Use of South African languages by youth on social media

Abstract

The focus of this article is to discuss new media choices and use of selected South Africanlanguages on social media by youth residing in Limpopo Province, South Africa. The use oflanguage on social media facilitates communication between communicators and use of one’scultural language can ensure that this communication is better. This paper summarises a study ofyouth in Limpopo Province. The purpose of the study was to explore and describe languages usedby youth on social media and identify reasons for the communication engaged in. The researchmethodology used to collect and analyse data was a combination of qualitative and quantitativeapproaches. For the quantitative part of the research, a survey and online observation were usedfor data collection and statistical methods and semiotic analysis used to analyse data. For thequalitative aspects of the study, personal interviews and focus groups were employed for datacollection and thematic analysis used to analyse data. The findings indicated that the majorityof the youth do not prefer to use their African mother tongue languages to communicate onTwitter and Facebook but chat in the English language on those forums. However, the youngpeople prefer to use their African languages when communicating to others on the WhatsAppsocial media platform. Reasons for these choices are stated. The discussion contributes to theacademic debate on the role of language in decolonising higher education, and to debates aboutpromoting the use of African languages.