The Impact of Lexicographical Work on Language Use: The Case of Shona Monolingual Dictionaries in Zimbabwe*

J Mapara,S Nyota

doi:10.4314/lex.v17i1.52265

Abstract

This article examines the impact of current lexicographical work in Zimbabwe on some sectors of Shona language use, namely education, media, medicine and local government. It looks specifically at Shona monolingual lexicographical projects completed by the African Lan-guages Research Institute (ALRI), successor to the African Languages Lexical Project (ALLEX). It analyses how users of Shona in these particular sectors are responding to the different lexico-graphical products published by ALRI. The article maintains that Shona monolingual lexicography has resulted in language raising and awareness. It has also led to term creation and has contributed towards standardisation of the language. Shona has furthermore gained the abstractive power it needs to explain its own and other concepts. All these have caused diglossia leakage from Low (L) Shona to High (H) Shona in some areas of Shona language usage. The overall effect is that Shona is now used in some formal sectors such as the above-mentioned ones which previously were the preserve of English in Zimbabwe. Keywords: MONOLINGUAL LEXICOGRAPHY, GENERAL DICTIONARIES, SPECIALISED DICTIONARIES, STANDARDISATION, LANGUAGE RAISING, LANGUAGE AWARENESS, LANGUAGE USE, SLCA, ALLEX, ALRI

Highlights

In addition to compiling dictionaries, the African Languages Research Institute (ALRI) carries out language research and documentation and for this it has full-time data entry operators
ALRI's Shona monolingual lexicographical work is taking place in a diglossic situation where there is no clear language policy, where there is not a linguistic normative body (Chimhundu 2006: 11), and where the Education Act serving as language policy relegates the Shona language
The dictionaries created the much-needed terminology in the teaching of Shona as a subject at different educational levels, that is, from grade one to tertiary levels. This field is complemented by ALRI's prioritisation of and shift to specialised or terminological dictionaries in different domains of Shona language use, for example, medicine, language and literature, and music

Summary

Introduction

ALRI's Shona monolingual lexicographical work is taking place in a diglossic situation where there is no clear language policy, where there is not a linguistic normative body (Chimhundu 2006: 11), and where the Education Act serving as language policy relegates the Shona language. Despite this uneven situation, standardisation of the Shona language is taking place, as Chimhundu (2006) confirms when he states: The standardisation of the nominal national languages is happening without official policy planning or policy framework

Historical overview of lexicography and standardisation of Shona

Areas showing the impact of lexicography

The electronic and print media

National and local governments

Findings

Conclusion