Soppangheid for Kaaps: Power, creolisation and Kaaps Afrikaans

Hein Willemse

doi:10.14426/mm.v3i2.42

Abstract

In this contribution, the dignity of speakers of Cape Afrikaans (Kaaps) is discussed withreference to the need for bi-dialectic tuition at school and Afrikaans poetry writtenin the Cape eye dialect. It is argued here that, besides Standard Afrikaans, a greaterawareness of language varieties must be cultivated in education and the media sothat learners develop the ability to control a variety of language registers. Further themanifestation of Kaaps, as eye dialect, is discussed at the hand of poetry examples.Here it is found that poets often stereotypically affirm topics in their poetry writtenin dialect format. The hope is expressed that the dignity of Kaaps Afrikaans in poetrycan be attained with multiple rhetorical strategies. The soppangheid, dignity, of Kaapsis not only a linguistic issue, but can also serve as a confirmation of the dignity of allAfrikaans speakers.

Highlights

The 2012 symposium on Kaaps closely matches a few other events where similar matters were discussed
I am thinking of the Roots Symposium of 2009, as well as the symposium of Prof
Kwesi Kwaa Prah’s Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) which took place in January 2011 and of which the proceedings were published in Afrikaans as well as English

Summary

Introduction

The 2012 symposium on Kaaps closely matches a few other events where similar matters were discussed. The same applies to my previously published contributions on the topic, for example issues such as the development of a creolised society and linguistic hybridity, the establishment of Standard Afrikaans as a conscious ethnic construct and my call for a “more multi-faceted Afrikaans”.1 These matters are applicable as background to the matters to be discussed here. In the midst of all these views, I do not hear a single opinion promoting the total rejection of Standard Afrikaans This 2012 symposium, I presume, wants to promote firstly an awareness of a specific regional variety (and language varieties in general) and secondly, determine the processes of re-standardisation. The choice of the varieties in which (theoretically putative supra-dialect) Standard Afrikaans was established, the selection processes for in- and exclusion were not value free It was sometimes aimed in such a way that significant sections of the Afrikaansspeaking community, mostly non-white speakers were continuously excluded. Today, as well as this ongoing debate, are enough proof that important questions are being raised about the future and general acceptance of Standard Afrikaans

Kaaps Afrikaans

Kaaps in the classroom

Eye dialect in Afrikaans poetry

Conclusion