on-blacksouth-african-women-poets-2000-2018?fbclid=IwAR03FYEVtMs_UGavvKoSZ2_ 8zpasPK6OAsUK7y-pZ1O103MVIYXW7Hh2koY (accessed 30 March 2020). https://mg.co.za/author/kholeka-shange. https://ms-my.facebook.com/PoliticalAndInternationalStudies/videos/kholeka-shangezwakala-umntwana-umagogo-commonly-known-as-princess-magogo-kadinu/8303469 54119120 (accessed 23 April 2021). I am grateful to Lorryn Williams for making me not only aware of the Afrikaans movement but also for her excellent research assistance and help with translation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5R7IySRXHo. Boetie and Saartjie was a prescribed Afrikaans novel in South African schools during apartheid which described normative white Afrikaans life which few coloured people could identify with. Piet, 26-year–old fisherman, Muizenberg, 8 January 2020. Stella, 60-year-old coloured domestic cleaner, 10 March Stellenbosch, 10 March 2020, Karen, 43-year-old academic, Stellenbosch, 25 April 2020, Herbert, 66-yearold writer, Stellenbosch, 2020. Sofie, 27-year-old coloured domestic lady, Graaf-Reinette, 4 January 2020. Many thanks to Lorryn Williams again for stressing this point to me. Mitchell’s Plain, two interviews. Grandmother, 61-year-old retired pre-school teacher, Mitchell’s Plain. Hendrik, 31-year-old self-identified “brown” hip-hop artist, 10 March 2020. Claire, Susan, Margie, and Cloe, Idas Valley. DJ Mac, HipHop artist, Stellenbosch, 10 March 2020. https://omny.fm/shows/midmorning/trailblazer-vannie-kaaps-bernie-fabing. The Vannie Kaap brand can be regarded as an example of the potential economic power of Kaaps. For a recent discussion of the economic empowerment through Kaaps see van der Rheede 2016. Frederike, 24-year-old female, and Jo, 27-year-old male, PhD students, Stellenbosch, 4 March 2020.. Josie, 24-year-old coloured student, Stellenbosch, 8 March 2016. Susan, 36-years, Magda, 27 years, and Lorryn, 25 years old, Idas Valley, 19 January 2015.. Reinette, 58-year-old self-identified female “Afrikaner professional”, 7 February 2020.

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In a volume which carries the beautiful alliteration Chronicles of Complexity as a subtitle the late Jan Blommaert (2013: 114) wrote about the many ambiguities of the linguistic landscape in his own neighbourhood. He showed that there is no single position, and positionality one can hold which yields a “definite picture” in a sense that it can claim to know completely “whatever there is to be known”, even at one time at one space. The meaning or rather the construction of ‘truth’, especially in global North scholarship has too often been based on a premise that ‘truth’ is universally applicable and constitutes globally relevant knowledge. Realizing that linguistic and social realities as well as perceived truths vary significantly from one place to another, from one person to another, and also from one communicative context to another has implications of what precisely we see as constituting empirical ‘data’ and ‘evidence’ in anthropological linguistics. I have followed Blommaert’s suggestion to capture “the logic of change instead of the ‘laws’ of the system” (Blommaert (2013: 114) by exploring how racialized language ideologies are located “within the processes by which power is produced, naturalized and challenged” (Briggs 1992: 388). Reflecting on how changing logics of language and identity politics are constituted in relation to English as a lingua franca in South Africa must include considerations of how my own background and professional position impacted on the research process. Although self-reflexive analysis has been an integral part of anthropological and social research for many decades, it has only more recently featured as an important concern in language studies. Bourdieu’s (1989) epistemic reflexivity urges scholars to critically look at their own background and positioning, “to develop an epistemological take” on our relationship to the subject and object of our study (Salö 2018: 25). In linguistics and scholarship on language some scholars (Byrd Clark & Dervin 2014) called for a reflective turn. Hence, this chapter engages with my positionality and provides more detail about methodological and analytical concerns. Growing up in Germany in the 1970s and 80s only speaking my native language, German, was a very far cry from the reality in which my own multilingual children grow up today. But spending a year in Canada at the age of 17 made me become, after some initial difficulties, a fairly proficient English speaker, albeit with a strong Canadian ‘youth’ accent which English teachers in Germany later DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472-9

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lamented. This bilingualism was an advantage when doing my master’s in anthropology in Germany where, although classes were in German, the majority of texts were in English. It provided me with a privilege that many German students did not have at the time and probably worked in my favour when receiving a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship to South Africa at the end of my master’s. So, in 2001, my South African journey began and when I arrived at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (then still only Natal) in Durban, the medium of instruction was English only. In 2003, I started teaching a course entitled Academic Learning in English (ALE) which was a mandatory module for all second language speakers of English who were predominately isiZulu speaking. Many of my students struggled with English academic literacy. These students felt alienated not only on linguistic grounds but also because of the white academic culture and staff body of the institution at the time. While much of this has changed, in particular at the University of KwaZulu-Natal which is considered one of the most “transformed” institutions in the country, African language speaking students continue to experience alienation and marginalization in universities (Bangeni & Kapp 2007; Kessi & Cornell 2015; Rudwick & Parmegiani 2013). The close entanglement of language and race continues to produce many injustices in South African universities. Recent findings from a report produced by the Human Science Research Council (HSRC) demonstrate that “language is used as a tool of discrimination and frequently heightens racial tension” in universities (Swartz et al. 2018).1 I am indebted to my students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and some of my consultants, especially isiZuluspeakers, for pointing out how flawed my own linguistic and racial behaviour has been at times. This ranged from the presumption that my English ‘second’ language identity could easily compare to those of black South Africans, to a previous failure to engage sufficiently with my own white privilege. Teaching and coordinating the ALE course between 2003–2006 sensitized me to the linguistic, socio-cultural, and academic difficulties African students experienced and it also fostered my own awareness of European vis-à-vis South African whiteness(es) and privileged backgrounds. Combined with my own struggles in writing my doctoral thesis in English, this trajectory influenced my perspective on the language. When my supervisor, Nkonko Kamwangamalu, returned the first draft chapter of my thesis,2 he had a stern look on his face and said that the content of my writing was fine, but the language was awful. How was this possible? I felt disheartened. For most of my life I had thought of English as a kind of liberating and empowerment tool, it gave me access to information, places, people, and situations which I wouldn’t have had access to as a Germanonly speaker. And yet, I realized that English also disempowered me. Living in South Africa made me more acutely aware of the many social injustices which were due to the power of English. Accepting my own white privilege and simultaneously navigating my way through my personal rite of passage as an English writer and ethnographer characterized most of my first years

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in South Africa. Like many of the consultants in this study I started to experience English as oppressive on the one hand and empowering on the other. I had a ‘love-hate relationship’ with the English language, as reportedly do African language speakers in South Africa (De Klerk & Gough 2002), and it is this relationship that triggered the writing of this monograph. So, this book, in one way, draws from my experience in South Africa over a period that spans almost twenty years. While living permanently in South Africa between 2001 and 2009, I became a proficient English speaker and an isiZulu student. I have held permanent residency in the country since 2003 but, ironically, research on the ambiguous roles English holds as a lingua franca in the country only started more systematically when I moved from South Africa back to Europe in early 2009. To some extent it was the distance that allowed me to reflect on some of my previous research which had mostly focused on Zulu language and culture in relation to identity. In November that year, I returned to South Africa with my five-month-old daughter, stayed for four months, and then continued to return in each of the subsequent ten years, except for two. While several research projects were conducted on the side, the role of English was never insignificant. This book project draws from the fieldwork conducted in two primary locations, KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. The longest and most recent fieldwork period was from September 2019 till June 2020, four months in KwaZulu-Natal and half a year in the Western Cape. Through this multi-sited ethnography, my objective was to understand how South Africans in different parts of the country think about and use English as a lingua franca. It involved extensive “hanging out” with primarily isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers in order to observe how they respond to linguistic and social situations. I spent many days talking to South Africans about what English meant in their life while also learning to interpret these meanings in a broader lingua franca context. When positionality and reflexivity are translated into ethnographic fieldwork, they manifest in various situations of everyday life and actions. It influenced the way I approached someone and asked for an interview, where to go, what to do, which languages to speak, what to say and how to be. My consultants, who were ‘insiders’ of the language and racial groups I studied and the conversations we had with each other, instructed much of my persona as an ethnographer. But also, the everyday triviality of my encounters, language choices, relationships, and positions have shaped how I elicited and analysed the data. Although, as stated earlier, I would place this book within linguistic anthropology its otherwise multidisciplinary nature makes it methodologically rather eclectic, sourcing across disciplines and alongside a broad conceptual frame. While the literature on ELF has been instructive in many regards, applied linguistics texts alone could not have provided sufficient explanatory tools to navigate through the turbulence of South Africa’s rich raciolinguistic realities. It was helpful in my ethnographic approach to be guided by the views of the participants and consultants in my undertaking to collect narrative and discursive data. Sometimes this also meant staying in the background and

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allowing participants to create meanings amongst themselves, other times I was an active participant and in yet other instances, I was an assistant to my consultant and able to step in as an active discussant. Many of the interviews unfolded through snowball and respondent-driven sampling but I also met several of my interviewees simply through quotidian experiences. Throughout the many years of data collection, I always aimed to check, double-check, and cross-check consultants’ interpretations with my own and those of other participants. Luckily, I have had the good fortune to meet a number of exceptionally bright students, consultants, and research assistants who guided me in understanding the complexities of the ambivalent feelings English triggered. They also assisted me in understanding that contradictions can make sense and that feelings of shame, disadvantage, uncertainty, self-consciousness, and worry can run parallel to a sense of empowerment, pride, and advantage in English lingua franca situations. This profoundly ambiguous space is instructive in the study of the politics of language. The world is replete with contradiction, so we might as well embrace it rather than deny it. Some scholars (Kuo 2006; Holliday 2009) have argued that it is problematic that ELF scholarship developed in Europe and as such is located in the ‘centre’ and in a privileged and predominately white space while often speaking for the ‘periphery’. While my own positionality is that of the centre in terms of my personal background (white European), this book recaptures my time in the periphery. I do not aim to speak ‘for’ the periphery, I merely capture voices of the periphery and frame them through socio-political and historical context. Holliday (2009: 23) suggested within the ELF context that “one has to live the ideas and emotions of the periphery condition” in order to understand it. Linked to that is also the hierarchy between so-called ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speakers of English which the ELF paradigm intends to disrupt but which nonetheless continues to have currency in English language studies and academia more generally. But the relationship between language and privilege is never straightforward and it might not always be useful to dichotomize geopolitically between the global South and the global North (Byrd Clark and Dervin 2014: 8). At the same time, speaking English, in particular an English that is close to what is considered to be Standard, puts one in a privileged position. Throughout the writing of this monograph, I have aimed to show that personal biographies and narratives illuminate the understanding of language experienced by ordinary people. Hence, this monograph carries many ‘stories’, and yet the narratives found here are only a fraction of the many narratives I have collected over the past ten or more years. Stories are powerful tools in human interaction. I believe, like Eze (2018: 170), that “stories about other people bring them closer to us”. Building a rapport with South Africans from various backgrounds over a number of years, I focused on observing closely people’s own understandings of the meaning of English in their life. The result was an application of a broad range of methods, both formal and informal. This combination included participant and ethnographic observation, interviews, discussions, reflexive

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analyses, as well as the analysis of the extracts of parliamentary debate and artistic materials discussed in the previous chapter. The result is a multimodal portrayal of English social practices and identity formations among isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers. As mentioned earlier, during the many years of research for this book, I conducted 158 interviews and worked more closely with eight consultants, three of whom also worked as research assistants during some of the project. In all English lingua franca encounters, individual cultural and linguistic background, communicative goals, and speaker’s competence influence the communication (Meierkord 2002: 129). This also affected my position as an ethnographer in encounters. My own positioning differed significantly in relation to isiZulu speakers and Afrikaans speakers. I was obviously a racially Other for isiZulu and coloured Afrikaans speakers, but because of my European roots I was also constructed as an ‘ethnically’ Other by many Afrikaners who have a strong sense of belonging as (South) African. It was the experience of English as a second language that we shared and felt various degrees of ambivalence about. While it was the experience of using English as a lingua franca which created some common ground, it was also, and perhaps more importantly, our first languages which made us share understandings of language as human condition. When using English in interview encounters it was not always a ‘happy’ ELF communication but one where, for instance, one interlocutor felt disadvantaged or another frustrated because he/she couldn’t say just what he/she wanted to say – in English. It is for these reasons that much of the data I collected was in isiZulu or Afrikaans. Only a person who has experienced the struggle to become proficient in another language, who has embarrassed themself by stammering and making ‘mistakes’ can relate to the real discomfort felt when one has to operate in powerful domains without one’s ‘strong’ language, which more often than not is people’s ‘mother tongue’. It is an ironic twist that it is primarily English only language speakers who do not have this experience, many of whom belong to the most powerful elite in the world. Different types of sociolinguistic and meta-language data were elicited, the former through the broad ethnographic frame, the latter through media and text analysis. Language and modalities were analysed within specific contexts, time, and space as much as the scope of this monograph allowed (which admittedly might not have always been sufficient). The systematic observation of English lingua franca interactions across various domains and hierarchies triggered many questions regarding the ideologies and power relations inherent in the ways of speaking English as a lingua franca. Being from Germany and not from an Anglo-American country helped my position in the field for at least two reasons. First, and as mentioned earlier, it was beneficial that my mother tongue was not English, but that English was a second language and lingua franca for me. While this created a certain feeling of solidarity between consultants, interviewees, and myself, it was also helpful from the perspective that some isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers are more timid

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about speaking in English in the presence of first language English speakers. The second reason was that my ‘outsider’ status, and in particular my European background, gave rise to curiosity in some of my encounters and several interviewees were also equipped with a catalogue of questions for me. This mutual interest in each other’s culture and society contributed to an extremely productive atmosphere for my research. Reinharz (1997) makes a distinction between three main categories of ‘selves’ in the field which I found instructive. The research-based self, for instance in my case, a person who is interested in English and other languages; the brought-self, for instance a white, female European; and, lastly, the situationally created self, for example, a hip hop fan, a substitute English teacher in the township, a mother, a visitor, an acquaintance of a friend, etc. One can slip into various different roles depending on the circumstances and situations and my ‘outsiderness’ could sometimes benefit from aspects of ‘insiderness’, whether it was my efforts to speak isiZulu or Afrikaans, my speaking out about white privilege, or a shared experience of the politics of English. The positions I inhabited were never fixed and static and I was never “fully outside or inside the ‘community’”, my position was “constantly being negotiated and renegotiated” (Naples 1997: 71). Empirical research is always replete with power relation and my white female European identity came with its own power baggage. In one reflective session with some of the UKZN student interviewees3 in Durban in December 2016, we discussed accents and students commented on the “unfairness” that my European accent was perceived as ‘nice’ while African accents were often devaluated by people. This raciolinguistic discussion showed how difficult it is to disentangle a person’s racial positioning from their specific English language usage (Rosa & Flores 2017). One of the Durban consultants, Nqobile, also reflected on her annoyance that white people often commented on how ‘great’ she spoke English as an African person. One of her retrospections is worth quoting. She said: “So there was this white, middle-aged guy who stood next to me in the Glenwood Bakery and he said ‘Wow … your English …, I am just so surprised … you look so African but speak such good English’”. When I asked how she responded, she said: “You know what I wanted to say but didn’t was ‘“yeah – colonisation is a bitch’”. It was important that my consultant and participants benefitted in an intellectual way from this research and Nqobile wrote her own research paper which had been published by the time this manuscript was submitted. One of my Afrikaans consultants told me towards the end of our work in late 2019 that the best thing she took away from this project was a critical awareness of her own positioning. From the very beginning, I was constantly aware of Smith’s (2012) warnings not to coerce research participants into anything. Research that involves individuals from the periphery does not necessarily need to subscribe to the norms and conditions of research conventions stipulated in the global North. The methodologies I employed allowed for ‘stories’ to be told as narratives, and I tried to give those I studied the leading position which often

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meant me stepping back. In many instances, it also meant close relationships with consultants in the study, many of whom I have known for more than ten years now. Spaces and contexts constitute their own legitimacies through various power dynamics that are beyond the control of local actors and the researcher. It was also an important objective to see and determine linguistic and cultural modalities which are linked to macro powers in society. The intersectional perspective provided the insight that lived experiences are fundamentally shaped through a dialectic between systemic macro factors such as race, class, gender, etc., and individual ‘micro’ positions and circumstances.4 While observing, tracking, transcribing, reflecting, and interpreting the English lingua franca space, the most divisive social variable was the issue of ‘race’. Working in South Africa has shaped my understanding of racial politics and identities in a way that is significantly different from my previous European views on how race and racial identities are constituted. My decision to analyse linguistic and racial politics in South Africa as a white German woman was not uncontroversial. The detailed self-reflections offered here are in part intended to highlight the limitations of my own interpretations and conclusions. In early 2015, I spent an afternoon in Durban Mitchell’s park talking for several hours with Ayanda, a then 26-year-old, very gifted Zulu poet/writer who was working for a small NGO. After she had told me about her frustration at writing up a report about a rural empowerment project for KwaZuluNatal bead workers, I offered to help her. She looked me up and down rather provocatively and then said full of indignation: “Why? You think my English is not good enough for that?” My initial reaction was defensive, I had meant well. But Ayanda was right to reject my proposal in the way she did, it was both presumptuous and intrusive. How dare I think my ‘academic’ English and rather limited isiZulu necessarily equipped me ‘better’ to write this report about work on a local art form of rural elderly Zulu women, many of whom spoke almost no English at all. Our conversation continued with a discussion about ‘white benevolence’ being misplaced and connected to white anxieties and fragility.5 This incident with Ayanda and other useful criticisms I received were extremely helpful in terms of engaging my positionality and self-awareness as a white academic and non-native South African. Ayanda remained my consultant for a long time and the many ensuing conversations we had reshaped much of my thinking about the privileges of whiteness. Many pages in this book have discussed how discrimination on the basis of language has racial dimensions. Having been in Stellenbosch for the annual Woordfees three times made me realize that there are still Afrikaners who continue to think, for instance, that the Woordfees is ‘their’ artistic playground. This white hubris resonates throughout some events in the festival. Lizette, an Afrikaner woman in her 60s,6 who was introduced to me during the festival in 2020, told me that she found it “a little annoying” that “they” (coloured people) also participated in the Woordfees now. Meeting her in the idyllic setting of Stellenbosch Botanical Gardens during the festival, I assured

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her that her conversation would remain anonymous but I struggled to maintain my composure. Lizette chatted along in her bigoted ways, saying: “They don’t belong here, I really don’t understand why they don’t make their own festival”. Inherent and implicit in her comment was a firm (white supremacist) belief in a matrix of power exclusive to her own in-group, white Afrikaners. Her ideas were reminiscent of Bourdieu’s (1977) conceptualization of the ‘legitimate’ versus the ‘illegitimate’ speaker/person. Clearly, she considered coloured Afrikaans speakers as illegitimate in the context of the Woordfees. Linguistic and racial identity are seen as mutually constituting one another in this instance, and this tight inter-dependency was employed to justify exclusion, analogous to the incident described in Chapter 4. Regrettably, on numerous other occasions during my five months stay in Stellenbosch, white Afrikaans speakers, when broadly talking about the nature of language and society in South Africa, made comments similar to those of Lizette. Another multimodal reflection about the Woordsfees deserves mentioning here. Also in early March 2020, not long before COVID-19 restrictions hit the country, I went to a multilingual (English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, and Somali) performance which was part of the festival programme with my daughter and an isiXhosa-speaking friend of mine. The play was entitled What the Water Remembers and it took place in the Adam Small Theatre. A dance performance took place prior to the play on the pavement at the entrance to the theatre. I was familiar with the work because of the Durban-born choreographer Sbonakaliso Ndaba. In the Woordfees programme her work Abakhulu is described as “a moving dance work that uses African rhythms and neo-classical sounds to explore how our youth relates to the concept of respect as it is expressed in the initiation process in African culture” (Woordfees Program 2020: 179). The dancers were all African, dressed in white and they moved beautifully in a choreographically harmonious composition. It was a powerful performance but the theatre event inside finished whilst the dance was taking place outside, and many people started to leave the building. A seemingly exclusive white crowd came down the steps at the entrance to the theatre, some individuals completely ignored the dance performance, others turned their heads away from the dancing, while others stopped to watch for a few moments only to turn away. A few white ladies aged 50+ trespassed right onto the space demarcated for the performance (lined by chalk on the asphalt) while chatting away, possibly unintentionally but also totally unapologetic. The behaviour could have been entirely accidental but from my perspective (and those of my daughter and my Xhosa companion) there was a distinct element of disrespect at play here. While completely non-verbal their behaviour communicated disregard for the ‘black bodies’ who were performing the dance. In my view, the disturbing kinesthetics of this incident merit mention here in order to show the multimodality (Kress 2010) of social and racial practices. I should also mention that during my fieldwork in Stellenbosch, I encountered several white

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Afrikaans speakers whose inability to grapple with their own racist beliefs led them to take on a type of recalcitrant position. In some instances, this was also linked to a refusal to speak in English, despite, for instance, the presence of European foreigners with no knowledge of Afrikaans.7 Methodological reflexivity and the building of a dialogue between the consultants, myself, and the field meant a permanent learning process including many wobbles. Although my rapport with consultants and interviewees benefitted the research in various ways, I also often felt that it was the spontaneous encounters which provided much authentic data. While the aim of the fieldwork was to systematically document how linguistic and cultural choices shape narratives my interpretations were often guided more significantly by the multilingualism and other languages, mostly isiZulu or Afrikaans, of the consultants. A multidisciplinary discourse perspective (Wodak & Meyer 2001) means that multiple interpretations of the roles of English as a lingua franca and the various other languages that entered the conversation were possible. English as a multi and translingua franca is a complex phenomenon not confined and restricted to any single social understanding. My ethnography offers many narratives and stories from people who look at English in various different ways in the same situation. While I also used some insights from critical discourse/text analysis (Fairclough & Wodak 1997; Wodak & Meyer 2001; Blommaert 2013) to analyse how power and inequality manifest and how ideologies are represented through language, ethnography was my primary methodological tool. The English lingua franca context was approached as a multi-layered and multilingual performative platform which sees interlocutors co-construct, de-construct, and re-construct identities through multiple languages in spaces where English was the putative lingua franca. In the many informal conversations that made up part of the data for this project, I shared some of my own experiences to give something back to my participants. At the same time, there were plenty of situations where my consultants and interviewees challenged my views and interpretations. In particular, two of my male isiZulu speaking consultants and one of my female coloured research assistants ‘corrected’ my interpretations of certain interviews and events and I am deeply grateful to them for this learning curve. In trying to interpret people’s thoughts and understand the importance of languages in their lives I never thought I could arrive at a complete picture but accepted that ideas were shaped, unshaped, and reshaped in a continuous manner. In many ways, I have tried to follow what Mignolo & Walsh (2018: 3) describe as a “pluriversal and interversal decoloniality”, an entangling of local subjectivities, narratives, and struggles to belong. On reflection I have also tried to move away from any universal signifiers and one-dimensional views that give in to the logic of coloniality. By providing the participants of this study with agency and by allowing their perspectives to penetrate not just the data presentations but also the analysis I hope to have been able to give fairer, more balanced, and more meaningful portrayals of language matters involving English as a lingua franca in South Africa.

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Notes 1 Racial tensions have also been observed elsewhere (see e.g. Horákova 2018; Swartz et al. 2020). 2 My doctoral research (2001–2006) focused on the link between isiZulu and identity/ ethnicity in a Zulu township community. Only a few days into the fieldwork it dawned on me that exploring the role of isiZulu as the one (and only) language in identity and ethnicity construction made no sense because the English language was ubiquitous in the educational township setting. Although in these township schools almost every learner and teacher spoke isiZulu as a first language, the ‘official’ medium of learning and teaching was English. 3 IsiZulu-speaking student interviewees, Durban, 20 December 2016. 4 It has been stressed that the language choices of speakers, identity politics, and language management require the consideration of both macro and micro factors (Nekvápil & Sherman 2015). 5 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/16/racial-inequality-nicenesswhite-people. 6 Lizette, 51-year-old Afrikaner professional, 12 March 2020. 7 Van der Westhuizen (2013: 179) suggested that resistance to the English language has “intergenerational existential significance” and is often linked to an ethnolinguistic mobilization which aims at claiming space for Afrikaans and Afrikaners. Although her younger respondents (32–35-years-old) did not claim the “existential investment” in Afrikaans the way the older participants did, they also asserted their “right to be there” (Van der Westhuizen 2013: 179).

10 Conclusion Moving the Centre

The subtitle of this last chapter is borrowed from Ngu-gı-’s (1993) wonderful collection of essays, which appeals to a pluralistic world order of languages, cultures, and people. Although I did not write about an African (Bantu) language as a lingua franca for contemporary South Africa, in the same way that Ngu-gı- replaced English in his writing with Gikuju, I hope to be forgiven for borrowing his compelling phrase here for my purpose. With this book I have tried to move the centre of attention to English (as a) lingua franca research from Europe to Africa in order to show its sociocultural and political ambiguity in this context. After all, it has to be acknowledged that “the realities of the Global South are very different from those of the North, and unless applied linguists can learn to see from the South, the frameworks for understanding will never be bridged” (Pennycook & Makoni 2020: 137). My intention has been to contribute to decolonizing the field of ELF by portraying a southern perspective and by arguing that Africa should play a role in the advancement of theoretical and empirical studies that involve English as a lingua franca.1 A field of study which reserves for itself the acronym ELF for the general phrase of English as a lingua franca cannot, from my perspective, close itself to postcolonial African realities and interdisciplinary2 perspectives, even if it might shake some of its foundational principles. Crucially important as well, English lingua franca studies ought to consider to a greater extent how ELF encounters are entangled in processes of racialization, racial positioning, and racism. Linguistic racism manifests itself in multiple diverse ways in English lingua franca communication and while research in the educational domain already offers many insights into how this is operationalized, especially in South Africa and the USA, it is the quotidian English lingua franca racism experienced by people in various domains which has not received sufficient attention. When Pennycook (1998, 2017) laid the larger foundations for our understanding of the politics of the global spread of English, he considered in depth the inextricability of imperial exploitation with the persistent inequalities perpetuated by neoliberal and white ideologies. This approach sees English in relation to both historical and contemporary power dynamics, discrimination, and cultural identity politics. Pennycook also urged us to make sense of the global spread of English by developing detailed and nuanced understandings of DOI: 10.4324/9780429031472-10

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the multiple social realities in which English operates on local levels (Pennycook 1998, 2017) because only in those specific circumstances can we unravel the many intricacies of its power. This book aimed to do just that with reference to the lingua franca status of the language in South Africa and by focusing primarily on two different language groups who have strongly embedded linguistic identities, isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers. I have tried to provide at least some preliminary answers to the question of how sociocultural complexities of English as a lingua franca are reflected in linguistic, ethnic, racial, and gender ideologies and how these impact on identity politics in the country. There are many local specificities which have been narrated but globally relevant issues have also emerged. One of these issues is the fundamental socio-cultural and political ambiguity of English lingua franca communication which can never be considered ‘neutral’. All too often, and in both academic as well as public discourse, English has been portrayed as the valued intercultural, communicative, and global lingua franca in rather romantic terms. This book echoes Duranti’s (2011) perspective that language practice can never be neutral. Consequently the paradigm upon which this book rests is in contrast to some of what has been written on the topic of English as a lingua franca (especially studies that can be regarded as mainstream ELF scholarship). This monograph is saturated with narratives of South Africans who speak English as a second or third language, mostly in lingua franca settings, and do not consider ELF practice as neutral. These individuals’ experiences of multiple levels of marginalization and empowerment, mobility and immobility, inclusion and exclusion due to their usage of English as a lingua franca or that of others have filled the pages of this book. Their voices, their frustrations about raciolinguistic profiling, ‘Othering’, and discrimination evoke the ‘guilty’ character of the English language that Njabulo Ndebele (1986) spoke of many years ago. Colonial frameworks continue to harm African English speakers in South Africa on a daily basis and some of these facets of coloniality were portrayed in this book. But the story of English as a lingua franca in South Africa is only partially told here, leaving space for much further examination. There are several arguments which constitute the vital core of this book. One is located on a meta-pragmatic level and concerns the question of the extent to which English in fact constitutes a useful lingua franca, what kind of lingua franca status the language has, and whether or not its lingua franca status is stable in South Africa. Several scholars have analysed language data collected by the South African statistics institute (Deumert 2010; Posel & Casale 2011; Posel & Zeller 2011, 2015, 2020; Bekker & Hill 2016). When it comes to English proficiency, the last three censuses show a steady growth in the number of South Africans who claim to speak English as a second language (Posel & Zeller 2015, 2020). At the same time, the share of Africans who reported English as their first home language only increased by about 2.5 percentage points over a 15-year period: from 0.35 percent in 1996 to 2.89 percent in 2011 (Posel, Hunter & Rudwick 2020). These statistics provide

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some evidence of the vitality of African languages and Afrikaans and very little indication of a significant language shift to English as a first language. More generally in Africa, it has been shown that the influence of European languages on its linguistic vitality and multilingualism has been limited (Vigourou & Mufwene 2008; Dyers 2008). In fact, language death seems to be “less dramatic on the African continent than in other parts of the world” (Dimmendaal & Voelz 2007: 598). What many pages in this book highlight is that there are many sides to this reality and while English lingua franca communication and by extension ELF ways of speaking can be seen as bridges between different language groups, it can also be rejected as a legitimate and fair way of communication. A few years ago, one of the EFF ministers of the South African parliament Makoti Sibongile Khawula (also known as MaKhawula) vowed only to use the language of her KwaZulu-Natal constituency, isiZulu. Here English is rejected as the sole lingua franca of the South African parliament. The strong instrumental value English holds for second language speaking communities is entangled with the equally significant cultural value home languages hold (Bangeni & Kapp 2007; Rudwick 2004, 2008; Rudwick & Parmigiani 2013; Anthonissen 2013; Coetzee-Van Rooy 2021; McKinney 2015, 2017). In other words, English does not seem to be replacing African languages or Afrikaans to any significant degree, but it might well be strengthening its lingua franca position. The increasing functions of English as a second/third language and a seemingly robust African language/English bilingualism (Posel & Zeller 2015, 2020; Posel et al. 2020) suggest that English is likely to remain one of the country’s primary lingua francas for years to come. And yet, it has to be remembered that many poor and rural black South Africans cannot be considered proficient in English. Van der Walt and Evans (2018: 186) rightly argue in their recent contribution to the Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca that in South Africa “in reality there is a disjuncture between the perceived status of English and its actual grassroots usage with several other viable contenders for the position of lingua franca”. IsiZulu is certainly a strong contender for the position of a national lingua franca. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted that at a national level politicians realized that English usage would not suffice in the official information briefings to the South Africa public. Extensive codeswitching into African languages, primarily isiZulu, sometimes ad hoc and other times systematic and scripted, could be observed (Rudwick, Sijadu & Turner 2021). One of the core arguments of this book is that ambiguity is one of the primary and yet insufficiently acknowledged characteristic of the roles English assumes as a lingua franca. Although I demonstrated this only with reference to South Africa3 by discussing how and where its lingua franca status is being questioned, contested, yielded, or disrupted, there are some broader epistemological issues which emerge for the study of English as a lingua franca more broadly. There are several reasons why ELF is relevant in South Africa, and

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Africa is relevant to ELF. For instance, ELF has tried to disrupt the constructed polarity between so-called ‘native speaker’ (NSs) and ‘non-native speakers’ (NNSs) in English lingua franca communication.4 However, the reality facing NNSs of English, in particular teachers, suggests that even “after nearly a quarter of a century of discourse on the NS/NNS inequity” little has been achieved in attempting to disrupt “the insidious structure of inequality” which marks the power dynamic of global English (Kumaravadivelu 2016: 82). There seems to be a disconnect between theory and praxis in some ELF research and a need to put more emphasis on inequality and injustices through systematic empirical studies. The African continent offers a wealth of empirical data to complicate and diffuse the distinction between native and non-native English speakers. The concept of the mother tongue has been contested for many decades; most African children simply grow up speaking more than one or two languages and they have native-like competencies in several of them. In most instances, English is only one of many linguistic tools African children have access to, and its influence on their daily lives is often limited. And even for the overwhelming majority of African adults, English usage remains restricted to lingua franca settings which are often professional domains only. While ELF as a research field has recently shifted in a direction that takes increased cognisance of multilingualism as the basis of communication in which English features as a lingua franca (e.g. Cogo 2016, 2018; Jenkins 2015, 2018), the acronym EMF for English as a multilingua franca, coined by Jenkins has only found little resonance. Exceptions to this are some studies emerging with reference to the Asian context (Weihua 2019, Ishikawa & Jenkins 2019, 2020, Baker & Sangiamchit 2019).5 This monograph has also aimed to advance an understanding of English as a translingua franca, as envisaged by Pennycook (2010), that transfers linguistic and cultural elements of various ethnicities and nationalities. Such a “translingual approach to meaning making evokes a decolonial lens with its focus on the ideologies implicit” in language and any other tool chosen for meaning making (Cushman 2016: 236). Race is a vital category of this meaning making, not only in South Africa but also in the world beyond. Makoni et al. (2003) pioneered the study of race as an important category in language studies and this has also been addressed systematically recently through the field of raciolinguistics in the USA (Nelson and Rosa 2015; Rosa and Nelson 2017; Alim et al. 2016; Alim, Reyes & Kroskrity 2020). Developments in this field, however, have had a US focus and their applicability to South Africa requires the consideration of additional aspects. The status of English as one of South Africa’s primary lingua francas is inextricably linked to colonial and apartheid legacies. Hutton argued that linguistics is “both the parent and child of race theory” (1998: 3) and given the history of English imperialism (Phillipson 1992) and its global cultural politics (Pennycook 2007), it becomes clear that the study of whiteness as linked to English cannot be ignored. This is especially so because “whiteness is wily: white supremacy is so embedded in our psyches that we end up doing it even while we claim (and believe) it is what we oppose” (Phipps 2020: 4).

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Language usage, arguably, can never be completely dislodged from the significance of race. This book demonstrates how English contributes as a lingua franca to the trouble South Africans find themselves in when it comes to racial identity politics (Stroud & Williams 2017; Durrheim, Mtose & Brown 2011; Erasmus 2017). Although, pitted against the other colonial language Afrikaans, English has emerged as the lesser of the two colonial evils, it is far from being socio-politically neutral. The ways of speaking English largely depend on one’s education and class, as the privilege of speaking of what is viewed as so-called Standard or ‘un-accented’ English is linked inextricably to fee-charging quality schools few African language speakers have access to. Therefore, coloniality, English, and race intersect in complex ways and it is quite obvious that the “claims of global English’s neutrality belie the historic colonial inequalities, which created the conditions for its existence” (Hsu 2015: 125). There are countless ways in which race matters in the study of English as a lingua franca and there are many “political aspects of discrimination” involving English which continuously requires more attention by scholars in the field (Holliday 2009: 27). One of the seminal scholars of ELF, Jenkins, regards the consideration of race as “very important”6 and one of her current projects examines ELF and disempowerment, with race constituting one of the key focus areas. ELF as a research field has developed greatly since the seminal publications in the early 2000s (Jenkins 2000; Seidlhofer 2001; Mauranen 2003) which focused on phonological and lexical descriptions and corpus development, and as a paradigm it has undergone several phases.7 ELF studies have much to offer in terms of empirical, theoretical, and pedagogical advances in English language teaching and communication strategies, but its impact on more general thinking about the ontologies and epistemologies of English lingua franca practices, in particular in terms of their socio-political and cultural importance, demands much further attention. English is currently the primary language of power in the world which creates multiple injustices and as English users we are – more or less – complicit in its power. Boundaries are constructed on the basis of different ways in which English is used as a lingua franca. But boundaries are mostly only pertinent when people struggle for power and feel excluded (Mbembe 2017). If English continues to develop as a multi and translingua franca and if it increasingly offers a platform upon which other languages can be utilized and given recognition, then these boundaries might lose pertinence. English lingua franca spaces are likely to continue to show how norms of conventional English practices can be disrupted. Race and its ubiquity in the communication processes in which English serves as a lingua franca provides an opportunity “to reflect more carefully on how and when different kind of racial concepts may be useful, useless or dangerous” (James 2010: 10). If more weight is given to non-native and, importantly, non-white English speakers in the ‘natural’ development of the language, which is what some ELF scholars have been proposing for decades, then English might develop further potential to decolonize not only in the ex-British colonies but also on a world

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language level. South Africa’s multilingualism “offers an as yet untapped potential for connecting the project of human mutuality to that of non-racialism” (Stroud and William 2017:168).8 But for this to happen the ways in which we think about English have to change and the historical relationships between languages and racialization have to be disrupted. Chinua Achebe wrote as far back as in 1965 that he felt that the English language could “carry the weight” of (his) African experience but he also conceded that this English “will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit its new African surroundings” (Achebe 1965: 349). In South Africa such a new English is not the dominant variety yet, because Standard English maintains a privileged position in society. And there are cultural assumptions which are locked in coloniality, such as the view of language as a bound entity, which have not been abandoned in mainstream thinking. English lingua franca communication needs to be seen as a multiple communicative platform that can foster ‘solidarity’ among various language speakers (Martinez 2017) through mutual language learning. This study does not aim to provide any descriptive framework of how English ‘should’ ideally be used and understood in racially mixed lingua franca communication but the core feature of English lingua franca discourse which, from my perspective, deserves greater recognition is its relentless socio-political ambiguity. Some ELF studies have fallen into the trap of bounded language thinking and prescriptivism. Park and Wee (2011: 44) phrased it aptly: “To privilege one particular mode of interaction or group of speakers as more authentically representing ELF than others is clearly an unsatisfactory conceptualisation, as it ignores the complex and polymorphous way in which English is used in the world”. In contemporary South Africa, African language speakers are often more or less forced to speak English when they communicate with non-African language speakers. Due to lack of African language knowledge among non-African population groups, there is much coloniality which continues to characterize interracial encounters. While African language speakers might choose to use English as a multilingua franca in conversation with each other, these ways of speaking English are very different and, in most cases, highly translingual. Pennycook (2020: 10) suggested that a project of redistribution does not need to “be limited to, or be dependent on, the redistribution of traditionally material goods, but can also include the redistribution of linguistic resources, agentive actions, cognitive processes and forms of identity”. There is no doubt that especially among non-Africans there is much potential to explore such redistributive processes. South Africa could be a more equal and a more socio-politically and ‘racially’ equitable place if all South Africans independent of their background were fluent in at least one African language. There is a great need to learn not only African languages but also from the linguistic experiences of African language speakers (McIntosh 2018). Self-reflective whiteness can draw from the notion of epistemic vulnerability which captures an openness to be affected and shaped by others (Gibson 2011; Snyman 2015). Through such an approach the epistemologies of ignorance can be broken down so that one can start working

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towards deliberately unthinking one’s own covert Eurocentricity (Snyman 2015: 270). Such a disposition includes greater awareness of the significance and knowledge of not just African languages but African lifeworlds. Over the past few decades, critical scholarship on the various roles of English in the world has consistently pointed to the need to rethink Western discourse on English which masks as universal. Blommaert’s (2010: 23) concept of peripheral normativity captures much of the English lingua franca communication in South Africa as, in particular in urban mixed areas, English usage is based on non-Standard English varieties and other languages. Language use is indexical for cultural meanings (Silverstein 2003, Blommaert 2015) and English lingua franca contexts are often those in which the periphery is the cultural norm. Translingual English can manifest as a resistance practice in some instances (Canagarajah & Dovchin 2019), but it can also continue to marginalize the speakers of minority languages in English dominant settings (Flores & Rosa, 2015). The complexity of what African language speakers do with languages, the extent and nature of their multi and translingualism, and their culturally and socio-politically embedded language choices make Africa a vital site for knowledge production on English as a lingua franca. The dialogue between African lifeworlds and the doing and undoing of ELF communication demonstrates how the South can inform the North (Comaroff & Comaroff 2012; Connell 2007) and how African theorizing can forge new ways of being in the world. The multi and translingual development of English as a lingua franca in South Africa suggests that a certain amount of African multilingual skills will have to be acquired in the future in order to communicate successfully in South African ELF encounters. It has been established in the ELF literature that first language English speakers may have better access to a wider range of styles and communication strategies, but they might not be able to accommodate in English lingua franca discourse in the way that multilinguals do (Sweeney & Hua 2010). From a South African perspective, first language speakers of English who do not have some level of proficiency in an African language have a ‘handicap’ in urban interracial ELF encounters. Second language English varieties certainly have currency in the country. The analysis of the parliamentary debate in Chapter 5 served as an example of the fact that the value of what is perceived as white English is contested by African language speakers. At the same time, however, strongly accented African Englishes are not valued in many domains of power. Hunter (2019) showed how the education system largely elevates “white tone” (and hence, not African Englishes) as the desirable educational variety and how this situation contributes to complex racialization processes. Due to the fact that African Englishes in English lingua franca communication are a proxy for race they also constitute a platform that attracts racialization processes and, unfortunately, racist behaviours. All ways of speaking are embedded in socio-economic, political, and cultural systems (Pavlenko & Blackledge 2004) and this also applies to English as a lingua franca. For many African language speakers English continues to

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represent coloniality, whiteness, and frustration. Negative perceptions stem from the sentiment and valid opinion that English has no ‘natural’ presence in Africa but was imposed as one of many other colonial impositions. It is important that these sentiments are respected and that we take cognisance of the fact that what “we come to know cannot be separated from what we feel and who we are” (Fecho 2004: 153). At the same time, the hybridity prevalent in the type of Englishes exemplified above combined with the extent to which African people have made the language their own (Higgins 2007; Smit 1996; Parmegiani 2008, 2017) allows for much agency among lingua franca users. But to take ownership of English, adapt it, and recreate it is not synonymous with understanding its status and position in Africa as ‘naturalized’. On an emotional level, sociolinguistic perceptions are a reflection of socio-political realities. After all, English is one of the most immediate gatekeepers of success in the country, moreover, all over Africa “the mere choice of using English is seen as a signal of upper-class status” (Banda 2020: 10). Branford (1996: 48) suggested in the early days of South Africa’s democracy that “an intelligent respect for one another’s ‘Englishes’ is one of the many tolerances that must be learned and practised in a future South Africa”. It appears, however, that identity politics surrounding English usage is still an incessant feature of the country’s realities. The language is firmly entangled in socio-political ambiguity, understood as a “colonial language” on the one hand, as “language of liberation” and an (inter)national lingua franca on the other. Depending on the eye of the beholder English will either be perceived as ‘deethnicized’ and relatively ‘neutral’ or white and ‘oppressive’. English is far from an “innocent language” (Ndebele 1986) and its power remains pervasive and for these reasons its position in society needs to be continuously monitored. Ideologically grounded arguments for and against the use of English as opposed to an African language or Afrikaans are informed by the atrocities of colonialism and apartheid but they are also based on the idea that these languages are bound entities. Looking at language as infinite ways of speaking and as multifaceted social practice renders all language ontologically heterogenous. This also means that the names of languages and labelling of ways of speaking are multiple and that the distinctions between seemingly solid units are fluid. Conceiving of language as a heterogenous set of various ontological practices entails questioning whether or not single conceptual and analytic categories can have the capacity to define language (Demuru and Gurney 2021). How we think about English as a lingua franca therefore has to broaden in scope and it is my hope that it will become more and more African. The language which most educated South Africans take for granted as a primary medium of public life in the country will continue to hold a contested position in society. It engenders multiple powers and disempowerments, inclusion and exclusion, and complex racialization processes. If, as has been suggested in the ELF literature (e.g. Seidlhofer 2009), the issue of social identities is central to ELF (and by extension WE), then racial identity politics such as the ones described in this book have to be given space in the fields. All

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over the world, language and race serve as tools of discrimination and English as a lingua franca is no exception to this. The concept of coloniality is not only useful but necessary in the context of lingua franca English because it draws attention to the historical unequal distribution of power due to English which finds global resonance. “Resisting the coloniality of English” (Hsu 2017) and at the same time contributing to a less romanticized view of English as a lingua franca might provide some space for more social justice. In order to decolonize the field of ELF, some more ‘undisciplined’ (Milani 2019) perspectives are necessary to expose the good and the bad in “how English is entangled in everyday, simultaneous activities and material encounters” (Pennycook 2020: 11). Studies of language have had a Northern and Anglo-American bias (Smackman & Heinrich 2015; Pennycook & Makoni 2020; Makoni et al. 2019; Piller, Zhang & Li 2020) and the ELF field is certainly no exception to this. The “complicity between ways of knowing embedded in the field” and ignorance about the history of unjust knowledge distribution (Pennycook & Makoni 2020: 136) obstruct the search for social justice in language scholarship. Studies on English as a lingua franca need to unreservedly and unapologetically address the colonial legacies and the perpetuated privilege of whiteness. As scholars we need to work towards a redistribution of resources in order for new forms of knowledge to emerge which can reinvigorate the study of language in society (Rudwick & Makoni 2021). There is no language that unambiguously brings justice and well-being to humankind and there is no language sociologist who is free of ideology. With this book I hope to have offered an initial platform upon which we can open new debates about the role of English as a lingua franca in South Africa and in the world.

Notes 1 While I have only focused on South Africa, I think that many socio-political dynamics which involve the role of English as a lingua franca, in particular in the academic domain, are very comparable to other African countries. By having focused on South Africa, I did not mean to show that it is exceptional but simply that this has been my ethnographic focus. However I concede that when it comes to race South Africa represents a different playing field than most other African countries. 2 Jenkins never intended EMF to replace ELF, but her recent work has advanced the field in a direction where the work of multilingualism scholars and findings from ex-colonial settings are considered (personal communication). A current interdisciplinary volume (Grazzi 2020) emerging from a project where ELF and plurilingualism were examined as constituting each other also offers inspiration for future research. 3 While there have been previous studies on the South African English lingua franca situation, there has been no comprehensive study like the one at hand (McLean & McCormick 1996; Balfour 2003; Van der Walt & Evans 2018, Khokhlova 2015; Smit 2010a). 4 The question of “whose” English “should” be the international communication medium constitutes one of the foundations of ELF research and Anglo-centric attitudes have long been criticized (Seidlhofer 2012) 5 Personal correspondence with Jennifer Jenkins, 8 September 2020.

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6 Private communication with Jennifer Jenkins, 8 September 2020. 7 For more detail on this, see Jenkins 2015. 8 Non-racialism aims to transcend race thinking through creative self-reflective ways in order to relate to one another only as human beings.

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Index

Academic Learning in English (ALE) 134 accents 7, 14, 29–30, 52, 71, 73–74, 75–76, 138 ACE (Asian Corpus of English) 19 Achebe, Chinua 118, 127, 148 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi 118 African/English language bilingualism 46 African National Congress (ANC) 43–44, 45 African National Congress Youth Language (ANCYL) 73 African Urban Youth Languages (AUYLs) 109–110 Afrikaans 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 15n6; and Afrikaner ethnicity 40; attitudes towards 47, 90–96, 122–123; vs. Dutch 37; vs. English 31; ethno-nationalism 33, 59–60; historical discussion 36, 39, 41;as lingua franca 39; and marginalization 58–59, 141; as official language 39–40, 41–42, 43, 44, 62, 84; population 16n14; Standard Afrikaans 44, 59–60, 61; ‘subaltern whiteness’ 58–59, 60–61; Suiwer Afrikaans 123 Afrikaans English 44 #AfrikaansMustFall 60 Afrikaaps 9, 90, 118, 122, 123–126, 128 see also Kaaps Afrikanerdom 8, 9, 40, 43, 44 Afrikanerization 39 Afrikanerness 8, 33 Afropolitanism 81, 83–84, 85 Alexander, Neville 37, 40, 44, 45, 54, 89, 95, 123 Alim, H. Samy 34, 80n10 Amakholwa (Christian converts) 39 amandla ngawethu 43–44 ANC see African National Congress

ANCYL (African National Congress Youth Language) 73 Anderson, Benedict 6, 33, 35n7 Anglicization 37 Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) 37, 39 apartheid 7, 31, 33, 36, 39–45, 50–51, 60–62, 68–70, 79, 85 apartheid thinking 50–51 Appalraju, Dhalialutchmee 102–103 Appiah, Kwame Anthony 82, 97n2 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) 32 Asian Corpus of English (ACE) 19 authenticity 66, 72–73, 75–76, 78 AUYLs (African Urban Youth Languages) 109–110 Baird, Robert et al. 27 Baker, Will 32 Balfour, Robert 31 Banda, Felix 24, 150 Bantu Education 31, 41 Bantu Education Advisory Board 42 Bantu languages 24, 38 ‘Bantustans’ 40 Barth, Frederik 6, 35n5 Baugh, John 52, 101 Beck, Rose Marie 89 Beck, Ulrich 82 Bengu, Sibusiso 86 Berman, Bruce et al. 38 Besnier, Niko 72 Bhabha, Homi 83, 131 Bhengu, Cebelihle 102 Biko, Steve 65, 122 bilingualism 46, 134 Black South African English (BSAE) 24, 30, 31–32, 44, 76 Blackledge, Adrian 65

186

Index

Blaser, Thomas, M. 92 Blommaert, Jan et al. 10, 25, 30, 66, 67, 74–75, 76, 77, 133, 148 Boetie and Saartjie 126 Bosch, Barbara 86 Botman, Russel 86 Bourdieu, Pierre 2, 18, 133, 140 Bozena du Preez, Jenny 120 Branford, Bill 150 Briggs, Charles 133 Brink, Christopher 86 British Cultural Studies 131 British Government 40 brought-self 138 Brutt-Griffler, Janina 31, 41 BSAE see Black South African English Bucholtz, Mary 7, 11 Buthelezi, Mangosuthu 8, 43, 48n5, 56 Butler, Judith 6, 104 Campbell, Catherine et al. 46 Canagarajah, Suresh 5, 18, 27–28, 66, 117, 131 Canham, Hugo 65, 76, 79 census data 3, 24, 46, 100, 104, 127, 128, 144 Chaplin, George 33 chapter outlines 12–15 Chick, Keith 32 Chidester, David 48n5 Christian National Education (CNE) 40 City Press (newspaper) 62 Clément, R. 103 ‘coconuts’ 3, 65, 71, 76, 111 code-switching 47, 57, 71–75, 119–120, 123, 145 colonialism 12, 36, 37, 46, 103 coloniality 129, 130, 144; concept 3, 34, 61, 77, 103, 151; of English language 72, 149–150, 151; inequality 147; of language 121, 144, 148 coloured people: and language 39, 84, 123–129; and racial discrimination 94, 95–96; terminology 15n5, 16n14, 69 Coloured South African English 44 colourism 9–10, 70 communication vis-à-vis identity 28–32 Constitution (Act 1996) 4, 45 Cooper, Adam 95, 123 cosmopolitanism and parochialism 13, 81, 97n10; ethnolinguistic politics and parochialism 90–96; is English cosmopolitan? 81–86;

#OpenStellenbosch (OS) 86–90; concluding thoughts 96–97 Coupland, Nikolas 75, 104 COVID-19 pandemic 47, 55, 57, 64n13, 122, 145 Crenshaw, Kimberlé 7 Cushman, Ellen 146 DA (Democratic Alliance Party) 71 Daily Maverick 76 Dangarembga, Tsitsi 104, 118 Dawjee, Haji Mohamed 73 De Kadt, Elizabeth 45, 51, 63, 102–103, 105, 109 De Klerk, Gerda 41 De Klerk, Vivian 44 De Souza, Lynn Mario 90 decolonialization 11, 12, 41, 60, 117, 122, 142 DEIC (Dutch East India Company) 37 Democratic Alliance Party (DA) 71 Denner, Heloise 58–59 Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology (DACST) 44 Deterding, David 19 Deumert, Ana 21, 46, 154 DiAngelo, Robin 61 Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. 145 Dingane 38 disruption and innovation 14, 116–122; reclaiming linguistic belonging 122–129; concluding thoughts 130–131 ‘divide and rule’ 41 DJMac 127, 128 Dlamini, Jacob 108 Dlamini, Sibusiswe Nombusu 43 Dörnyei, Zoltán 103 Dovchin, Sender 66 Dröschel, Yvonne 18 Dube, Bevelyn 63, 89 Durán-Almarza, Emilia María et al. 83–84 Duranti, Alessandro 144 Dutch East India Company (DEIC) 37 Dutch language: Cape Dutch 37; as official language 37, 39 Dyers, Charlyn 123, 128 Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) 57, 71 education in South Africa: higher education 85; status of English 5, 23–24, 29, 31, 38, 40–43, 70, 149 Edwards, John 35n5 ELF see English as a lingua franca

Index ELFA (English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings) 18 Elmes, Simon 132n3 EMF see English as a multilingua franca English: vs. Afrikaans 31; coloniality of 72, 149–150, 151; dominance vs. prevalence 57; is it cosmopolitan? 81–86; and Kaaps 127; as “language of liberation” 43, 45; multivocality 10; as official language 39; restricted access to learning of 41; in South Africa 46, 149–151; status of 62, 70; varieties of 44; and whiteness 52, 70, 83, 146 English as a lingua franca (ELF): ambiguities 11, 84, 144, 145; communication vis-à-vis identity 28–32; context 12, 17–19; critique 21–24; discourse 29, 35n3; and disempowerment 147; and gender 103, 105, 109; identity 11, 63; politics of 8; as a process 63–64; racializing English as lingua franca 10, 32–34; reorientation towards multilingualism 24–28; scholarship 19–21; in South Africa 1–2, 3–6, 10–11, 12, 37–47, 144–146 English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings (ELFA) 18 English as a multilingua franca (EMF) 5–6, 22, 25, 117–119, 146, 151n2 English as a translingua franca 146, 148 epistemic reflexivity 133 epistemic vulnerability 148 Erasmus, Zimitriu 123 Erasmus students 29 Esch, Edith 54 essentialist thinking 9, 72, 75, 85 eThekwini Municipality 116, 131–132n1 ethnicity 33, 35n5; and culture 35n6; defined 35n5; and language 33, 35n6, 101–103; race and gender 6–11 ethno-nationalism 59–60 ethnographic data 2–3, 27 ethnographic fieldwork 135–136 ethnolinguistic assumptions 74–75 ethnolinguistic politics and parochialism 90–96 European Journal of English Studies 83–84 Evans, Rinelle 5, 31, 145 exclusion see inclusion and exclusion Eze, Chielozona 82, 83, 136 Fabing, Bernie 128 Fanon, Franz 65

187

Fardon, Richard 24 Fecho, Bob 150 Finlayson, Rosalie 102 Fishman, Joshua A. 9, 48n6, 126 Flores, Nelson 34, 72 framing the study 1–6; chapter outlines 12–15; ethnicity, race, and gender (in South Africa) 6–11 Freedom Charter 43 Freedom Front Plus (FFP) 58–59 Friedman, Steve 69 Frueh, Jamie 9 Furniss, Graham 24 Gal, Susan 3–4, 18, 63–64, 102, 106 Gear Rich, Camille G. 68, 78 gender: and English as a lingua franca 103, 105, 109; ilobolo (bridewealth) 105; in South Africa 6–11 gender(ed) ambiguities 13–14, 100–102; homosexuality 111–113, 115n30; style 104–105; women and ‘prestigious’ language 102–113; concluding thoughts 113–114 General Household Survey 18 101 Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (GRA) 37 Gibson, Erinn 61 Giles, H. et al. 72 Giliomee, Hermann 39, 59, 86, 91 Gilroy, Paul 97n2 Global Language Network (GLN) 8 Global North 4, 20, 21, 51, 67–68, 84, 85, 103, 133, 136, 139, 143 Global South 4, 21, 25, 103, 136, 143 globalization 30 Gmail 8 Google 8 Gough, David 24, 31 Gourgem, Hicham 83 Graham, Lucie Valerie 56 Great Trek (1835–1846) 37 Groenewald, Pieter 59, 60, 61, 62 Gugushe, R.N. 41 Hachimi, Atiqa 70 Hall, Kira 7, 11 Harvard Educational Review 34 Helbling, Monika 97n5 Heller, Monika 72 Herbert, Robert K. 114n13 Herzog, J.B.M. 85 Heunis, Jan 89

188

Index

Hickel, Jason 56 Higgins, Christina 10 Hill, Lloyd 98n18 hip hop 123–124 history 37 Hiu, Lydia H. 27 Hlatshwayo, S. 41 hlonipha (respect) 101, 106, 107, 109, 112, 114n1 Holliday, A. 32, 82, 83, 136 home languages 3 homosexuality 111–113, 115n30 Horáková, Hana 79n3 House, Juliane 26 Hsu, Funie 147, 151 Hüllen, Werner 28 Human Science Research Council (HSRC) 134 Hunter, Mark 70, 149 Hurst, Ellen 110 Hutton, Christopher 146 Hymes, Dell 66 identity politics 2, 3, 7–8, 11, 18, 37, 63, 66, 67–78, 120, 150 identity vis-à-vis communication 28–32 ideology 2 Ilanga Lase Natali (newspaper) 39 ilobolo (bridewealth) 105 inclusion and exclusion 5, 11, 22, 29, 50, 52–53, 63, 144, 150 Indian South African English 30, 107 Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) 8, 43 interdisciplinary perspectives 143, 151n2 intersectionality 7–8, 11, 139 Irvine, Judith T. 106 Ishikawa, Tomokazu 22 isiHlonipho 106, 114n13 isiNdebele 40 isiNgqumo 112, 115n30–115n31 isiTsotsi 110, 115n22, 115n23 isiXhosa 4–5, 40, 87, 88, 89, 90, 101 isiZulu: historical discussion 36, 38, 39, 40, 43; and identity/ethnicity 3, 6, 7, 9, 33, 62, 142n2; and Jacob Zuma 54–57; in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) 40, 46, 100, 101; as lingua franca 145; prevalence 101, 102, 116, 120–121, 131–132n1; status of 23, 29; and translingualism 120–121; use in parliament 57; see also gender(ed) ambiguities Ives, Peter 82

Jablonski, Nina G. 33, 52, 69 James, Michael 147 Jaspers, Jürgen 20, 21, 50 Jeewa, Sana 5, 63 Jenkins, Jennifer 5, 19, 20, 22, 25, 27, 29, 83, 103, 143, 146, 147 Joseph, John 26–27 Journal of English as a Lingua Franca (JELF) 20 justice and injustices 134, 151; linguistic injustice 7, 122, 146, 147; racial injustice 34, 49, 53, 117; social justice 3, 7, 23, 44–45, 57, 63, 68–69, 82, 117, 134, 151 Kaaps 9, 60, 92–93, 95, 123, 124–128 see also Afrikaaps Kachru, Braj 17 Kamwangamalu, Nkonko M. 17, 36, 39, 46, 96, 122, 134 Kaunda, Chammah K. 61 Kerfoot, Caroline 128 Khawula, Makoti Sibongile 57, 58–59, 145 Kirkpatrick, Andy 19, 32 Knapp, Karlfried 1, 2, 23, 29, 48n1 Kolisi, Siya 101 Kriel, Mariana 123 Kroskrity, Paul V. 18, 29, 63, 72 KwaZulu homeland 43 KwaZulu-Natal (KZN): history 37, 39, 40; isiZulu 40, 46, 100, 101; language and gender 30, 102–103, 105 Langenhoven, C.J. 39 LANGTAG Report (1996) 44, 45 language: and ethnicity 33, 35n6, 101–103; as a mobile tool 66–67; and racial identity 71–78; style 104; see also gender(ed) ambiguities language death 144–145 language ideologies 18, 28–29, 63 language-in-education policies 41 language policy 13, 23, 37, 40, 44–46 languages 2, 4, 36–38 Lepere, Refiloe 26 Levinson, Stephen 10 Levon, Eres 8 Lingua Franca Core (LFC) 19 Lingua Franca English (LFE) 18 lingua franca multilingualism 129 lingua francas 1; Afrikaans 39; defined 36, 48n1; history of 36; isiZulu 145;

Index in South Africa 4–5, 36; see also English as a lingua franca (ELF) linguistic anthropology 7, 103 linguistic human rights 26 linguistic imperialism (LI) 25 linguistic injustice 7, 122, 146, 147 linguistic mobility and racial authenticity 13, 65–66; language as a mobile tool 66–67; racial mobility - really? 67–71; “speak English like an African” 71–78; concluding thoughts 78–79 linguistic racism 143 Lushaba, Suyabonga Lwazi 39–40 Maartens, Jeanne 40 Mabokela, Reitumetse O. 88 McCormick, Kay 46 McElhinny, Bonnie 72 McKinney, Carolyn 104 McLean, Daryland 46 Madia, Tshidi 73 Madisha, Willie 73 Madonsela, Thuli 68 Madsen, Lian Malai 50 Mail & Guardian 55, 120, 122 Maimane, Mmusi 73, 74, 75, 78 Makhanya, Mondli 56 MaKhawula see Khawua, Makoti Sibongile Makoni, Busi 60 Makoni, Sinfree et al. 4, 5, 19, 21, 34, 38, 60, 90, 130, 143, 146, 151 Malan, D.F. 85 Malaysia 10 Malema, Julius 73 Mamaila, Khatu 62, 63 Mandela, Nelson 44, 82, 114n5 Maré, Gerhard 6, 55 marginalization and empowerment 12–13, 49–54; Afrikaans 58–59, 141; English, the “oppressor” language 58–59; marginalization mobilized for empowerment 54–58; socio-linguistic amnesia 59–64 Marshall, Rhode 74 Mashau, Thinandavha 61 Mauranen, Anna 19, 22 May, Stephen 33, 63 Mazrui, Alamin M. 11, 44, 46–47, 121–122 Mazrui, Ali A. 46–47, 121–122 Mbeki, Thabo 114n5 Mbembe, Achille 83

189

Mbhele, Zakhele 71, 72, 78 Meierkord, Christiane 2, 19, 48n1 Mendes, Ronald Beline 8 Mesthrie, Rajend 30, 109 Methope, Gosebo 73 Mhlangana 38 Mhlongo, Niq 79n1, 118 Mignolo, Walter D. 142 missionaries 37, 38–39, 40 Mkongi, Bongani 73 Model C schools 30, 35n4 Modern Africa, Politics, History and Society 20 Moore, Emma 104 mother tongue 9, 17, 39, 146; Afrikaans vs. Dutch 37; education 40, 41, 42; vs. English 43–44; rights 62; use in court 55 multilingualism 24, 44, 89, 90, 148 multivocality 10, 24, 67, 121, 123–124, 126, 127, 130 Murray, Sarah 81 Naples, Nancy A. 138 National Conventions 39 National Education Crisis Committee (NECC) 42–43 National Party (NP) 40, 42 ‘native speaker’ English 17, 51–52 Nattrass, Nicola 77–78 Ndaba, Sbonakaliso 140 Ndebele, Njabulo 144, 150 Ndhlovu, Finex 44 Ngcoya, Mvuselelo 50–51 Ngozi, Adichie Chimamanda 113 Ngūgī, wa Thiong’o 143 Nguni languages 40, 122 Nhlapo, Thandabantu 97n8 Nigerian English 117 Nigerian Pidgin English 52, 64n3 Noah, Trevor 114–115n21 non-racialism 148, 152n8 Norton Peirce, Bronwyn 43 NP see National Party Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 66, 118 Obama, Barack 80n10 #OpenStellenbosch (OS) 23, 60, 81, 86–90; Luister (Listen; documentary) 88, 94; Memorandum of Demands 87–88 O’Regan, John P. 21, 25 Othering 41, 77 Oxford English Dictionary (OED) 31, 117

190

Index

Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) 45 Pandor, Naledi 73 Park, Joseph Sung-Yul 26, 148 Park Wee 14 10 Parmegiani, Andrea 79, 109 parochialism see cosmopolitanism and parochialism Pavlenko, Aneta 65 Penner, Andrew M. 68 Pennycook, Alastair 4, 5, 10, 19, 21, 22, 30, 90, 130, 143–144, 146, 148, 151 peripheral normativity 149 Perry, Timothy 45 Phillipson, Robert 25, 30–31 Phipps, Alison 146 Pieterse, Edgar 123 Pieterson, Hector 42 Piller, Ingrid 29, 84 Posel, Dorrit et al. 3, 57, 101, 114n7, 127 positionality and reflexivity 14–15, 122, 133–142 power and ideology 2 power and language 33, 72, 101 power relations 138 Price, Max 85 primordial thinking 9 privilege 19; of Afrikaners 58, 94; of apartheid 51; of bilingualism 134; and hlonipha 106; of learning English 38, 147; and Standard English 84, 91, 147, 148; white privilege 61–62, 65–71, 74, 76, 77, 84, 92, 112, 134–136, 138, 139, 151 psychological trauma 47 Public Safety Act 43 race 6–11, 34, 41, 139, 146–147 racial authenticity 13, 65, 66 racial classifications 3, 15n5, 69–70 racial discrimination 94, 95–96 racial identity 2, 65–66, 71–78, 139, 147, 150–151 racial injustice 34, 49, 53, 117 racial mobility 67–70; during apartheid 68; “elective-race framework” 68; and socio-economic status 70–71 racialization 7, 53–54, 70 racialized language 7 racializing English as a lingua franca 10, 32–34 raciolinguistic profiling 49, 51–54, 64n7, 72, 78

raciolinguistics 32, 34, 146 racism 9–10, 32–33, 49, 52, 83, 143 Ramanathan, Vaidehi 82, 97n3 Rampton, Ben et al. 11 rap 123–129 Raum, Otto F. 106 Rawula, Thembinkosi 71, 72 redefinition of negative characteristics 72 reflective turn 133 reflexivity 27, 133, 135 Reinharz, Shulamit 138 research-based self 138 respect see hlonipha (respect) ‘retribalization’ 41 #RhodesMustFall campaign 63, 86, 97n9 Ricento, Thomas 44 R.I.P. Afrikaaps (poem) 124–129 Robins, Steven 56 Rosa, Jonathan 34, 72 Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca 20, 31, 32 Rudwick, Stephanie 5, 28, 63 Salö, Linus 133 Saperstein, Aliya 68, 69–70, 77 SASCO (South African Student Council Organization) 87 SASE see South African Standard English Seekings, Jeremy 77–78 Seidlhofer, Barbara 19–20, 51, 151n4 Sekhonyana, Mathabo 73–74 ‘selves’ in the field 138 Sesanti, Simphiwe 55 Shaka kaSenzangakhona 37–38, 48n3 Shange, Kholeka 120–122, 131 Silverstein, Michael 55 similects 22 Singleton, David et al. 24 Siswati 40 situationally created self 138 Siziba, Liqhwa 44 Slabbert, Sarah 102 Small, Adam 93, 95 Smith, Linda Tuhiwai 139 Smitherman, Geneva 80n10 Smuts, Jan 85 Snyman, Gerrie F. 61 social diversity 72 social justice 3, 7, 23, 44–45, 57, 63, 68–69, 82, 117, 134, 151 social media 73, 75

Index socio-economic status 70–71, 131, 150 socio-linguistic amnesia 59–64 sociohistorical background 12, 36–37 sociolinguistics 30, 61, 66, 76 Somerset, Lord Charles 37 Soudien, Crain A. 3, 9, 117 South African General Household Surveys 57 South African Indian English 44 South African Standard English (SASE) 30, 31, 68, 96 South African Student Council Organization (SASCO) 87 Soweto uprisings (1976) 42, 60 Soyinka, Wole 118 Späti, Christina 66 Standard Afrikaans 44, 59–60, 61 Standard English 1: and elitism 47, 63, 70, 85, 147; in higher education 80n5; and privilege 84, 91, 147, 148; and racial identity 76, 77; and whiteness 52, 70, 83, 146 standard language ideology 29 Stellenbosch University (SU) 97n10; AdamTas society 60; Afrikaans 85–86, 87, 88–89; cosmopolitanism 13; English 52, 85, 86, 89; isiXhosa 87, 88, 89, 90; languages 87; Woordfees 140–141; see also #OpenStellenbosch (OS) Steyn, Melissa E. 39, 60 Strijdom, J.G. 85 Stroud, Christopher 88, 121, 123, 128, 130, 148 ‘subaltern whiteness’ 58–59, 60–61 subjectivities 11, 14, 21, 27, 33, 79, 104, 109, 142 Suiwer Afrikaans 123 Suttner, Raymond 7, 56, 57 Swartz, Sharlene et al. 134 Sznaider, Natan 102–103 Teney, Céline 97n5 terminology 16n14, 16n15 The Citizen 73 Thompson, Leonard 37 Tobias, Steven M. 118 translanguaging 21, 119–121 translation 27 translingualism 27–28, 117–121, 131 Tsedu, Mathatha 62 Tshabalala, Jefferson Bobs 26 Tsotsitaal 119–120

191

Tutu, Desmond 82 Tutuola, Amos 118 umlungu 65 University of Cape Town (UCT) 85 University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) 23, 29, 89, 96, 97, 102, 103, 108; Academic Learning in English (ALE) 134; language ownership 109 Van der Merwe, Willem 56 Van der Waal, Kees 29, 39, 41, 72, 95, 96, 123 Van der Walt, Christa 5, 31, 145 Van der Westhuizen, Christi 43, 93 Van Herk (2012) 104 Venda 62 Veronelli, Gabriela A. 128 Verwoerd, H.F. 85 Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) 18 Vilakazi, Absolom 43 Voelz, F.K. Erhard 145 Vorster, B.J. 85 Wade, Rodrik 32 Waetjen, Thembisa 55 Walsh, Katherine 142 Wang, Ying 33 WE see World Englishes Wee, Lionel 26, 148 Weinreich, Max 96 Weltanschauung 35n6 Western Cape 52 White South African English 44 Williams, Quentin E. 88, 121, 123, 128, 130, 148 Williams, Rejane 65, 76, 79 Wodak, Ruth 125 women: power and language usage 30, 101; and ‘prestigious’ language 102–113; Woolard, Kathryn A. 75 World Englishes (WE) 17, 22, 31, 32, 76 Wright, John 38 Xaba, Makhosazana 120, 132n5 Xhosa people 101–102, 114n5 YouTube 8 Zeller, Jochen 3, 114n7, 127 Zulu, Andile 76

192

Index

Zulu, Nakanjani, S. 113 Zulu ethnicities 6, 101 Zuluness 8, 33, 38, 43, 48n5, 56, 108; hlonipha (respect) 101, 106, 107, 112, 114n1; ilobolo (bridewealth) 105;

isiHlonipho 106, 114n13; see also isiZulu Zuma, Jacob Gedleyihlekisa 6–7, 54–57, 73 Zungu, Phyllis J. 38