Resumen de "l'm a cleva!": the linguistic makeup of identity in a South African urban environment
Sarah Slabbert, Rosalie Finlayson
Rapid urbanization and the approach adopted by the authorities during the previous dispensation have left the new democratic government with townships and informal settlements on the peripheries of the urban concentrations of South Africa. Contact at all levels between Speakers of the nine Bantu languages of South Africa, together with the process of modernization, characterize the social dynamics of these urban societies.
The result has been multilingual communities that interact on a daily basis in the urban areas and their peripheries in both a dynamic and complex ränge of contexts. Multilingual interaction fuelled by the competitive forces of supply and demand coupled with the free movement of communities have resulted in a hybrid form of identity, which distinguishes urban people from their rural counterparts. This paper examines the relationships that exist between the languages and Speech varieties of some selected urban communities and their ethnic and assumed linguistic identities. It has been found that the boundaries and distinctions between ethnic identities and the identities assumed by urban residents become blurred and indistinct, with their lifestyles and sociocultural characteristics changing äs they are absorbed within the urban areas of South Africa.
