Multilingualism and social cohesion: insights from South African students (1998, 2010, 2015)
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Susan Coetzee-Van Rooy
Abstract
The relationship between nations (or states), languages and social cohesion have been studied over time. Contexts like Africa and India challenge the conceived Western notion of “one-nation-one-language”. Insights about multilingualism and social cohesion from complex sociolinguistic contexts like South Africa could provide a deeper understanding helpful for promoting social cohesion in emerging “super-diverse” situations across the globe. This article reports on selected data from a longitudinal language repertoire survey conducted over three periods (1998, 2010 and 2015) in the Vaal Triangle region in South Africa. It discusses the views of multilingual urban students (N=1900+) about the relationship between multilingualism and social cohesion. The main findings are that the multilingual African home language participants believe that being multilingual is related to social cohesion, while this is not a prominent finding for Afrikaans home language users (who are mainly bilingual). The data from the South African context indicate the importance of multilingual repertoires as instruments that support the fostering of social cohesion in complex settings. Multilingual repertoires facilitate communication that enhances the building of better relationships and a deeper understanding between people in diverse settings. The implications of the findings for emerging “super-diverse” global societies are discussed.
Acknowledgements
A part of the article was presented as a paper at the International Association of World Englishes (IAWE) conference in New Delhi, India (18–20 December 2014). A second part of the article was presented as a paper at the annual joint conference of the Linguistics Society of Southern Africa (LSSA), the South African Association for Language Teachers (SAALT) and the Southern African Applied Linguistics Association (SAALA) at the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West Unversity (22–26 June 2015). Comments and discussions at those conferences assisted me greatly. Thank you to the North-West University for allowing me research leave to complete this work. The National Research Foundation (NRF) of South Africa is thanked for incentive funding for rated researchers that assisted me to complete this research. The NRF is not responsible for views expressed in this article.
Appendix A1: Formulation of questionnaire items in 1998 survey
To what extent do you think it is important to speak more than one language in South Africa?
| Not important at all | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 [6] | Extremely important |
ADVICE TO ALL SOUTH AFRICANS ABOUT LEARNING OTHER LANGUAGES
If you have to advise any South African person about learning OTHER languages than his/her mother tongue, which language or languages would you advise him/her to learn and WHY?
Please indicate the NUMBER of OTHER languages you would advise other SOUTH AFRICAN people to learn. Put a cross (X) in the appropriate block.
| South Africans do NOT need to learn languages other than their HOME LANGUAGE | South Africans must learn ONE OTHER language | South Africans must learn TWO OTHER languages | South Africans must learn THREE OTHER languages | South Africans must learn MORE THAN THREE OTHER languages |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Why must SOUTH AFRICANS learn so many languages OTHER than their HOME language? Please explain your answer at number 25 above.
Appendix A2: Formulation of questionnaire items in 2010 survey
To what extent do you think it is important to speak more than one language in South Africa?
| Not important at all | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 [7] | Extremely important |
If you have to advise any South African person about learning OTHER languages than his/her home language, which language or languages would you advise him/her to learn and WHY?
Please indicate the NUMBER of OTHER languages you would advise other SOUTH AFRICAN people to learn. Put a cross (X) in the appropriate block.
| South Africans do NOT need to learn languages other than their HOME LANGUAGE | South Africans must learn ONE OTHER language | South Africans must learn TWO OTHER languages | South Africans must learn THREE OTHER languages | South Africans must learn MORE THAN THREE OTHER languages |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
Why must SOUTH AFRICANS learn so many languages OTHER than their HOME language? Please explain your answer to question 34 above.
Appendix A3: Formulation of questionnaire items in 2015 survey
Do you think it is important to know more than one language in South Africa? Please put a tick (✓) or cross (X) in the appropriate block below.
| Not important at all | Not very important | Slightly important | Neutral | Moderately important | Very important | Extremely important |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
In your opinion, how many languages should a South African learn?
| Options to consider | Please tick (✓) the ONE response that you agree with the MOST |
| South Africans should ONLY learn their HOME language | 1 |
| South Africans should learn their home language and ONE additional language | 2 |
| South Africans should learn their home language and TWO additional languages | 3 |
| South Africans should learn their home language and THREE additional languages | 4 |
| South Africans should learn their home language and FOUR additional languages | 5 |
Why must South Africans learn the number of languages you propose above?
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Beware of the weeds
- Standardization and the myth of neutrality in language history
- Bildts as a mixed language
- Language maintenance and shift under pressure: Three generations of the Turkish immigrant community in the Netherlands
- Ethnic minority linguistic ambivalence and the problem of methodological assessment of language shift among the Ogu in Ogun State, Nigeria
- Modeling social factors in language shift
- Global repertoires and urban fluidity: youth languages in Africa
- Linguistic landscaping in Tabriz, Iran: a discursive transformation of a bilingual space into a monolingual place
- The idea of a Kosovan language in Yugoslavia’s language politics
- Multilingualism and social cohesion: insights from South African students (1998, 2010, 2015)
- Reviewers for the International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2016
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Beware of the weeds
- Standardization and the myth of neutrality in language history
- Bildts as a mixed language
- Language maintenance and shift under pressure: Three generations of the Turkish immigrant community in the Netherlands
- Ethnic minority linguistic ambivalence and the problem of methodological assessment of language shift among the Ogu in Ogun State, Nigeria
- Modeling social factors in language shift
- Global repertoires and urban fluidity: youth languages in Africa
- Linguistic landscaping in Tabriz, Iran: a discursive transformation of a bilingual space into a monolingual place
- The idea of a Kosovan language in Yugoslavia’s language politics
- Multilingualism and social cohesion: insights from South African students (1998, 2010, 2015)
- Reviewers for the International Journal of the Sociology of Language 2016
