Language and Social History: Studies in South African Sociolinguistics

Couverture
Rajend Mesthrie
New Africa Books, 1995 - 352 pages
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Table des matières

The Khoesan languages of South Africa
1
towards a sociohistorical perspective
19
Sociolinguistic evidence of Nguni Sotho Tsonga and Venda origins
39
The formation of Afrikaans
68
South African English
89
German speakers in South Africa with special reference to KwaZuluNatal
107
Women in the history of Afrikaans
129
the historical origins of standard Tsonga
154
Codeswitching codemixing and convergence in Cape Town
193
the influence of English
222
lexical and syntactic characteristics
242
Slang in South African English
265
language and language practices in Soweto
291
a background to the future
306
a perspective
319
Index
351

Fanakalo in South Africa
176

Expressions et termes fréquents

Fréquemment cités

Page 285 - bricoleur', builds up structures by fitting together events, or rather the remains of events, while science, 'in operation' simply by virtue of coming into being, creates its means and results in the form of events, thanks to the structures which it is constantly elaborating and which are its hypotheses and theories.
Page 285 - His universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with 'whatever is at hand', that is to say with a set of tools and materials which is always finite and is also heterogeneous because what it contains bears no relation to the current...
Page 285 - bricoleur' also, and indeed principally, derives his poetry from the fact that he does not confine himself to accomplishment and execution : he 'speaks' not only with things, as we have already seen, but also through the medium of things: giving an account of his personality and life by the choices he makes between the limited possibilities. The 'bricoleur' may not ever complete his purpose but he always puts something of himself into it.
Page 285 - It is to be defined only by its potential use or, putting this another way and in the language of the "bricoleur" himself, because the elements are collected or retained on the principle that "they may always come in handy.
Page 285 - Penetrating as this comment is, it nevertheless fails to take into account that in the continual reconstruction from the same materials, it is always earlier ends which are called upon to play the part of means : the signified changes into the signifying and vice versa.
Page 285 - Now, the characteristic feature of mythical thought, as of 'bricolage' on the practical plane, is that it builds up structured sets, not directly with other structured sets but by using the remains and debris of events: in French 'des bribes et des morceaux', or odds and ends in English, fossilized evidence of the history of an individual or a society.
Page 186 - A native is requested to tell a tale ; and to tell it exactly as he would tell it to a child or a friend ; and what he says is faithfully written down.
Page 265 - Flexner initially defines slang as "the body of words and expressions frequently used by or intelligible to a rather large portion of the general American public" although not considered good formal usage by most people. Slang is highly transitory, and it comprises at any given time about 10 percent of the words an average American knows. For Flexner, slang comes from the "imagination, selfconfidence, and optimism of our people...

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À propos de l'auteur (1995)

RAJEND MESTHRIE is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cape Town, where he holds a National Research Foundation (SARCHI) research chair. He is also the current President of the Linguistics Society of Southern Africa. He has published in the field of Sociolinguistics, with special reference to language contact and variation in South Africa. His most recent publication is "World Englishes" (with Rakesh Bhatt, CUP 2008). He is a regular participant on SAFM s Word of Mouth radio program, where he appears to have a fairly large following. He is an A-rated researcher, the only linguist in South Africa currently so designated by the NRF.

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