Language, race or place? Influential factors in determining young “Coloured” individuals’ attitudes towards Afrikaans accents in English

Abstract

In South Africa, current social dynamics are still largely determined by the heavy legacy of apartheid. In this context, the term “Coloured” is widely used to delineate a social group that is generally not considered white or black in the old senses. This study focuses on the implicit language attitudes of 84 young Coloured English and Afrikaans speaking participants towards Cape Flats English, largely associated with Coloured communities of the greater Cape Town area, and Afrikaner English, largely associated with the White group. Implicit Association Test results show an overall statistically significant implicit positive bias towards Cape Flats English among participants, although a small subgroup reversed this tendency. A post-IAT survey was used to investigate the contribution of a number of social variables in determining the biases associated with each accent. A regression analysis detected that participants’ L1, language repertoire and other community language practices play a significant role in predicting such language biases. Furthermore, a correlation analysis also showed a trend regarding both the language distribution in their place of residence and social distance levels with the White group. Finally, a qualitative analysis based on the comparison of context-relevant cases underlined the complex in-group dynamics of the studied sample.