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3 - Rethinking Youth Language Practices in South Africa:

An Interactional Sociocultural Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2021

By
Heather Brookes
Edited by
Rajend Mesthrie ,
Ellen Hurst-Harosh  and
Heather Brookes
Rajend Mesthrie
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Ellen Hurst-Harosh
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
Heather Brookes
Affiliation:
University of Cape Town
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Summary

This chapter argues for an alternative view of 'African youth languages' based on ethnographic and ecological approaches that link structural and discursive analyses of spontaneous communicative interactions with immediate situational and local social dynamics and then the broader sociocultural context of the speech community in which these practices occur. Using video recordings of naturally occurring conversations from twenty-two years of observation among male youth in a township in Johannesburg, South Africa, I demonstrate that so-called Tsotsitaal or tsotsitaals are interactive performative practices that constitute a performative register made up of a set of discursive strategies that draw on different linguistic resources in the quest for originality as part of male sociality during a particular life stage. I show that variation in choice of words and other semiotic features of this practice are best explained from a persona-constructionist perspective as part of male sociality where linguistic choices index attitudes, stances and identities in the service of social distinction. Innovations spread based on linguistic skill and status within male social networks. Multivalency accounts for the presence of some of the male youth lexicon in urban vernaculars. Implications for current approaches to the study of youth language in Africa are discussed.

Keywords

Africayouth language practicesregisterstyleidentitylexical variationinteractionmultivalency
Type
Chapter
Information
Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa , pp. 66 - 93
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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