Trends in recent South African linguistic research

Abstract

Linguistic inquiry is under pressure in South Africa. This is unexpected in a country where such a rich collection of languages are used, ostensibly supported by a very enabling language policy. This paper analyses trends in recent linguistic scholarship for the period 2000 to 2005. In a partial extension of Lubbe (2002) the paper focuses on the extent of scholarship in different linguistic sub-disciplines and the theoretical orientation of research. While the emphasis is on Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, other domestic journals that publish linguistic research occasionally, as well as book publications will be considered. The aim of the paper is to focus on trends, rather than to provide a summary of all findings. The trends include a change in the scope of linguistic research with less research being done in the traditional core domains of microlinguistics and a stronger focus on macrolinguistics. As far as the languages investigated are concerned, Afrikaans is still the language that received the most attention, while there is a significant focus on the Semitic languages, specific African languages and even a proportional increase in work on English. The main theoretical orientations are the generative paradigm for work done on the syntax of African languages, cognitive linguistics for semantic studies on Afrikaans and Semitic languages and typological functional approaches and corpus linguistic approaches. Once the trends have been established, possible reasons for the decline in output as well as the perceived drop in quality are offered, namely, the current state of the university environment, transformation, commercialisation, a lack of funding and changes in publishing strategies and publishing channels.