Language Learning, Power, Race and Identity: White Men, Black Language (Encounters, 4) - Hardcover
Buch 22 von 27: Encounters
Inhaltsangabe
This book investigates the strategies and identities of colonials who have learned the languages of colonised people, using the context of isiXhosa in South Africa. While power in language learning research has traditionally focused on the powerful native speaker and the relatively disempowered learner, this book studies the inverse, where elites are the language learners. The author analyses the life histories of four white South Africans who acquired isiXhosa during the apartheid years. The book offers insights into relationships between language, power, race, identity and change in their stories and in the broader context of apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, with its conflicted history and disparities. This book should appeal to researchers interested in studies of language acquisition, narrative and identity, as well as those more broadly interested in South African history, multilingualism and race studies.
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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren
Liz Johanson Botha has taught languages since 1968 and held a faculty post at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa from 1998 to 2012. More recently, she has worked as a Research Associate to the Faculty of Education at Rhodes University, South Africa. Her interests include language learning, identity and teacher education.
Liz Johanson Botha has taught languages since 1968 and held a faculty post at the University of Fort Hare, South Africa from 1998 to 2012. More recently, she has worked as a Research Associate to the Faculty of Education at Rhodes University, South Africa. Her interests include language learning, identity and teacher education.
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Language Learning, Power, Race and Identity
White Men, Black Language
By Liz Johanson BothaMultilingual Matters
Copyright © 2015 Liz Johanson Botha
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78309-385-4All rights reserved.
Contents
Acknowledgements,
Preface: Autobiographical Origins of This Book,
Introduction,
Part 1: Background,
Chapter 1: The Eastern Cape, Then and Now,
Chapter 2: Life History, Identity and Language Acquisition,
Part 2: The Life Histories,
Chapter 3: Childhood: Intimacy and Separation,
Chapter 4: Rites of Passage: Paths Diverge,
Chapter 5: Adult Life and Work: Language and Power,
Chapter 6: Identity Across Spaces: White Discourse and Hybrid Space,
Chapter 7: Conclusion,
Appendices,
Appendix 1: Timeline of Events in the Eastern Cape (and South Africa),
Appendix 2: Historical Events and the Lives of the Participants,
Appendix 3: Interview Schedules (Initial Plan),
Appendix 4: Stages in Data Analysis,
Appendix 5: Military Service in South Africa, 1957–1994,
Appendix 6: Some Background on Firearms in South Africa,
References,
Index,
CHAPTER 1
The Eastern Cape, Then and Now
... although one is still in an area of special and outstanding beauty, it is not long before one is conscious of something more; an impression, seemingly, of a distinct and plangent power deriving from forces occult as well as visible, from an inner component of the malign set within a landscape whose natural attractiveness nevertheless has provoked more jealous antagonism and combat than any other in all Africa. Here on this frontier, between the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth century, was to be found the crucible of modern South African society.
Frontiers – Mostert (1992: xxi, xxii, xxix)
The four men whose life histories are the subject of this book are all descended from members of one or other of the earliest groups of white settlers in the Eastern Cape, who were initially all farmers. In this chapter, I look at the history of these groups of settlers, of the groups of indigenous people with whom the settlers interacted and the background to inter-group relations in the area. This means examining the wars and struggles of dispossession and resistance in which the participants' forebears participated, patterns of land occupation and seizure, and labour relations and conditions on farms. Significantly too, in terms of the research, it means exploring language issues and multilingualism in the region, both historically and in the present. I do not go into detail about the more recent apartheid history, which is well known, but focus on the earlier history, linking it to current themes which feature in the men's stories. The chapter culminates in a more detailed account of each of the four men's lives. The oldest was born, as I was, around the time that the National Party took power in 1948, while the other three were born in the 1960s, when the implementation of the apartheid policy was getting into its stride (see Appendix 2).
In setting out the socio-historical context of the men's stories, I draw on seminal works on the history of the Eastern Cape (Mostert, 1992; Peires, 1981, 1989) and South Africa (Giliomee, 2003; Sparks, 1991; Terreblanche, 2002), augmenting these with more specific information and alternative constructions from other sources. I also draw on novels and biographical works (Brodrick, 2009; Gregory, 1995; Johnson, 2006; Poland, 1993; Thomas, 2007), which give further details about the history and an insight into the atmosphere and mood, as well as personal and emotional responses to the times, often by multilingual white people. While most of the seminal works are written by white historians, I have endeavoured to include black perspectives, and to maintain a consciousness of how and by whom the events have been constructed.
Indigenous People and Early Settlers
At the time when the European 'voyages of discovery' were rounding the tip of Africa, a number of clans of the Nguni group of peoples lived on its south-eastern seaboard (Crampton, 2004; Peires, 1981). They grew some crops, but cattle formed the social, spiritual and economic basis of their society. Around 1600, the charismatic Tshawe overthrew his brother, the legitimate heir to one of these chiefdoms (Soga, 1931: 7), and united a number of fairly diverse groups and fragmentary clans to form the powerful amaXhosa (Peires, 1981: 15ff.). Descendants of Tshawe's adherents still live in the Eastern Cape (and in many urban areas, especially around Cape Town), but the term Xhosa is now often used to refer loosely to all the groups coming from the Eastern Cape region who speak a language related to isiXhosa, the Nguni dialect which was written down by missionaries in the 19th century, thus becoming regarded as 'standard' isiXhosa.
In the 18th century, a difference of opinion over the appropriate behaviour for a Xhosa king caused the powerful Rharhabe to leave his brother Gcaleka, the heir to the throne, on the north-east side of the Kei River, and settle, with a large following, south-west of the Kei. This divided the amaXhosa in two: the amaGcaleka and the amaRharhabe (Mangcu, 2012: 52) (see Map 2, p. 5). Some independent chiefdoms, also recognising Rharhabe's authority, moved across the Fish River into what became known as the Zuurveld (sour grassland) and beyond (Peires, 1981: 56). After Rharhabe's death, the territory of his followers, under Ngqika and his regent Ndlambe, was to become a cauldron of war, as settlers of European origin moved into the area, seeking land and colonial dominion over the indigenous inhabitants.
Forebears of the four participants in this study are found in all of the main groups of early settlers to the Eastern Cape: Portuguese sailors, shipwrecked on the coast from as early as 1550 (Crampton, 2004), Dutch trekboers (travelling farmers) and British and German settlers.
The trekboers were descendants of Dutch, French and German settlers at the Cape, who gradually moved further and further away from the constraints of the Dutch colonial government, seeking more grazing for their cattle. Map 2 (p. 5) shows that the paths taken by the trekboers eventually led some of them to areas west of the Great Fish River, some also moving into the Zuurveld, between the Bushmans and the Great Fish Rivers (Lubke et al., 1988: 395). Mostert (1992: 165ff.) graphically describes the restless lifestyle of the physically powerful trekboers, removed from the cultivated lifestyle of the Cape, beholden only to themselves and God, living and dying by their guns, and dependent on the Cape only for ammunition. In the period between the late 1820s and 1845, trekboers, motivated by a complex of reasons, most of which were related to their dislike of British domination and policies making them feel like aliens in what they regarded as their own land, moved out of the Eastern Cape in great numbers, seeking self-determination beyond the Orange River. Particular grievances were the change from the loan farm system to freehold title, the emancipation of slaves and the granting of equality before the law to Khoi and amaXhosa (Giliomee, 2003: 144ff., 161; Terreblanche, 2002: 220). Some trekboers remained in the Eastern Cape, and their descendants still live in the region.
In 1820, the British, who ruled the Cape from 1806 onwards, recruited 5000 Britons, representative of all social strata of British life,...
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