Browsing by Subject "multilingualism"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    A case study of grade 6 multilingual learners' experiences with monolingual assessment practices in a working-class township school in Cape Town.
    (2022) Cingo, Siviwe Innocent; Kapp, Rochelle
    This qualitative case study focusses on the experiences and challenges f multilingual learners when writing monolingual assessments. It draws on a growing body of poststructuralist theory on linguistic repertoire and translanguaging in order to understand how grade 6 multilingual learners engaged with monolingual assessments in a working-class school in the Western Cape where English is the language of learning and teaching for all learners except those for whom Afrikaans is a home language. Using ethnographic methods, I focused on 3 grade 6 classrooms and observed 46 lessons over a period of 8 weeks. In addition, I collected assessment transcripts, learners' notebooks and conducted interviews with 14 learners and their teachers. The data shows how classroom pedagogy tended to be mainly oral and dominated by teacher talk with limited space for learner engagement. Informal written assessment tasks were monolingual, but generally mediated by translanguaging and translation. Learners relied on teachers and on the linguistic resources of peers to facilitate comprehension of assessment questions and assessment content. By contrast, formal, high-stakes assessments included no mediation prior to and during assessment. Thematic analysis of learners' written answers shows how the majority of learners struggled with language comprehension at the level of vocabulary, sentence, as well as schooled academic literacy. The study concludes that both teachers and learners are placed in an untenable position by language in education policies that insist on monolingual assessment practices. Such policy results in compensatory, and contradictory classroom teaching and learning that is aimed at instrumental, assessment focused practices rather than meaningful learning. The study ends with recommendations for policy and practice.
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    It's easy to learn when you using your home language but with English you need to start learning languge before you get to the concept': bilingual concept development in an English medium university in South Africa
    (Taylor & Francis, 2009) Paxton, Moragh Isobel Jane
    This article describes a multilingual glossary project in the economics department at the University of Cape Town which gave multilingual students learning economics through the medium of English, opportunities to discuss new economic concepts in their home languages in order to broaden and enrich understanding of these new concepts. The findings from this project illustrate how important it is that students use a range of languages and discourses to negotiate meaning of unfamiliar terms. The article responds to Mesthrie's (2008) caution regarding the development of multilingual glossaries, dictionaries and textbooks at higher education level in South Africa. It argues that translation of terminology happens inevitably both inside and outside our university classrooms as multilingual university students, in peer learning groups, codeswitch from English to their primary languages in order to better understand new concepts and this could be used as an important resource for building academic registers in African languages.
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    Plain language and multilingualism in South Africa: a focus on literacy and understanding in law drafting
    (2025) Maziba, Gugu; Mpendukana, Sibonile
    Multilingualism and plain language are underexamined concepts in the prescripts of South African law, in which their minimal representation has deterred the ordinary citizen from linguistic liberty, due to complex and insufferable legalese. Madiba (2014) and Moen et al. (2023) studied literacy and multilingual classrooms in South Africa where indigenous knowledge creation and sustenance were discovered as literacy interventions. This study focuses on multilingualism and plain language within the prescripts of South African law drafting in assembling plausible resolutions for legal illiteracy among ordinary consumers. Previous studies looked at multilingualism and plain language as a lacking factor in the judiciary and recommended that rigorous indigenous language implementation be adopted by the law for fair consumer protection. The study focuses on the challenges faced when decoding legalese and enquires as to whether plain language would be more helpful for a select sample of South Africans. This study looks at how the judiciary can use plain language as a principal framework for legal indigenous language glossaries and vocabularies. The study conducted interviews and observations using law order documentary evidence. The participants were provided with a law order to read, which was followed by a semi-structured interview and discussion. The study discovered that the select sample in the study tentatively points to a preference to read law documents in English. Indigenous languages were referred to as optional languages or ‘niceto-haves' for law orders to be provided in. The English desire emanated from the economic and social status of the language, which provided more improved educational and employment outcomes than indigenous languages. English dominates legal communication even though citizens struggle with its legal understanding. Legalese tends to be upheld by law professionals in which commitment to law literacy interventions for unlearned citizens needs to be consigned to. Moreover, the study found that media viewership influenced citizen emotions and perceptions of the law as legal televised programming often provides law education and insight.
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    South African cinema after apartheid: A politicaleconomic exploration
    (2010) Treffry-Goatley, Astrid
    When South Africa was emancipated from the oppressive apartheid regime in 1994, it was a severely divided society in need of an inclusive national identity to bind its citizens and maintain peace. Therefore, the state targeted the cultural industries, including film, as a means of promoting symbolic representations of national unity. The film industry was further identified as a priority sector for economic growth and as a potential platform for equitable redress. This article discusses existing and emerging finance, distribution and exhibition structures in the post-apartheid film industry. It considers government interventions in the form of film policies and development strategies with the purpose of examining the influence of globalising forces, in particular neoliberalism, on the apparent market-orientation of such interventions. The results presented indicate that the post-apartheid vision of equality, freedom and diversity does not always sit comfortably with the neoliberal, free-market principles promoted in the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme of 1996. Moreover, it suggests that in this commercial environment, the voices of the historically oppressed black majority, rather than enjoying a sense of artistic and creative freedom, can in fact encounter commercial censorship through the commodification of films for an export-orientated market.
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    The influence of social media marketing on the rise of emerging African Language repertoires in South African digital communication
    (2025) Mokgesi-Selinga, Masabata; Hall, Martin
    The multilingual South African landscape is represented by the country's twelve official languages, of which nine are African languages. This landscape presents an opportunity for brands to foster inclusive communication with and amongst diverse communities. As global communication increasingly becomes digitalised, social media is rapidly growing as an easily accessible communication platform for social engagements and digital marketing. This study aimed to analyse how African language speakers communicate with and about local brands on social media platforms to identify emerging social media trends and marketing opportunities using African languages when engaging with South African consumers. The research case study primarily observed the interaction between four proudly South African brands and the brands' “followers” on three social media platforms. The four brands were selected for being top-performing African brands that play a significant role in driving the continent's economic growth. The said brands have also enhanced their digital communication, resulting in stronger consumer engagement. The qualitative data was collected through screenshots of social media posts by the brands and their followers. For data integrity and analysis, the screenshots were converted into verbatim texts. Core findings indicate that social media platforms, particularly Twitter—rebranded as “X” —, are the quickest way to initiate and broadcast new African language repertoires. The social media platforms of four brands were included in this study: two food brands and two financial brands. The chicken-based food outlets, Nando's SA and Chicken Licken SA, went out of their way to celebrate the linguistic, cultural and social diversity of their followers by embracing new language repertoires, code-switching, and interacting with a great sense of humour. Meanwhile, the financial brands, Capitec and OUTsurance, did not communicate with followers in African languages, and their shortcoming was that they forfeited broader consumer engagement. This study illustrated that brands that engage consumers with familiar social jargon, such as emerging African language repertoires, have the potential to maximise their marketing opportunities, as observed from the social media marketing of Chicken Licken SA and Nando's SA.
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    The meaning of post-apartheid Zulu media
    (2011) Ndlovu, Musa
    This article explores the relationship between certain South African media corporations, growing post-apartheid Zulu media platforms, the size and diversity of Zulu-speaking media consumers, and the historical socio-cultural construction of ‘Zuluness’. This relationship, this author observes, manifests largely through media corporations’ increasing recognition of Zulu people's pride in Zulu (i.e. the language) and ‘Zuluness’ – all of which are historical products of various forms of socialisation. Coopting this pride, profit-driven media corporations are commodifying Zulu and ‘Zuluness’. This commodification via the establishment of Zulu media outlets is paradoxical: 1) it is a transformation of a public and open Zulu cultural sense of ‘being’ into institutionally determined commodities exchangeable for revenue, for the ultimate benefit of media owners other than the masses of Zulus themselves; 2) it is a form of commoditisation that gives Zulu a linguistic profile that has historically been accorded only to English and Afrikaans. This article's argument is further briefly articulated through various intellectual frames: Graham Murdoch and Peter Golding's conceptualisation of critical political economy of communications and culture (2005); John and Jean Comaroff's anthropological analysis of commercialisation of ethnicity (2009); and, for South African specificity and precedent, through Herman Wasserman's reading of Afrikaans media corporations’ commercialisation of Afrikaans language and identity. Then the question is: What does the explored relationship mean for South Africa's multilingualism?
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    Toward Linguistically Fair IQ Screening: The Multilingual Vocabulary Test
    (2019) Siebert, Julian M.; Thomas, Kevin G.F.
    Neuropsychological assessment in linguistically heterogeneous populations is fraught with numerous challenges, such as lacking or inappropriate normative data or the unavailability of appropriate tests. Accommodating multilingual individuals exacerbates the issue by adding the question of which language(s) to use when assessing multilingual individuals. Different testrelated concepts may be accessible to them via different languages, as their lexicon is spread out over two or more languages. Hence, any monolingual instrument is likely to disadvantage them. The present set of three studies circumvents this question and presents evidence for an inherently multilingual English/Afrikaans/isiXhosa screening tool for intelligence, the Multilingual Vocabulary Test (MVT). I describe the instrument’s development from the pilot study to a psychometric analysis of the final, digitally administered version. For an abbreviated 13-item version, Study 3 (N = 494) shows an internal consistency of  = .59 and Study 2 (N = 101) produced significant criterion-related validity values of r = .46 and r = .52 with the KBIT-2 and Shipley-2 VIQ scores respectively. Linear regression analyses show that, while all criterion measures are biased toward E1-speakers, the MVT is largely immune to test-takers’ linguistic background. Thus, the MVT paves the way toward more fairness in cognitive assessments, in general, and provides a promising first step toward addressing one of South African neuropsychologists’ greatest needs—that of a quick and easy-to-administer, yet linguistically fair screening tool for cognitive impairment.