ETD Collection

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/104


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    Language and identity: Investigating the language practices of multilingual Grade 9 learners at a private desegregated high school in South Africa
    (2008-05-20T12:32:26Z) Nongogo, Nomakhalipha Margaret
    This research report engages with the concern that African learners attending English medium, multiracial schools are losing their proficiency in African languages. In so doing, the report explores the language practices of four multilingual Grade 9 learners at a desegregated private high school in Gauteng. In a school environment that does not overtly support the use of African languages, I explore the extent to which multilingual learners use African languages in the school context, to position themselves and others, as an identity building resource, and the extent to which the use of African languages is implicated in their identities. I also explore the possible influence of the learners’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds on their language practices, and related to this, the expression of their identities. I look at how their language practices help them shift identities with space and purpose, and the contradictions therein. The study draws on poststructuralist theories of language and identity (Weedon, 1997; Zegeye, 2001), in considering how language constitutes identity (Pennycook, 2004) and self and other ‘positioning’ (Davies and Harre`, 1990) It also draws on Bourdieu’s (1991) theorizing of language and power and language as a form of cultural capital. I draw on two traditions in qualitative research: case study and ethnography. In my analysis of the data, I argue that both African languages and English are important in learners’ identities. I indicate that through their language practices, the learners continue to position themselves in multiple and contradictory identities that continue to shift with context. I also argue that the learners’ proficiency in English has not led to them losing proficiency in their home languages, which are retained and used as a primary marker of ethnic identities and for ideas of ethnic purity. This purity is in turn not constructed in a staidly ‘traditional’ manner, but negotiated through joking and verbal competition. Notions of ethnic purity are also often discursively constructed through the use of English, illustrating the contradictory nature of identities. I also point out that some learners protected apartheid constructed ethnic compartmentalization by setting boundaries of belonging. I point to language being a site of struggle for power and contestation in an effort by the learners to resist linguistic assimilation.
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    Multilingualism and Change on the Kinyarwanda Sound System post-1994
    (2007-02-26T11:31:57Z) Habyarimana, Hilaire
    The present study on ‘Multilingualism and change on the Kinyarwanda sound system post-1994’ focuses on sociolinguistic approaches oriented to the effects of language contact to Kinyarwanda sound change. Many studies on various multilingual societies have been conducted, and most of them have focused on multilingualism and language policy, education and social integration in different multilingual societies. In particular, most studies conducted on the new linguistic configuration of Rwanda have focused on language attitudes in a multilingual context, but none of them has tackled the issue of multilingualism and sound change as a result of language contact. The main hypothesis expounded in this research is that Kinyarwanda sound variants that can be heard from current speech arise owing to Kinyarwanda speakers’ language background. In the light of the literature review on multilingualism and sound change, an extensive analysis of the most prominent linguistic variables of sound variation in Kinyarwanda was done, and its evaluation shows that there have been shifts in the sound system of Kinyarwanda post-1994. It has been shown that some sounds were modified or shifted to other sounds which exist in neighbouring languages because of contact. In addition to that, it has been argued that this sound variation has been possible mainly because Kinyarwanda came into contact with other languages which have different sound systems. It is hoped that this research will add a new dimension to studies of multilingualism within Bantu languages and will contribute to yielding a solution to the Rwandan language problem because of suggestions related to how the Kinyarwanda sound system can be standardized.
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    Predictors of Academic Achievement in Multilingual Learners
    (2007-02-22T11:19:43Z) MacFarlane, Marco
    This research considered factors that predict academic achievement in Grade 8 and 9 learners. The learners in this study were categorised primarily based on their first language. As a researcher in South Africa one is not faced with a division between monolinguals and bilinguals, but rather is forced to classify language users based on their ‘home’ or ‘first’ language. Thus learners whose first language was English fell into the first-language (L1) group, while learners whose first language was not English fell into the second-language (L2) group Academic achievement was defined in this study as the marks obtained by learners in their school subjects. This method of assessing students and learners is both pervasive and essential in the determination of academic potential, and the subsequent determination of future employment and educational opportunities. The results of these school achievement tests were compared with results obtained from the Differential Aptitude Test Form S (DAT-S) English Version. The DAT-S is an assessment instrument used to determine academic potential. This test was developed in South Africa, and normed against Afrikaans and English speaking students (Vosloo, Coetzee & Claassen, 2000). The test was chosen for use in this study because “the kind of information obtained from the differential aptitude tests can … facilitate judgements regarding potential success in the course of a career” (Vosloo, Coetzee & Claassen, 2000 p. 1). The results of this comparison were used to examine factors that determine success in an academic sphere, and which underlying proficiencies as predicted by the DAT-S may have contributed to this success.