South African English: labels, comprehensibility and status

Abstract

Racial or ethnic labels are common practice in South African English, but in recent years some criticism has been levelled against this practice, particularly as far as the label Black South African English is concerned. This article investigates the labelling practices of ordinary, non-linguist South Africans to determine what may be acceptable to them, following a bottom-up approach to categorisation. Data were elicited from 167 black first year students in a survey designed to compare the labels they assigned to six different forms of South African English, alongside their attitudes towards these varieties, their perception of the proximity of these varieties to their own English and a measure of the comprehensibility of these varieties. The results indicate that the participants do avail themselves of ethnic and racial labels, but their main categorisation strategy is the national label South African English, used for all varieties, but more frequently for the varieties of Black and Indian speakers than White speakers. Furthermore, the acrolect form of Black South African English emerges as the variety that enjoys the highest status amongst the participants, on the basis of the most favourable attitudes, the sense of greatest proximity and the highest degree of comprehensibility.

Towards developmental world Englishes

“…To them, ‘it serves as a marker of cultural identity within the complex, multilingual and multicultural identities of black users of English in South Africa’. The results of Coetzee‐Van Rooy and Van Rooy (2005: 16) furthermore indicate that also the mesolectal variety of Black South African English is attributed with low prestige. Their findings demonstrate that university students they observed ‘do not want to associate themselves as much with this variety in their proximity ratings, and it scores low in the attitude and comprehensibility tests’.…”

Cross-cultural linguistic realization of politeness: A study of apologies in English and Setswana

“…The use of English in South Africa, indeed, varies significantly across speech communities: over time, new varieties (see Coetzee-van Rooy and van Rooy 2005;Kasanga 2001Kasanga , 2005Makalela 2004; articles in the following: World Englishes 21 (1); Multilingua 17 (2/3); de Klerk 1996) have emerged in the Outer Circle of Kachru's (1982) concentric circles model of Englishes, which corresponds to varieties of English as a second language. The other two circles are the Inner and the Expanding Circles, representing respectively English spoken natively and English as a foreign language.…”

Intelligibility and perceptions of English proficiency

“…1 1 It is well known that it is problematic to place South Africa within the three Kachru circles (Coetzee‐Van Rooy and Van Rooy 2005: 3). The South African participants in this project are conceptualized as belonging to the Outer Circle, because they learnt English as a second language at school, and had opportunities to use it outside the classroom. …”