Xhosalising English? Negotiating meaning and identity in Economics

Abstract

As yet, very few South African studies have explored multilingual learning contexts in order to develop a better understanding of the role that students’ diverse primary or hybrid languages play in meaning making in English medium universities. This paper will report on a project which set out to investigate code-switching practices in informal learning groups in the university and to distinguish the forms and functions of these code-switching practices. A particular focus has been to gain insights into the ways in which concepts transfer from one language to another in order to develop thinking on language and learning in multilingual contexts and extend theories of conceptual transfer. The particular focus of this paper is the pedagogic and social functions of this hybrid language and how its use might be tied to questions of identity. We look particularly at the way the tutor in the peer learning group used code-mixing to negotiate different identities in dealing with first a rural and then an urban group of students. We will also illustrate by means of our data ways in which English is being appropriated and Xhosalised, particularly by the urban group of students in order to negotiate meaning, identity and status on this campus and in the wider community.