Hy leer dit nie hier nie (‘He doesn't learn it here’): talking about children's swearing in extended families in multilingual South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper explores family language policy as a conceptual framework for exploring the ideologies around swearing and children in a multilingual family environment. The case study revolves around two young male children born to adolescent mothers living in socio-economically marginalised neighbourhoods in Cape Town, South Africa. Whilst family language policy research has traditionally investigated children's language learning in multilingual family contexts, this paper focuses on practices and discourses around swearing. The children are raised in a particular type of family: their young parents do not live together, but with their respective extended families. Drawing on recordings of interactions and casual conversations, the paper shows that swearing is an important topic for adults within talk around children's language. General questions around family language policy uncover the participants’ association of children's use of Afrikaans with swearing. Moreover, the interpretation of empirical data brings to the fore the contradictions between language socialisation practices and expressed family language policies around children's acquisition of swearwords. Furthermore, the paper highlights how beliefs around children and swearing are not expressed within the nuclear family as a social unit, but rather along extended family lines – thereby emphasising the processes of ‘family making’.