Language in Cape Town's District Six

Download or read book Language in Cape Town's District Six written by Kay McCormick and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book is a sociolinguistic case study of District Six, an inner-city neighbourhood in Cape Town characterized by language mixing and switching of English and Afrikaans. Its early inhabitants included indigenous people, freed slaves of African and Asian origin, and immigrants from Europe andelsewhere. The ravages of apartheid affected the residents' attitudes towards their languages in various ways, which are described. The book examines the norms and practices regarding language choice for various functions and domains in the only surviving sector of District Six. It also containsdetailed analyses of extended bilingual conversations showing a range of social, linguistic and discourse features. Of particular interest is the paradoxical polarization and blending of the two languages. They are strongly polarized symbolically and functionally, yet they are also habituallyblended in vernacular speech through lexical borrowing and intrasentential language switching. This paradox has interesting implications for the construction of individual, community and language identity.