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The study investigated the English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers' perceptions on the relationship between code-switching and emerging varieties of English called New Englishes, as well as the teachers' perceptions on the teaching of such local varieties of English. The inquiry adopted a qualitative research paradigm and focused on two purposively sampled secondary schools comprising one rural day, and one urban boarding school. Four ESL teachers were interviewed (two teachers per school). The inquiry revealed that there was unanimous agreement among the four teachers that there is a relationship between code-switching and New Englishes. In addition, two of the teachers expressed the view that there is nothing wrong with teaching the local variety of English in the schools, while the other two said they preferred the teaching of Standard English.The study recommends that language policy planners in Zimbabwe consider adopting a balance of the endonormative and the exo-normative models of English for the education system. Such a model, while acknowledging the importance of Standard English, would not undermine the importance of the local variety of English. In addition, the inquiry recommends that the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (ZIMSEC) be sensitive to aspects of the local variety of English rather than set exo-normative models. Finally, the study recommends that further research be done on the perceptions of ESL teachers on the teaching of Standard English and New Englishes in school types which were not included in the sample for the present study.

Abstract

Speech Act Theory (SAT), a theory in pragmatics, is an attempt to describe what happens during linguistic interactions. Inherent within SAT is the idea that language forms and intentions are relatively formulaic and that there is a direct correspondence between sentence forms (for example, in terms of structure and lexicon) and the function or meaning of an utterance. The contention offered in this paper is that when such a correspondence does not exist, as in indirect speech utterances, this creates challenges for English second language speakers and may result in miscommunication. This arises because indirect speech acts allow speakers to employ various pragmatic devices such as inference, implicature, presuppositions and context clues to transmit their messages. Such devices, operating within the non-literal level of language competence, may pose challenges for ESL learners.

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