Do the Modals of Black and White South African English Converge?

Abstract

Convergence between native and nonnative varieties, the so-called settler and indigenous strands of English in postcolonial settings, is a characteristic of the fourth phase in Schneider’s dynamic model of English. The primary objective of this article is to determine if Black South African English (BSAfE), the nonnative variety of the majority of the indigenous population of South Africa, converges on the native variety of the descendants of the original settlers as far as their use of modal and quasi-modal verbs is concerned. Corpora of written data from the 1950s and the contemporary period are compiled and analyzed in terms of the frequency of modals and quasi-modals, in comparison to corresponding data from White South African English (WSAfE). Results indicate an increase in the frequency of modals and quasi-modals in BSAfE, and no decline in the frequency of modals as observed in most native varieties of English. Since WSAfE shows a decline in frequency of both modals and quasi-modals, the distance between the two strands increases as far as frequency is concerned. The two strands do share a relatively higher frequency of the modal must, unlike other varieties where it is declining in frequency. A semantic comparison of must and should does not show convergence between BSAfE and WSAfE, because there is little change in BSAfE.