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Political power, national identity, and language: the case of Afrikaans
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P. Eric Louw
Published/Copyright:
July 27, 2005
Abstract
Afrikaans is the home language of 5.9 million people. During the 1980s, Afrikaans was the dominant state language and a widely-used lingua franca in South Africa and Namibia. But by the end of the twentieth century, English had replaced Afrikaans as the dominant state language and a decline in the use of Afrikaans was in evidence, even among native Afrikaans speakers. An examination of this language's twentieth-century journey helps illustrate the relationship(s) between political power, national identity, and the growth and/or decline of languages.
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Published Online: 2005-07-27
Published in Print: 2004-10-29
© Walter de Gruyter
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Articles in the same Issue
- Multilingual writing: a reader-oriented typology — with examples from Lira Municipality (Uganda)
- Political power, national identity, and language: the case of Afrikaans
- First-name changes in South Africa: the swing of the pendulum
- Globalization, the African Renaissance, and the role of English
- Ethnic identity and linguistic hybridization in Senegal
- Language, social history, and identity in post-apartheid South Africa: a case study of the “Colored” community of Wentworth
- Oppressing the oppressed: the threats of Hausa and English to Nigeria's minority languages
- “Ya know what I'm sayin'?” The double meaning of language crossing among teenagers in the Netherlands
- Asturian: resurgence and impeding demise of a minority language in the Iberian Peninsula
