The role of English in South African multilinguals’ linguistic repertoires: a cluster-analytic study

ABSTRACT

A substantial body of research has examined the role of English in South Africans’ linguistic repertoires. Many of these studies have investigated whether a language shift towards English might be underway among first-language (L1) speakers of the indigenous languages. At the same time, the role of English in the repertoires of L1 English speakers has received little attention, the implicit assumption being that English remains dominant for them. This paper presents an empirically informed comparison of English experience within and across L1 and non-L1 (Ln) English speakers in order to shed light on the importance of English in these individuals’ repertoires. Cluster analysis is employed to analyze language background data from bi-/multilinguals (n = 200). The analysis produces two clusters, which differ in extent of English exposure and preference for English use. All but one of the L1 English speakers belong to the ‘higher exposure, higher preference’ cluster, while the vast majority of the Ln speakers fall into the ‘lower exposure, lower preference’ cluster. The results indicate that English experience is relatively homogeneous across L1 speakers but differs, for the most part, across L1 and Ln speakers. The findings are relevant to our understanding of language use in multilingual South Africa.

KEYWORDS:

• Language background
• cluster analysis
• multilingualism
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

The data for this paper were collected as part of a project jointly funded by the National Research Foundation and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdiens (DAAD), Grant DAAD160722180990. The author gratefully acknowledges this funding. The author would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

The data are available at https://figshare.com/s/171ccd21d38fefaf0946

Notes

1 In this paper, ‘first language’ (L1) and ‘mother tongue’ are used to refer to the language(s) of an individual learned from birth. L2, L3, L4 etc. are used to refer to the chronologically second, third, fourth, etc. languages learned. This is also how these terms are defined in the questionnaire used to collect the language background data, the LEAP-Q.

2 It should be noted that these are findings from middle-class families. Dyers’ (2008) study of working-class Afrikaans–English bilinguals provides evidence of Afrikaans maintenance that is more in line with the national-level findings.

3 The terms ‘Black’, ‘White’ and ‘Coloured’, with the latter referring to individuals of mixed race, are apartheid-era designations that, though contested in some spheres, are still widely used in South Africa for both official and unofficial purposes.

4 The LEAP-Q does not define dominance explicitly. It is therefore assumed that participants would answer based on their overall language use patterns.

5 An anonymous reviewer points out that compared to the Vaal Triangle region, the Western Cape is likely home to more heritage speakers of European languages and to a larger number of African migrants, many of whom are also French speakers (see e.g. Dekoke 2016). While there are evidently some heritage speakers of European languages in the sample – those who report their L1 as Greek, Italian and Portuguese – the other individuals who indicate knowledge of a European language report it as L3, L4 or L5. As the relevant question in the LEAP-Q defines L1, L2 and so forth as the first and second languages required, respectively, these other instances of European languages in the participants’ repertoires are unlikely to have been acquired in the home.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a scholarship awarded jointly by the National Research Foundation and the DAAD.

Notes on contributors

Robyn Berghoff

Robyn Berghoff is a lecturer in the Department of General Linguistics at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Her research focuses on multilingual language acquisition and processing from a psycholinguistic perspective.