Social identities in post-Apartheid intergroup communication patterns: linguistic evidence of an emergent nonwhite pan-ethnicity in Namibia?
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Stell, Gerald [1]
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[1] University of Pretoria
University of Pretoria
City of Tshwane, Sudáfrica
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- Localización: International journal of the sociology of language, ISSN 0165-2516, Nº. 230, 2014 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Ethnolinguistic Identities and Loyalties), págs. 91-114
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
There has been considerable interest in the linguistic emergence of “pan-ethnicities” in urban Europe, while much less attention has been paid to the emergence of such identities in post-colonial contexts, where it could serve as an indicator of nation-building processes. The case study I propose is Namibia, a country bearing a legacy of segregation along ethnolinguistic lines. Relying on an experimentally set-up corpus of interethnic interactions, I investigate patterns of linguistic convergence and divergence/maintenance across ethnic combinations. On the basis of an analysis of lexical and morphosyntactic variation as well as of code-switching patterns involving up to three languages simultaneously (i.e. Afrikaans, English and one among the various Namibian ingroup languages), I first identify evidence of a general dichotomy between whites and nonwhites. I further identify evidence of a Nonwhite pan-ethnicity, which, however, reveals upon closer inspection signs of a socio-historical division between northern and southern ethnicities. Finally, I demonstrate the relevance of “multiethnolectal studies” to describing nation-building processes by placing the findings of this study in a broad post-colonial context.
