Black South African English Research Articles

Threatening as a sociocultural–conceptual communicative act

AbstractThe present article revisits threatening discourses from the perspectives of anthropological linguistics, Cultural Linguistics, speech act theory and pragmatics. On the basis of linguistic data from 11th‐century Britain (Old English), 14th‐century Norway (Old Norse), 19th‐century Ireland (Early Modern Irish English and Modern Irish), 20th‐century Hong Kong (Hong Kong English) as well as 21st century South Africa (Black South African English), the discussion establishes verbal threats as socio‐pragmatic modes of action, that is, commissives that come as both illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. The main aim of the article is to elaborate on the central role that sociocultural norms and conventions play in the enregisterment of threat in a speech community at a given point in time. The article contributes to the development of forensic–linguistic threat assessment through a stronger focus on the sociocultural embeddedness of threatening discourses.

Grammatical change in South African Englishes

AbstractThis article investigates whether grammatical change in South African English (SAfE) leads to convergence or divergence in the different varieties within SAfE. Contact between speakers of English and other languages potentially leads to divergence from varieties beyond SAfE, and to convergence within SAfE. Modal auxiliaries show convergence between White SAfE (WSAfE) and Afrikaans, but not between WSAfE and Black SAfE (BSAfE). No convergence is observed between the innovative use of the progressive in BSAfE and WSAfE, except for similar long‐term frequency increases. The omission of the complementiser that shows similar long‐term frequency changes between WSAfE, Afrikaans and BSAfE. The findings indicate that higher degrees of contact between speakers result in closer convergence, especially as far as constructional semantics are concerned, but convergent frequency changes seem to be possible without the same closeness of contact.

‘Between phutu and samoosas’: Student response to assessment tasks for a thirdyear university course which adopts a World English approach

This article demonstrates how teaching World Englishes (WE) and Indigenised Varieties of English (IVE), such as South African Englishes (SAE), challenges the hegemony of English which persists in African teaching contexts despite progressive language policies, the multilingualism of the learners and the fluid, translingual linguistic boundaries which exist in the 21st century. There is a need to acknowledge the linguistic resources of the multilingual learner. This article describes the value of teaching SAE as a didactic initiative designed to empower multilingual speakers of English in a semester module prescribed for the major in English at the University of South Africa, taught via distance education. It represents, in this context, a challenge from within the heart of hegemony. The paper showcases assessment tasks designed to teach WEs while promoting English language proficiency at graduate level. A qualitative analysis of student responses reveals that, although the hegemony of English remains strong, ‘Black’ South African English (BSAE) as an IVE is rapidly gaining ground. Students write with authority when the linguistic resources they bring to the assignment task are harnessed, but find certain of the theoretical underpinnings of WE difficult. This is not surprising given that although a greater tolerance for non-standard varieties of English is endorsed by the course, a standard variety is required for assessment purposes. Keywords: World Englishes, pedagogy, indigenised varieties of English (IVE), South African Englishes, multilingualism, hegemony

The innovative progressive aspect of Black South African English

Conflicting findings are reported for New Englishes and Learner Englishes: similarities are identified mainly on psycholinguistic grounds and differences on sociolinguistic grounds. This article offers an analysis of the progressive form in Black South African English, in which the interaction between gradual increases in proficiency and normative interventions by explicit feedback and editing of published texts is examined to establish the route towards conventionalisation of innovative features. The results indicate that one innovative feature, the extension of the progressive to longer time spans, becomes established as a feature of the variety, but other potential innovations gradually disappear under normative influence and with increased proficiency. Innovations are likely to be accepted if they are insufficiently salient to be targeted for normative correction and sufficiently present in the written and spoken input to become entrenched in the grammatical representations of learners as they turn into advanced users of the New English.

Editorial practice and the progressive in Black South African English

ABSTRACTInnovative linguistic features occur in Outer and Expanding Circle varieties of English, leading to claims that new Englishes and learner Englishes form overlapping sets rather than discrete categories. However, less attention is given to the processes by which innovations acquire conventionalised status, in particular with regards to the role of editing of published written texts. We propose a model that incorporates both the proficiency of the writer and editorial intervention to account for the role of editing in the process of conventionalisation and legitimisation of innovative features, which is applied in a case study of the progressive aspect in Black South African English.

Syntactic and prosodic focus marking in contact varieties of South African English

The article presents results of an elicited-production study investigating syntactic and prosodic consequences of language contact on two varieties of multilingual Black speakers of South African English, namely Black South African English (BlSAfE) and a newly emerging variety by Black speakers (“crossing over variety”). The results indicate that contact varieties of South African English share syntactic traits of General South African English (GenSAfE) relating to focus marking. At the same time, BlSAfE also shows differences in the frequency of use of the syntactic structures. The differences cannot be accounted for solely by L1 influence. Also, in prosody, significant differences between the varieties emerge. For BlSAfE, the differences can be related to L1 influence. A language can exert its influence differently on different areas of another language’s grammar: With respect to syntax the “crossing over” variety groups with GenSAfE, with respect to prosody it is in-between GenSAfE and BlSAfE.

English in India and South Africa: Comparisons, Commonalities and Contrasts

This article offers a comparison of the history of English in India and South Africa, with special reference to its rise as a second language. As far as external history is concerned both territories show investment in a language whose use has long outlasted the colonial era, despite the concerns of leaders and scholars with a pro-indigenous language stance. The article focuses on comparing the grammatical characteristics of the second language varieties of English in India and South Africa, arising from the Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English. A comparison of relevant chapters in this work reveals close structural similarities between Indian English and Black South African English. Moreover, South African Indian English falls midway between the two in this typological survey.

THE USES OF 'SOME' AS DETERMINER IN BSAFE

The determiner some is used primarily as an indication of an unspecified, but particular quantity. The question of whether this core meaning of some is extended in Black South African English (BSAfE) is addressed in this paper. In an intercorpus comparison, it is found (unexpectedly) that the determiner some occurs significantly less frequently in the BSAfE corpus than in the Indian English corpus. However, it is also found that the determiner some precedes plural nouns significantly more frequently in BSAfE than in Indian English. Similar differences are not observed in a comparison of BSAfE with a Kenyan English corpus. In the BSAfE intracorpus investigation, a collexeme analysis indicates a strong collocational attraction between the determiner some and a number of plural nouns. A co-varying collexeme analysis among all possible determiners and five frequently occurring non-singular nouns provides further confirmation of the strong association between some and plural nouns.

Perceptions of Students towards Black South African English in a Science and Science University Community

In this paper we reflect on Black South African English (BSAE) as a recognised variety in the new Englishes paradigm. The aim of the paper is to report on Science and Mathematics students’ perceptions and towards BSAE. A qualitative-quantitative mix approach was elected to elicit responses from a group of 23 Science and Mathematics students. Respondents were required to complete a perceptions questionnaire as well a feature recognition test. The results of a combination of statistical (frequencies) and thematic analysis show that learners recognise and prefer BSAE. Therefore, considering the fact that the results of this study indicate (1) positive perceptions (2) general preference of BSAE in the learning of Science and Mathematics, our article concludes with a decisive concurrence with evolving recommendations of the institutionalisation of BSAE as an indigenised variety of English. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p1479

Progressive aspect and stative verbs in Outer Circle varieties

ABSTRACTThe extension of the progressive form to stative verbs is a widely discussed feature of Outer Circle varieties of English. This paper examines the semantics of the stative progressive in three corpora, representing spoken and written Indian (IndE), Kenyan (KenE) and Black South African English (BSAfE). The results reveal that the progressive form is used more frequently in spoken than written data, and most frequently in BSAfE, followed by KenE, and then IndE. All three Outer Circle varieties use the progressive form proportionally more often with stative verbs than British English. The main use of the progressive form is to convey a sense of extended duration. This Outer Circle prototype is termed an on‐going state, and clearly differs from the sense of a temporary state, which is prototypical for Inner Circle varieties. There are nevertheless a substantial minority of limited duration (temporary state) uses, especially in the written data, but at the same time, a number of examples where the progressive conveys the sense of states with unlimited duration, especially in BSAfE and the spoken data. The main conclusion is that the progressive is not simply extended to stative verbs, as is argued by many previous researchers, but rather that of a different prototype, of extended duration, sanctions a wider range of uses of the progressive form with dynamic verbs and stative verbs alike.

Do the Modals of Black and White South African English Converge?

Convergence between native and nonnative varieties, the so-called settler and indigenous strands of English in postcolonial settings, is a characteristic of the fourth phase in Schneider’s dynamic model of English. The primary objective of this article is to determine if Black South African English (BSAfE), the nonnative variety of the majority of the indigenous population of South Africa, converges on the native variety of the descendants of the original settlers as far as their use of modal and quasi-modal verbs is concerned. Corpora of written data from the 1950s and the contemporary period are compiled and analyzed in terms of the frequency of modals and quasi-modals, in comparison to corresponding data from White South African English (WSAfE). Results indicate an increase in the frequency of modals and quasi-modals in BSAfE, and no decline in the frequency of modals as observed in most native varieties of English. Since WSAfE shows a decline in frequency of both modals and quasi-modals, the distance between the two strands increases as far as frequency is concerned. The two strands do share a relatively higher frequency of the modal must, unlike other varieties where it is declining in frequency. A semantic comparison of must and should does not show convergence between BSAfE and WSAfE, because there is little change in BSAfE.

‘To err is human: The case for neorhoticity in White South African English

While neorhoticity in acrolectal black South African English has been investigated and confirmed by Hartmann and Zerbian (2009), and while a few commentators (including Bailey 1984, Da Silva 2008 and Bekker 2009) have briefly mentioned the possibility of a re-emergence of rhoticity in white South African English (SAfE), the phenomenon has not been investigated closely. The research reported on in this article is the first attempt to do so, focusing as it does on the speech produced in a range of styles by eight young, female speakers of the local standard of SAfE, that is, General SAfE. The research shows, furthermore, and in agreement with the existing literature on neorhoticity in modern English accents, that the re-emergence of rhoticity in General SAfE is both phonologically and sociolinguistically constrained: it appears almost exclusively in the most formal styles and is particularly prevalent when following /ɜː/, as in nurse, purse, etc. More surprisingly, there does not appear to be any evidence for an increase in the /r/-sandhi phenomena alongside the re-emergence of rhoticity.

Corpus evidence of anti-deletion in Black South African English noun phrases

Black South African English (BSAfE) is now generally regarded as an independent variety of English rather than an interlanguage on the way to Standard English (Van Rooy, 2008: 274, 300 and in this issue). Mesthrie (2006: 115) demonstrates that many of the characteristic features of BSAfE can be ascribed to the overarching tendency of anti-deletion. Anti-deletion is a term coined by Mesthrie (2006: 115) to encompass three kinds of linguistic phenomena that are the opposite of deletion in generative analyses of English, namely undeletion, non-deletion and insertion. Undeletion ‘restores an element that is often assumed to be deleted or to have an empty node in generative analyses of English’ (Mesthrie, 2006: 125), e.g. She made me to go (Mesthrie, 2006: 111) in which the infinitive marker to is undeleted. Insertion entails the addition of grammatical morphemes, e.g. can be able (Mesthrie, 2006: 139–40). After examination of a number of undeletion phenomena in interviews with 12 mesolectal speakers of BSAfE, Mesthrie (2006: 129) arrives at the following principle: ‘If a grammatical feature can be deleted in [Standard English], it can be undeleted in [Black South African English] mesolect.’ He points out that such undeletions are not mandatory and adds the following corollary to the principle of undeletion: ‘If a grammatical feature can be deleted in StE, it can also be (variably) deleted in [Black South African English] mesolect, at a lower rate of frequency’ (Mesthrie, 2006: 129).

Corpus linguistic work on Black South African English

Black South African English (henceforth BSAfE) has received more attention from corpus linguists than any other variety in the country. In the early 2000s, two corpus projects were initiated more or less simultaneously: the corpus of spoken Xhosa-English, compiled by Vivian de Klerk at Rhodes University, and the Tswana Learner English corpus that I compiled. A number of further corpora have also been compiled in the more recent past, many of which are available in the public domain for research purposes.

Black South African English on the radio

ABSTRACTFor most rural communities in South Africa, community radio remains the most common mass communication channel which models English speech forms and functions. Whereas print media has received some attention in the earlier works on Black South African English (BSAE) research, the speech tokens used in the radio have not been empirically studied to date. In order to fill this gap and expand previous work on the variety, this study investigated high‐frequency features of BSAE drawn from a corpus of 209,000 words from a rural English‐medium community radio in Limpopo Province. Normalized frequency rates of syntactic, discourse and pragmatic features were calculated, using corpus quantification procedures, which were complemented by a cross‐linguistic analysis of the selected features with an upper limit of 10,000 words. The findings of the study provide evidence that BSAE has evolved alongside the nativization and endonormative phases proposed in Schneider's Dynamic Model and that both the radio usage and reliance on the logic of Bantu language substrate forms, in combination, reinforce its stabilization. Implications for future research directions are offered at the end of the paper.

<i>A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles</i>: A Case of Lexical Invasion or Corpus Enhancement?

The <i>DSAE</i> (<i>A Dictionary of South African English on Historical Principles<i>) embraces linguistic diversity by including many Afrikaans lexemes and lexemes from African languages. In the advertising pamphlet the dictionary proposes to, among other things, improve communication, give access to education, change perceptions of SAfE (South African English) locally and internationally, improve historical and political perspectives and create a new South African identity. These statements are discussed in relation to popular local debates around "standards", language variation and policy. An overview is given of the current status of SAfE in the context of Southern Africa and Africa. Finally I argue in favour of the dictionary as documentary evidence of a living spoken language at a given point in history. <b>Keywords:</b> dictionary, lexicography, south african english, varieties of english, intercultural communication, multilingualism, south african identity, language planning, discourse communities, organization of african unity, colloquialisms, regionalisms, language shift, language change, dialect, loan-words, borrowings, africanisms, afrikaansisms, black south african english, linguistic charter for africa, standardization, corpus enhancement, lexical invasion, sociolinguistics

Undeletions in Black South African English1

In this paper, I propose some syntactic tendencies by which New Englishes can be better characterised from an internal and a comparative perspective, using Black South African English (BSAE) as a case study and focal point. Many descriptions of New Englishes have simply taken the form of lists of features. Feature in New English Studies (as in traditional dialectology) refers to a linguistic item that is characteristic of a particular second language (L2) variety, but not of the relevant superstrate, which is usually standard first language (L1) English of Britain or the USA. Sometimes a feature is characterised not in terms of pure absence versus presence, but in terms of relative frequency, markedness, or a change of function. Such inventories of features are a useful, and perhaps necessary, first step in dialect description. However, they are a long way off from being descriptively adequate, if one may apply Chomsky's (1986) term in an L2 context. For that, one would need to study an individual feature as exhaustively as possible in terms of its function and sociolinguistic distribution in the dialect concerned.

Key identifiers and spelling conventions in MXit-lingo as found in conversations with Dr Math

Different human languages look different from other human languages. To use a term from the computer industry, each human language has its own “look and feel”. European English speakers can easily recognise a phrase such as “Comment allez-vous?” as being written in French while the phrase “¿Habla usted español?” is written in Spanish. Each language has its own letter frequencies, word frequencies and other identifiers. This paper describes key identifiers in MXit lingo as found in Dr Math conversations. MXit is a mobile instant messaging system which originated in South Africa and is expanding to other countries. Dr Math is a mobile tutoring system which uses MXit as a communication protocol. Primary and secondary school pupils can receive help with the mathematics homework using the Dr Math tutoring system. The pupils use MXit on their cell phones and the tutors use traditional Internet workstations. After exploring how MXit lingo is written, this paper will briefly explore why MXit lingo is written the way it is. By identifying and describing the orthographic conventions visible in the spelling of MXit lingo, although with some theoretical support, insight into the purposeful and functional nature of written, mobile communication will be revealed. In highlighting spelling that is influenced by Black South African English, an attempt will be made to contribute to the empirical development of a field of study that explores the construction of words used in South African mobile communication.Keywords: MXit, Math, letters, writing, orthographyDisciplines: Linguistics, mathematics, information technology

Linguistic penetration at Schneider’s Phase 4: Acceptability ratings of entrenched features of Black South African English by South Africans outside the originating culture of the variety

This study has its theoretical roots at the juncture between World Englishes theory, Black South African English (BSAE) as a variety of English, and pedagogy. The study determined acceptability ratings (AR) of selected, entrenched features of BSAE by L1 English and Afrikaans-speaking South African education students in their third year of university. Tolerance for features of BSAE in formal, academic writing suggests that a wider acceptance of BSAE is emerging. I argue that even a low level of acceptance of features of BSAE by this sample group can suggest linguistic convergence and initial entry into Phase 4 of Schneider’s (2009) Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes. This is indicative of a wider acceptance of features of BSAE beyond the originating members of the variety. The study evaluates responses by L1 English and Afrikaans-speaking student teachers at a tertiary institution in Gautengii to a questionnaire based on a list of characteristic features of Black South African English (BSAE) adapted from De Klerk and Gough (2002:362). Students were required to indicate the statements they would mark as incorrect in formal, academic writing and to identify the single feature which they regarded as the most in need of remediation. The findings indicate (up to 26%) that students outside the racial category of ‘black’ are tolerant of certain entrenched features (extension of progressive, no singular or third person indicative present, phrases such as ‘X’s first time’ and omission of the article) of BSAE. This suggests that the variety is gaining momentum as certain features are beginning to be tolerated even in formal, written, academic contexts at university level. If features are penetrating segments of the South African population outside of the originating culture it can be argued that there is some movement of the variety towards Schneider’s Phase 4 of endonormative standardization of BSAE. However, other entrenched features of BSAE (the use of too and very much as intensifiers, the use of resumptive pronouns and gender conflation in pronouns) received a 0% AR. The pedagogic implications of this non-acceptance are discussed. Key words: acceptability ratings, South Africans, BSAE, World Englishes, Assessment, Schneider, Dynamic model, South Africa

Stability of grammatical features of Black South African English

This article explores the level of stability of some grammatical features of Black South African English (BSAE). The study involved testing a group of undergraduate speakers of BSAE using an exercise in which students judged the grammaticality of sentences and rewrote those they considered non-standard. Students were then alerted to grammatical differences between BSAE and Standard English (SE). Awareness of these differences developed during a student writing assignment in which BSAE features were discussed and compared with the standard forms, and students learnt to distinguish between SE and BSAE forms in assessing the rewritten sentences of their fellow students. After an interval of two months, the same participants were re-tested on their use of these features using a second similar grammaticality exercise. The results suggest that this minor intervention increased students’ ability to recognise most of the non-standard forms and rewrite them in the standard form. This indicates present lack of stability in the BSAE variety, and is in line with previous findings (Van der Walt and Van Rooy, 2002) that BSAE is in a transition phase in which standard and BSAE forms are both regarded as options. The study also found also that some features of BSAE are more stable than others. The last part of the article considers qualitative data reflecting students’ attitudes to BSAE and suggests that a sense of ownership of this variety might be an important step towards students’ extending their repertoire to include a more formal written variety.