Policy, Practice and Power: Language Ecologies of South African Classrooms
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SOUTH AFRICAN CLASSROOMS
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POLICY, PRACTICE AND POWER: LANGUAGE ECOLOGIES OF SOUTH AFRICAN CLASSROOMS
INTRODUCTION
The linguistic ecologies of South African classrooms are embedded in complex local, national and global linguistic ecologies, with farreaching implications for access and equity in education. South Africa is a multilingual country with 11 official languages now recognised in the democratic Constitution of 1996 (South Africa, Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996) (see Table 1). Multilingualism is considered the norm (Makoni, 1994, p. 20; Reagan, 2002, p. 421) and the Language-in-Education Policy (LiEP) states, ‘being multilingual should be a defining characteristic of being South African’ (South Africa, Department of Education, 1997). This is symbolised by the national anthem (South Africa, Department of Education, 1997), which has four verses, each in a different national language: Xhosa, Sotho, Afrikaans and English. Despite attempts to promote linguistic equality and raise the status of African languages, English, the home language of only 8% of the population, continues to dominate the linguistic landscape at the centres of political, economic and social power (Wright, 2002). Although African languages are widely spoken at regional and community levels, particularly in rural areas, and are valued as languages of intimacy (Haugen, 1972, p. 329) and as symbols of cultural identity (Banda, 2000), the dramatic drop in the numbers of students studying African languages at universities (Wright, 2002) seems to indicate that they are losing rather than gaining status. Afrikaans, which was an official language alongside English prior to 1996, has now been stripped of its political power and consequently has lost some status nationally. Thus it would seem that Gal’s observation holds true for South Africa: namely that as a result of globalisation, the characteristic form of language change is that local languages are ‘subordinated to “world languages” in diglossic relations’ (Gal, 1989, p. 356; see also Makoni, 1994, p. 22). Mesthrie (2002) provides a detailed linguistic analysis of contemporary South Africa and reminds one that the linguistic situation is a dynamic one. Classrooms are the sites where the dynamics and tensions between the global, national and local linguistic ecologies A. Creese, P. Martin and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 9: Ecology of Language, 207–223. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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MARGIE PROBYN
Table 1 South African official languages and speakers Official languages and percentage of population speaking languages as first home language IsisZulu
24
IsiXhosa
18
Afrikaans
13
Sepedi
9
English
8
Setswana
8
Sesotho
8
Xitsonga
4
Siswati
3
Tshivenda
2
IsiNdebele
2
Source: Census 2001 in South Africa, Statistics South Africa (2004).
are possibly most acutely experienced. Although there are currently few analyses of South African classroom language that are framed in explicitly ecologic
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