In pursuit of multilingualism in South Africa

Abstract

Although multilingualism is a fact of everyday-life in Africa and attempts have been made on an official level to establish functional multilingualism in South Africa, the tendency towards mono-lingualism remains evident. This article aims at explicating the challenges emanating from the new language policy for black high school teenagers in the North West Province. It argues that the way in which speech communities responded to multilingualism in the past may still influence their current attitude towards and perception of multilingualism. A language survey conducted among black teenagers shows that the teenagers perceive indigenous languages as vehicles for cultural inheritance, and English as a language of higher functional value. The conclusion arrived at is that the optimization of the multilingual policy depends on the existence of a real demand for multilingual skills in South African society.