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Identity expression in language use by amaXhosa on YouTube

  • Authors: Ngcungca, Nkazimlo
  • Date: 2025-04
  • Subjects: Sociolinguistics -- South Africa , Language and languages -- Social aspects -- South Africa , Language and culture
  • Language: English
  • Type: Master's theses , text
  • Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/72454 , vital:79226
  • Description: The study investigates how amaXhosa individuals express their cultural and social identity in English-dominated online spaces, particularly focusing on their language use. Typically, cultural identity is not only expressed through visible markers, such as clothing and rituals but also significantly through language. This tendency is even prevalent in online spaces, dominated by English, like YouTube and other social platforms. Unlike in-person interactions, where cultural ties can be conveyed through attire and spoken dialogue, online communication relies heavily on written text. In these digital spaces, English often emerges as the prevailing lingua franca, posing unique challenges for individuals striving to assert their cultural identity. This research assumes that amaXhosa individuals continue to find alternative ways to express their identities through language, which can be identified through studying their language practices on online platforms, such as YouTube comments. Thus, this study sets out to investigate how amaXhosa use language as a tool to express their cultural identity on English-dominated platforms, such as YouTube. A pilot study evaluated the usability of the South African Language Identification tool where comments from ten YouTube videos were used. Although initial tests revealed limitations in using this identifier on YouTube texts, it ultimately proved effective for categorising comments into English and isiXhosa, including instances of code-switching that reflect everyday communication among individuals. Consequently, 80 videos were mined from YouTube, using Python 3 and a YouTube Application Programming Interface (API). The videos were selected based on certain criteria, including the minimum number of 50 comments and multiple languages in the comments. The mined comments were then converted into a text file and pre-processed through tokenisation using Ucto, a language-independent command-line tool for text tokenisation. Although initial tests revealed limitations in using this identifier on YouTube, it ultimately proved effective for categorising comments into English and isiXhosa, including instances of code-switching that reflect everyday communication among individuals. Overall, I categorise the results on language strategies that indicate isiXhosa cultural and social identities into two broad categories: explicit and implicit categories. On the one hand, explicit strategy only includes self-categorisation as an identity marker. On the other hand, implicit categories include pronouns as identity markers, expressions of ownership and solidarity, self-identification by group affiliation, distinctions between in-group and out-group members, social comparison language reflecting pride, geographical references, such as the Eastern Cape, and culturally specific linguistic strategies. The findings in this study demonstrate a clear relationship between the isiXhosa language and possible social and cultural isiXhosa identity, highlighting how language fosters solidarity and unity among amaXhosa. In other words, commenters employ various expressive strategies to index and position themselves linguistically. Thus, this research not only reinforces existing studies on identities but also contributes significantly to language and identity studies in South Africa. As far as it could be ascertained for this study, the dissertation, which investigates language and identity on YouTube, using comments from content consumers, pioneers corpus-based studies of amaXhosa identities. It lays a methodological groundwork for future research while providing practical insights regarding current tools and platform policies. Furthermore, this study advances the understanding of language and identity by exploring digital methods for extracting and analysing YouTube comments. It supports ongoing investigations into the relationship between language and identity among amaXhosa individuals while identifying new methods to address challenges, associated with studying multilingual and multicultural interactions on digital platforms. The methodology also included creating reusable scripts for mining YouTube comments, contributing to open science through accessible code that could assist other researchers, interested in using YouTube comment data for studying language and identity or the identities of speakers from various linguistic backgrounds on the platform. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, School of Language, Media and Communication, 2025
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  • Date Issued: 2025-04

Multilingual repertoires and strategic rapport management: a comparative study of South African and Dutch small business discourse.

  • Authors: Lauriks, Sanne
  • Date: 2014
  • Subjects: Discourse analysis , Business communication -- South Africa , Business communication -- Netherlands , Multilingual communication -- South Africa , Multilingual communication -- Netherlands , Communication in management -- South Africa , Communication in management -- Netherlands , Sociolinguistics -- South Africa , Sociolinguistics -- Netherlands , Language and culture -- South Africa , Language and culture -- Netherlands
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2382 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1013162
  • Description: In this era of globalisation and the consequent increase in social, economic and physical mobility, small businesses are transforming into sites of increasing language contact (Harris and Bargiela-Chiappini 2003). This study explores situated language practices within two small multilingual businesses. The first is a bicycle rental and repair shop located in Amsterdam (the Netherlands), which is a city with a dynamic multilingual society. The second is a tyre fitment centre in Grahamstown (South Africa), which is a city characterised by a stable triglossia of English, Xhosa and Afrikaans. Using Linguistic Ethnography (Rampton 2007) as my data collection method, I spent a total of eight weeks in these businesses. For the analysis I draw on Spencer-Oatey’s (2000b; 2011) Rapport Management Framework and sociolinguistics of globalisation (Blommaert 2010). This combination allowed me to explore situated language practices in relation to a contemporary context of increased globalisation. The analysis is structured using Spencer-Oatey’s (2000b) concept of rapport orientations. The orientations are presented as one of the key factors that influence the choice for a certain strategy. The orientations thus seemed a constructive way of showing how the observed strategies were employed by the participants of this study and what function they fulfilled in a certain context. However, difficulties emerged during the analysis with applying this concept to some of the more elaborate and complex data. As a result my argument developed into two different strands. The first demonstrates how individuals turn to their multilingual repertoires to negotiate agency and power relationships in small business discourse. The analysis reveals that people at times deliberately promote and maintains discordant relations, which can be understood as a rational response to the individual’s social and economic context. The second discusses the problems that emerged during my analysis with applying rapport management orientations to my data. I propose theoretical developments, warranted by my data, to create an Enhanced Rapport Management Framework suitable for the analysis of complex small business discourse.
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  • Date Issued: 2014

Literacy, orality and recontextualization in the parliament of the Republic of South Africa : an ethnographic study

  • Authors: Siebörger, Ian
  • Date: 2012
  • Subjects: South Africa. Parliament (1994- ) -- Language , Bill drafting -- South Africa , South Africa -- Languages -- Political aspects , Sociolinguistics -- South Africa , Language and languages -- Variation , Linguistic analysis (Linguistics) , Functionalism (Linguistics) , Systemic grammar
  • Language: English
  • Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2384 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1016140
  • Description: In parliaments, the tasks of drafting legislation and conducting oversight are accomplished by means of complex chains of spoken, written and multimodal texts. In these genre chains, information is recontextualized from one text to another before being debated in sittings of the houses of parliament. This study employs the point of view afforded by linguistic ethnography to investigate critically the ways in which meanings are recontextualized in one section of such a genre chain, namely the process by which committees of South Africa's National Assembly oversee the budgets of government departments and state-owned entities. It does this to identify possible sources of communication difficulties in this process and suggest ways in which these can be minimized. In so doing, it develops a theoretical model of the discursive effects of recontextualization informed by Latour's (1987) notion of black-boxing as well as Maton's (2011) Legitimation Code Theory. This model uses Interactional Sociolinguistics and elements of Systemic Functional Linguistics, including APPRAISAL and Transitivity as tools to describe the realization of these effects in language. This study finds that ideational and interpersonal meanings are condensed and decondensed at particular points in the genre chain in ways that lead to some MPs’ voices being recontextualized more accurately than others’. It also shows that common sources of communication difficulties in the committee process include differences in political background and understandings of committee procedure and participant roles. It recommends that representatives of departments and entities reporting to the committees should receive a fuller prebriefing on their roles; that MPs should receive training on asking clear, focused questions; and that the role of committee secretaries as procedural advisors should be strengthened.
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  • Date Issued: 2012

Afrikaans and the spirit of equilibrium : inaugural lecture delivered at Rhodes University

Perceptions of, and attitudes towards, varieties of English in the Cape Peninsula, with particular reference to the ʾcoloured communityʾ

  • Authors: Wood, Tahir Muhammed
  • Date: 1988
  • Subjects: English language -- South Africa -- Cape of Good Hope , English language -- Variation , Sociolinguistics -- South Africa
  • Language: English
  • Type: text , Thesis , Masters , MA
  • Identifier: vital:2336 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002018
  • Description: This study set out to analyse the concept of the ʾcoloured communityʾ and to describe the linguistic phenomena associated with it. It was found that the community was characterized by division and an overt rejection of 'coloured' identity. A satisfactory definition of the community could only be arrived at by exploring social psychological and anthropological concepts, particularly that of the social network, and a covert identification was postulated. This in turn was used to explain the linguistic phenomena which were found to be associated with the community. The latter included a vernacular dialect consisting of non-standard Afrikaans blended with English, as well as a stratification of particular items in the English spoken by community members . This stratification was analysed in terms of the social distribution of the items, enabling comparisons to be made with the English spoken by ʾwhitesʾ. A fieldwork study was embarked on with the intention of discovering the nature of the perceptions of, and attitudes towards, the idiolects of certain speakers. These idiolects were considered to be typical and representative of the forms of English normally encountered in the Cape Peninsula, and were described in terms of the co-occurrences of linguistic items which they contained. Tape recordings of the speech of this group of speakers were presented in a series of controlled experiments to subjects from various class and community backgrounds who were required to respond by completing questionnaires. It was found that those lects which contained items and co-occurrences of items peculiar to 'coloured' speakers were associated with lower status than those containing items and co-occurrences of items peculiar to 'white' speakers. Attitudes towards speakers were found to be more complex and depended upon the styles and paralanguage behaviours of the speakers, as well as accent, and also the psychological dispositions of the subjects who participated
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  • Date Issued: 1988
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