1. Youth language practices in Africa as creative manifestations of fluid repertoires and markers of speakers’ social identity

Hollington, Andrea; Nassenstein, Nico

doi:10.1515/9781614518525-003

Cited by 8 publications

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“…This is an indication that Black varieties may be converging into one relatively autonomous Black Afrikaans variety only loosely aligned with Baster and Coloured Afrikaans. A glimpse of that Black Afrikaans variety is given by the informants' accounts of Kasietaal, whose reported anti-register functions and ethnically neutral Black male indexicalities place it on a par with youth urban registers observed elsewhere in Africa (Beyer 2015;Hollington and Nassenstein 2015; see further Kießling and Mous 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, specific provision may have to be made for postcolonial settings from where settler populations have largely withdrawn. With such settings comes scope for subverted varieties of the colonial language to emerge as 'urban youth registers', whichespecially in African contextsmay turn into ethnically neutral lingua francas (Hollington and Nassenstein 2015;Kiessling and Mous 2004). To predict language variation in postcolonial settings where settler models may or may not be visible, I propose an approach that takes inter-group relations as a point of departure.…”

Section: Language Variation In Postcolonial Lingua Francasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One may assumebased on variationist predictionsthat women lead linguistic convergence with target groups if inter-ethnic boundaries are "soft" enough (Ehala 2010;Giles 1979; see further Mesthrie 2017 on the role of women in spearheading linguistic assimilation across ethnolinguistic boundaries). Not theorized by EVT are those situations that produce ethnically neutral varieties via mutual convergence, such as urban youth registers, whose emergence seems best described via an ethnographic approach (Hollington and Nassenstein 2015;Kiessling and Mous 2004). This study looks at inter-ethnic linguistic convergence and its implications for indigenization using the example of Namibian Afrikaans, a widespread L1 and lingua franca whose historically White standard varieties have lost prestige to English, the linguistic attribute of nationhood in independent Namibia.…”

Section: Language Variation In Postcolonial Lingua Francasmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Indigenization in a downgraded continuum: Ideologies behind phonetic variation in Namibian Afrikaans

Stell

2020

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

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This study generally looks at indigenization in languages historically introduced and promoted by colonial regimes. The case study that it presents involves Namibia, a Subsaharan African country formerly administered by South Africa, where Afrikaans was the dominant official language before being replaced by English upon independence. Afrikaans in Namibia still functions as an informal urban lingua franca while being spoken as a native language by substantial White and Coloured minorities. To what extent does the downranking of Afrikaans in Namibia co-occur with divergence from standard models historically located in South Africa? To answer this question, the study identifies variation patterns in Namibian Afrikaans phonetic data elicited from ethnically diverse young urban informants and links these patterns with perceptions and language ideologies. The phonetic data reveal divergence between Whites and Non-Whites and some convergence among Black L2 Afrikaans-speakers with Coloured varieties, while suggesting that a distinctive Black variety is emerging. The observed trends generally reflect perceived ethnoracial distinctions and segregation. They must be read against the background of shifting inter-group power relations and sociolinguistic prestige norms in independent Namibia, as well as of emergent ethnically inclusive Black urban identities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Language Variation In Postcolonial Lingua Francasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Language Variation In Postcolonial Lingua Francasmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Indigenization in a downgraded continuum: Ideologies behind phonetic variation in Namibian Afrikaans

Stell

2020

International Journal of the Sociology of Language

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“…#instagood was especially frequent and is a bit different from the other hashtags in that it rather expresses an attitude towards a post. Linguistic creativity in marking in-groupness and the coining of new words is a commonly observed strategy in sociolinguistics and has also been documented for youth languages, for instance (Hollington and Nassenstein, 2015). The issue of identities performed and indexed by these patterns and the semantics of the hashtags are discussed in more detail in the following section.…”

Section: ) #Tannedzania 8) #Agameoftonesmentioning

confidence: 93%

Investigating English in Multilingual Contexts Online: Identity Construction in Geotagged Instagram Data

Mohr

2022

Front. Commun.

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Tourism discourse, referring to communication in tourism as global industry, contributes to the creation of tourist spaces, where space is a social and affective construct as opposed to place as a geographical one. Tourists and hosts are part of these spaces and form them with their language practices, both offline and online. This article presents a case study of tourism discourse related to Zanzibar on Instagram, focusing particularly on linguistic repertoires, the role of English in them and language choices as well as their implications for identity construction. A central issue, in line with discourse-centred online ethnography, is the comparison of the digital data with previously collected data from the physical tourist space. Theoretically and methodologically, the concept of (linguistic) transnationalism is central for the study, which uses geotags and hashtags as means of data retrieval and framework of analysis to further this concept.

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“…The editors oddly omit a discussion of how their understanding of youth language practices differs from or builds on ideas presented in the volume Youth language practices in Africa and beyond , edited by Nico Nassenstein and Andrea Hollington. Hollington and Nassentstein (2015) similarly understand African youth language practices as fluid repertoires that emerge in performance. Readers are left to wonder how, if at all, Mesthrie, Harosh and Brookes’ volume brings anything new to the table, apart from the fact that it focuses on male speakers.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Youth language practices and urban language contact in Africa. RajendMesthrie, EllenHurst‐Harosh and HeatherBrookes (Eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2021. 205pp. Hardback (9781107171206) 85 GBP, Ebook (9781316767405) 88 USD

Singh

2022

Journal of Sociolinguistics

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The photograph printed on the cover of this book shows a group of eight young men talking, laughing, smoking and posing for the camera. The black and white picture, titled Tsotsis Sophiatown ('tsotsis' denotes 'Black gangsters' and Sophiatown is a township in Johannesburg, South Africa), has a historic feel to it, and judging from the clothes the young men wear I would assume that it was taken in the 1950s or 1960s. While we of course know that we should not judge a book by its cover, I think this image perfectly encapsulates the male, in-group, street-aligned linguistic practices that have emerged in the urban centres of Africa in the 20th century and that are the focus of this book. The image also conveys something of the carnivalesque atmosphere and countercultural attitude that are so characteristic of the speech practices of young urban men. The photographer captured a moment in which the interaction was uninhibited, limitless, chaotic, performative and anti-hegemonic. In the moment the photo was taken, the young men, absorbed in jocular conversation and loud guffawing amongst themselves, appear to feel unregimented by the prescriptive and punitive language ideologies that circulate in wider society and which are perpetuated through religious, educational and state institutions in postcolonial Africa. It is also very clear that the image could not have been taken by an unratified observer, or a fly on the wall; the young men attend to and even perform for the camera. This raises pressing questions about researchers' access, the observer's paradox and research ethics when studying youth language practices in Africa. While reviewing this book, I often returned to the cover image and, engrossed by their embodied linguistic performance of the moment, found myself laughing with the tsotsis. They must be in their 70s or 80s today. Would they still qualify as informants for scholars interested in youth language practices? How has the slang they used in the 1960s developed over time? Have they given their consent to appear on the cover of an academic book published by one of the most preeminent publishing houses of the colonial metropole?The book provides detailed descriptive information and insightful theorisations about contemporary youth language practices in South Africa (five chapters), Cameroon, Kenya and Côte d'Ivoire (one chapter each). In the Introduction, the three editors, all renowned sociolinguistics scholars from South Africa, conceptualise youth language practices as hybrid ways of speaking in urban Africa that are 'connected with street corners rather than classrooms' (p. 2) and that are ideologically associated with working-class adolescent men between the ages of roughly 15 and 25. The focus on young people, the editors argue, is a particularly pertinent research agenda for African linguistics, because 50% of Africa's urban population is under the age of 19, and around 20% are between 15 to 24 years of age (p. 2). I assume that readers interested in apparent-time diachrony will be able to draw new ...

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1. Youth language practices in Africa as creative manifestations of fluid repertoires and markers of speakers’ social identity

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Indigenization in a downgraded continuum: Ideologies behind phonetic variation in Namibian Afrikaans

Indigenization in a downgraded continuum: Ideologies behind phonetic variation in Namibian Afrikaans

Investigating English in Multilingual Contexts Online: Identity Construction in Geotagged Instagram Data

Youth language practices and urban language contact in Africa. RajendMesthrie, EllenHurst‐Harosh and HeatherBrookes (Eds.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2021. 205pp. Hardback (9781107171206) 85 GBP, Ebook (9781316767405) 88 USD

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