Profiling bilingualism in an historically Afrikaans community on the Beaufort West Hooyvlakte

[摘要] ENGLISH SUMMARY: This sociolinguistic study examines selected aspects of the linguistic behavior of a rurallanguage community in South Africa. The general aims are to establish first, whether thiscoloured community in the historically Afrikaans town of Beaufort West is stillpredominantly Afrikaans, second, whether there is evidence of language shift in thecommunity, specifically following more use of English in other formerly Afrikaanscommunities after the change of government in 1994, and third, what the nature of suchlanguage shift may be.An overview of pertinent aspects of the social and political history of South Africa generallyand of Beaufort West specifically, is presented in order to contextualise the languagedispensation – past and present – addressed in this study. History reveals that the town inquestion was first named Hooyvlakte and only later acquired the name of Beaufort West.Hooyvlakte is currently the name of one of the suburbs in which a section of Beaufort West'scoloured community resides. For the purpose of this study the larger Beaufort Westcommunity which is in focus here, is also referred to as the Hooyvlakte communityThe study is mainly of a qualitative nature. The respondents were 184 members of theHooyvlakte community, they included individuals of both genders and were aged between 16and 87 years. The only requirement for participation in this study was that the respondentshould have been a Beaufort West resident for at least 15 years. Each respondent completed aquestionnaire from which his/her language proficiency, language use and language preferencecould be assessed. The questionnaire also allowed respondents an opportunity to express theiropinion on the value and practice of multilingualism in their community.The results of this study indicate that the Hooyvlakte community remains predominantlyAfrikaans. There is, however, an increase in the knowledge and use of English, and despitepossible limits in actual English proficiency, the residents in the Hooyvlakte mostly viewthemselves as balanced Afrikaans-English bilinguals. This view is related to the gradualchange in linguistic identity, from an almost exclusively (often stigmatized) Afrikaansidentity to a (mostly proud) Afrikaans-English bilingual one. The stigmatized coloured andAfrikaans identities appear to be products of South Africa's sociopolitical history of ethnicand cultural categorisation and segregation. Stigma, on the one hand, and exclusion, on theother, have led to a desire in the Hooyvlakte community to associate with a language otherthan Afrikaans as well. This shift to an Afrikaans-English bilingual identity contrasts with theshift from predominantly Afrikaans monolingualism to virtual monolingualism in Englishfound in other Coloured communities studied in the Western Cape's and Eastern Cape'smetropoles (see Anthonissen and George 2003; Farmer 2009; Fortuin 2009).

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University