While alcohol continues to be abused on university campuses around the world, the precise situation on South African campuses is unknown. This paper attempts to address this gap by reporting the results of two annual surveys of alcohol consumption amongst students at Rhodes University, the smallest tertiary institution in South Africa, with an annual intake of approximately 6000 students. The results of a survey using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) suggests that alcohol consumption amongst these students is a public health concern, and likely to result in serious medical and social consequences.

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.

No abstract

In the past five years, there has been much interest in the question of whether women are really as concerned about politeness and status as they have been made out to be by such writers as Baroni and D'Urso (1984), Crosby and Nyquist (1977), Lakoff (1973), Spender (1980), and Trudgill (1972. Despite the commonly held perception that it is only males who bandy about derogatory and taboo words (Bailey 1985;Flexner 1975), Risch (1987) provided counterevidence based on data obtained in the United States. The results of the present study, based on data obtained in South Africa, strongly support her findings and challenge the assumption that women stick to standard speech, citing evidence that young females are familiar with, and use, a wide range of highly taboo/slang items themselves. In particular, attention is devoted to the question of pejorative words applicable to males and females, respectively, and the view that there are only a few pejorative terms commonly used to describe males (particularly by females) is challenged. (Women's language, politeness, linguistic taboo, stereotypes, slang, expletives, prestige forms).Linguistic taboos exist in most cultures, tabooed words generally being culture-specific and relating to bodily functions or aspects of a culture that are sacred. Such words are avoided, considered inappropriate, and loaded with affective meaning. Women, seen as aspiring to prestigious "ladylike" behavior, have long been regarded as upholding such taboos and avoiding nonstandard or "dirty" words in particular.In a study (de Klerk 1990) carried out on English-speaking South African adolescents in order to ascertain their command and use of slang, some interesting results emerged that demand that comfortable theories about "nice," nonswearing females are long overdue for reconsideration. Regardless of the reasons for current shifts in usage (de Klerk 1991), it would seem that change is in the air. Results of the present article conform nicely with results ob-

A number ofscholars (Fasold 1984; Aitchison 1991;Denison 1977;Dorian 1980;Gal 1979) have examined the issue oflanguage maintenance and shift, trying to discover why certain languages (or language variants) sometimes replace each other among some Speakers, particularly in certain domains of linguistic behaviour under some conditions or intergroup contact. This article provides an overview ofthe mainfactors that have been identifiedas playing an important role in influencing language shift and then reports on the relative importance of these factors in a survey that examined the experiences andattitudes of Xhosa-speaking parents who have recently chosen to send their children to English-medium schools in Grahamstown (Eastern Cape, South Africa). The research was carried out during 1998, and the project was a multifaceted quantitative and qualitative longitudinal study involving responses to a postal questionnaire sent to all non-English parents at English-medium schools in the town, and follow-up Interviews with 26 parents. The aim ofthe project äs a whole was to observe whether there is any evidence of a process of language shift taking place from Xhosa to English, both on an individual level and on a broader societal basis, to assess the linguistic and psychosocial effects on individuals who move to English-medium schools, and to monitor changing perceptions, language loyalty, and attitudes over this period. This paper attempts to assess the relative importance of a ränge of variables influencing the rate of possible language shift. The local context"The study of language maintenance and shift is concerned with the relationship between change and stability in habitual use, on the one hand, and ongoing psychological, social or cultural processes on the other hand, 0165-2516/00/0146-0087 /n/7.