Ethnicity and Language Variation

Grammar and Code-switching in the Afrikaans Speech Community

von Gerald Stell

298 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

This book discusses the linguistic reflection of ethnicity using as an illustration informal speech patterns in the bi-ethnic Afrikaans speech community. Its theoretical outlook is based on variationist studies and discourse studies on the processes shaping ethnicity. Two areas of language variation come into focus, namely Afrikaans morphosyntax and Afrikaans-English code-switching. Coloured and White speech norms are quantitatively reconstructed on the basis of a corpus of informal speech. This forms the point of departure for a qualitative reconstruction of strategies of ethnic identity negotiation. It is shown that quantifiable trends of linguistic convergence are not incompatible with enduring ethnic differentiation in speech norms.

• Reihe: Schriften zur Afrikanistik / Research in African Studies
• Themen: Gesellschaft und Sozialwissenschaften Gesellschaft und Kultur, allgemein Kultur- und Medienwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften
• ISBN: 9783631621653
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 02.12.2011
• Größe: 21 x 14.8 cm
• Verlag: Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften