Resisting the coloniality of language through languaging and making of a multilingual <i>ikhaya </i>in South Africa

Abstract

Multilingualism as a consequence of transnational mobility and migration is prominent in studies of language socialization and family multilingualism in the Global North. While mobility within and between the various regions in South Africa sustains multilingualism and aligns with the global dynamic of mobility, Indigenous multilingualism is inherently the norm. The officiation of 11 named languages positions the country as linguistically diverse. However, dominant ideologies from the coloniality of language continue to reinforce the power of colonial languages while African languages used by numerical majorities remain marginalized, especially in high-status domains such as education. In this article, we present ethnographic data from a case study of a Xhosa multilingual family traversing between their urban (township) homes and the main family homestead in a rural setting. The family includes a child who attends a suburban historically whites-only English medium school. Reflecting on the non-hierarchical use of languages within their homes, or their languaging, we show how they use their linguistic/semiotic and spatial repertoires to make family as well as to resist the hierarchical positioning of the colonial languages, English and Afrikaans, above isiXhosa (prefix isi- indicates the language of Xhosa people) at school. Informed by Siqwana-Ndulo’s (1998) challenge to the Western idea of the nuclear family, our analysis demonstrates how family is distributed across kinship ties and households. We introduce the notion of ikhaya – the isiXhosa word for both family and home (see Molate, forthcoming) – as a useful southern concept for accounting for the expansive nature of family kinship systems in African families.