The use of actually in spoken Xhosa English : a corpus study
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6136 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011588
- Description: The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the semantic and syntactic characteristics of the discourse marker actually, and then to describe and explain how it is used by mothertongue (MT) Xhosa speakers who have learned English as an additional language. Such a description may provide a useful benchmark for comparison with MT norms. The source of data for the study is a corpus of approximately half a million words of transcribed spontaneous dialogue between Xhosa English speakers.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 2005
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6136 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011588
- Description: The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the semantic and syntactic characteristics of the discourse marker actually, and then to describe and explain how it is used by mothertongue (MT) Xhosa speakers who have learned English as an additional language. Such a description may provide a useful benchmark for comparison with MT norms. The source of data for the study is a corpus of approximately half a million words of transcribed spontaneous dialogue between Xhosa English speakers.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2005
Towards a norm in South African Englishes: the case for Xhosa English
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6131 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011583
- Description: Black South African English (BSAE) is generally regarded today as the variety of English commonly used by mother-tongue speakers of South Africa's indigenous African languages in areas where English is not the language of the majority. Its roots lie in the history of the teaching of English to the black people of this country, where the role models who teach English are second language learners themselves. To date, BSAE has mainly been studied within an applied linguistic framework with emphasis on its character as a second language which is deviant from standard English. An alternative view is to see it as a variety in its own right, a new or world English (Coetsee Van Rooy and Verhoef, 2000; van der Walt and van Rooy, 2002). As a consequence, a new look at norms is becoming increasingly necessary, so that decisions about learners' language competence can be made in terms of this variety. This paper reports on preliminary analyses of a recently collected corpus of Xhosa English (XE) (a sub-category of BSAE) which consists of naturalistic spoken data, and comprises some 540,000 words of Xhosa English. This large database enables empirical analysis of actual patterns of use in language, making it possible to test earlier speculations which have been based on intuition, and to explore the possibility of systematic differences in the patterns of structure and use in this particular variety. The paper focuses on 20 separate linguistic characteristics, most of which have been previously identified in the literature as being features of BSAE, and analyses each of them in turn, in order to ascertain their usage patterns and frequency of occurrence in the corpus.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 2003
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6131 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011583
- Description: Black South African English (BSAE) is generally regarded today as the variety of English commonly used by mother-tongue speakers of South Africa's indigenous African languages in areas where English is not the language of the majority. Its roots lie in the history of the teaching of English to the black people of this country, where the role models who teach English are second language learners themselves. To date, BSAE has mainly been studied within an applied linguistic framework with emphasis on its character as a second language which is deviant from standard English. An alternative view is to see it as a variety in its own right, a new or world English (Coetsee Van Rooy and Verhoef, 2000; van der Walt and van Rooy, 2002). As a consequence, a new look at norms is becoming increasingly necessary, so that decisions about learners' language competence can be made in terms of this variety. This paper reports on preliminary analyses of a recently collected corpus of Xhosa English (XE) (a sub-category of BSAE) which consists of naturalistic spoken data, and comprises some 540,000 words of Xhosa English. This large database enables empirical analysis of actual patterns of use in language, making it possible to test earlier speculations which have been based on intuition, and to explore the possibility of systematic differences in the patterns of structure and use in this particular variety. The paper focuses on 20 separate linguistic characteristics, most of which have been previously identified in the literature as being features of BSAE, and analyses each of them in turn, in order to ascertain their usage patterns and frequency of occurrence in the corpus.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2003
English in the prison services: a case of breaking the law?
- De Klerk, Vivian A, Barkhuizen, Gary P
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A , Barkhuizen, Gary P
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6133 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011585
- Description: In this paper we report on an investigation into the use of English in a prison in the Eastern Cape Province, run by the Department of Correctional Services (CS) five years after the declaration of an official multilingual policy. The investigation consisted of a range of interviews and observations in this institution, aimed at establishing the extent to which the national language policy is actually being implemented on the ground. Findings suggest that the use of English predominates in the high, official domains, that there is a marked avoidance of Afrikaans, and that Xhosa, the main language of the Eastern Cape Province, increasingly occupies the lower, unofficial domains. Tensions between policy and practice are discussed, and it is argued that the CS has shown that pragmatism is a much stronger force than ideology. While the roles of Xhosa and Afrikaans appear to be in the process of reversing in the Grahamstown prison, English has emerged as stronger there than it has ever been before. And because it will continue to be a necessary prerequisite for the mobility and promotion of staff in the country as a whole, and the lingua franca for an increasingly mobile criminal population (which means the prisons are likely to become increasingly linguistically diverse, rather than settling into regional patterns), everyone will have to have some proficiency in English, which, ironically, will promote and strengthen it even more.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A , Barkhuizen, Gary P
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6133 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011585
- Description: In this paper we report on an investigation into the use of English in a prison in the Eastern Cape Province, run by the Department of Correctional Services (CS) five years after the declaration of an official multilingual policy. The investigation consisted of a range of interviews and observations in this institution, aimed at establishing the extent to which the national language policy is actually being implemented on the ground. Findings suggest that the use of English predominates in the high, official domains, that there is a marked avoidance of Afrikaans, and that Xhosa, the main language of the Eastern Cape Province, increasingly occupies the lower, unofficial domains. Tensions between policy and practice are discussed, and it is argued that the CS has shown that pragmatism is a much stronger force than ideology. While the roles of Xhosa and Afrikaans appear to be in the process of reversing in the Grahamstown prison, English has emerged as stronger there than it has ever been before. And because it will continue to be a necessary prerequisite for the mobility and promotion of staff in the country as a whole, and the lingua franca for an increasingly mobile criminal population (which means the prisons are likely to become increasingly linguistically diverse, rather than settling into regional patterns), everyone will have to have some proficiency in English, which, ironically, will promote and strengthen it even more.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Black South African English : where to from here?
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 1999
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6135 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011587
- Description: Black South African English is generally regarded as the variety of English commonly used by mother-tongue speakers of South Africa's indigenous African languages in areas where English is not the language of the majority. This paper explores some of the problems involved in defining this variety, problems such as whether it is a `new' variety of English or a dialect, and problems relating to whose English it is: the English of those learners who have encountered only a smattering of English in informal contexts or the variety of English acquired during formal schooling. The second half of the paper focuses on the possible future of Black South African English (BSAE) against the backdrop of South Africa's new multilingual policy. Reasons for the continued appeal of English are examined, alongside the range of factors influencing the possible future growth of BSAE as a distinct variety. It is argued that South Africans are unlikely ever to be free not to learn English, owing to the huge economic, political and ideological constraints which make the `choice' of English inevitable. The success of current efforts to resist value judgements and recognise the worth of BSAE will depend not only on the goodwill of South Africans, and on the cooperation of all speakers of English, world-wide, but on the rate at which the variety drifts away from recognised standard forms of English.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 1999
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6135 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011587
- Description: Black South African English is generally regarded as the variety of English commonly used by mother-tongue speakers of South Africa's indigenous African languages in areas where English is not the language of the majority. This paper explores some of the problems involved in defining this variety, problems such as whether it is a `new' variety of English or a dialect, and problems relating to whose English it is: the English of those learners who have encountered only a smattering of English in informal contexts or the variety of English acquired during formal schooling. The second half of the paper focuses on the possible future of Black South African English (BSAE) against the backdrop of South Africa's new multilingual policy. Reasons for the continued appeal of English are examined, alongside the range of factors influencing the possible future growth of BSAE as a distinct variety. It is argued that South Africans are unlikely ever to be free not to learn English, owing to the huge economic, political and ideological constraints which make the `choice' of English inevitable. The success of current efforts to resist value judgements and recognise the worth of BSAE will depend not only on the goodwill of South Africans, and on the cooperation of all speakers of English, world-wide, but on the rate at which the variety drifts away from recognised standard forms of English.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 1999
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