3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item What motivates South African parents (non-native English speakers) to teach their children English instead of their mother tongue(2019) Makwakwa, MonaThis study is set within the field of sociolinguistics and aims to bring awareness to how language shift, language maintenance, language ideologies, and language attitudes are a significant factor when it comes to the perseveration of languages. The study aimed to answer the following questions: what motivates South African parents (non-native English speakers) to teach their children English instead of their mother tongue? If there was a significant relationship between people’s identity and their linguistic choices and what value parents attach to English vs. indigenous languages? There is a thin body of literature on language shift, language death, and how language choice affects parents choices when it pertains to the languages they use to speak to their children in the South African context. This study aims at filling this gap. The study adopted a mixed method research design. In-depth interviews and questionnaires were used to generate data. This study was conducted on 10 South African parents who were based in the Gauteng Province. In order to analyse the data, patterns were drawn from the concepts and insights that the participants shared and a research report was written. The findings revealed that these parents and their children strongly identified with English. Furthermore, the parents did not have a positive attitude towards their mother tongues, as these are not global languages. Even though they identified with these languages, they did not see the instrumental value in imparting them to their children because their mother tongues are not really used in official domains. The study gives some recommendations that may aid in improving and solving the language attitudes and ideologies South African parents have about their mother tongue and English.Item Translation of Shakespeare as a tool for the advancement of South African indigenous languages: Romeo and Juliet and Peteni's Kwazidenge(2016) Dyosop, NtombenkosiThere are eleven official languages in South Africa. However, only two of these languages – English and Afrikaans – are dominant. It is often argued that this is because the other 9 official languages do not have enough terminology to be used in institutions of higher learning and in technical fields. I argue that the adaptation of literary texts helps in improving the status of African languages. For this purpose this research involves an analysis of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet which has been adapted into an English novel Hill of Fools by Peteni (1976) and later translated into isiXhosa as Kwazidenge (Peteni 1980). The analysis consists of a comparison between extracts from Romeo and Juliet and Kwazidenge via Hill of Fools using Lambert and van Gorp’s (1985) practical model for textual analysis. I argue that as much as Romeo and Juliet can be seen as a difficult text because of Shakespeare’s English, Peteni was successful in adapting the play into isiXhosa.