An innovative and insightful exploration of varieties of English in contemporary South Africa.

A wide-ranging guide to language and society in South Africa. The book surveys the most important language groupings in the region in terms of wider socio-historical processes; contact between the different language varieties; language and public policy issues associated with post-apartheid society and its eleven official languages.

The Mouton World Atlas of Variation in English (WAVE) presents grammatical variation in spontaneous spoken English, mapping 235 features in 48 varieties of English (traditional dialects, high-contact mother tongue Englishes, and indiginized second-language Englishes) and 26 English-based Pidgins and Creoles in eight Anglophone world regions (Africa, Asia, Australia, British Isles, the Caribbean, North America, the Pacific, and the South Atlantic). The analyses of the 74 varieties are based on descriptive materials, naturalistic corpus data, and native speaker knowledge.

This volume brings together a range of studies on various aspects of English and its use in Southern Africa. Experts in their field have written chapters on topics including the history and development of English in South Africa, the characteristics of particular pan-ethnic varieties of English which have evolved in South Africa (including black, Indian and colored varieties) as well as the unique features of the English of South Africa’s southern neighbours: Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. Other contributions focus on English in relation to issues such as standardisation, lexicography, education, language planning, language attitudes and interaction patterns. The book will be of primary interest to students of linguistics and language, but should also be relevant to educationists, sociologists and historians.

A scholarly and entertaining study of words, phrases and idioms which reflects the diverse social and linguistic currents within which the Indian South African community has developed. It focuses on the effects of language contact in borrowings, grammatical interference and semantic shifts as speakers of Indic languages came into contact with speakers of English, Afrikaans, Fanagalo and African languages. It focuses on the Indic lexical items which are common to all speakers, irrespective of whether their ancestral language was Tamil or Bhojpuri; on the lexical items restricted to particular subgroups depending on their ancestral language. It further annotates the idiomatic and slang phrases found principally amongst speakers of SAIE and identifies the specific grammatical and phonological features which characterise this variety of English. Mesthrie's work shows clearly both the distinctiveness of SAIE and its South Africanness. This lexicon provides an invaluable source of comparison with Indian English, the Creoles of the Caribbean, and with the linguistic experience of other overseas South Asian communities. "Mesthrie's A Lexicon of South African Indian English, described by the author as a supplement (and also complement) to the 1980 edition of A Dictionary of South African English (ed. Jean Branford) is a valuable and interesting endeavour in its own right. It is a valid contribution to the study of language and should appeal to students of linguistics, sociologists, anthropologists and cultural historians. The Lexicon also adds to the growing body of works on the contributions of the Indian South Africans." Rambhajun Sitaram, Lexicos Rajend Mesthrie was born in Durban, South Africa. He wrote his doctorate on the transformation of Bhojpuri in South Africa. He currently teaches linguistics at the University of Cape Town.

Grounded in ethnography, this monograph explores the ambiguity of English as a lingua franca by focusing on identity politics of language and race in contemporary South Africa. The book adopts a multidisciplinary approach which highlights how ways of speaking English constructs identities in a multilingual context. Focusing primarily on isiZulu and Afrikaans speakers, it raises critical questions around power and ideology. The study draws from literature on English as a lingua franca, raciolinguistics, and the cultural politics of English and dialogues between these fields. It challenges long-held concepts underpinning existing research from the global North by highlighting how they do not transfer and apply to identity politics of language in South Africa. It sketches out how these struggles for belonging are reflected in marginalisation and empowerment and a vast range of local, global and glocal identity trajectories. Ultimately, it offers a first lens through which global scholarship on English as a lingua franca can be decolonised in terms of disciplinary limitations, geopolitical orientations and a focus on the politics of race that characterize the use of English as a lingua franca all over the world. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, World Englishes, ELF and African studies.

The global spread of English has resulted in contact with an enormous variety of different languages worldwide, leading to the creation of many new varieties of English. This book takes an original look at what happens when speakers of these different varieties interact with one another.