Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus

Metacognition and the complex process of developing identities via a second language: Addressing the challenges healthcare professionals are facing in a multilingual context

Christine Fourie — 2023-09-18

This qualitative study takes into account that healthcare professionals are increasingly required to function in a multilingual environment where they often have to communicate with patients in a second or third language (Ushioda & Dörnyei 2009, Burford 2012). In this regard the identity of the healthcare worker can be compromised, as identity is interrelated with language (Joseph 2004, Gollin-Kies et al. 2015, Skjeggestad et al. 2017). Therefore, communication training courses in the healthcare context should accommodate professional identity formation processes, as a healthy identity would support stress and change management (Monrouxe 2009, Goldie 2012, Mavor et al. 2014). Data was collected during two separate courses: firstly at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, where medical students took part in a communication training course in Afrikaans and secondly when nurses in Antwerpen, Belgium took part in a similar communication training course in English. Both courses followed a blended learning approach and for each course an online community of practice via Facebook was utilised. Data was analysed according to the principles of grounded theory. Metacognitive markers that support the identity formation process were identified during the first course and refined for the second course. The result is a framework that supports both metacognitive awareness and the manifestation of metacognition that could facilitate the professional identity formation process alongside the process of language learning for healthcare purposes.

A sign of The Times: An APPRAISAL analysis of the imagined community’s bonding in letters to a South African newspaper

Jade Smith — 2023-09-18

This article investigates how writers to The Times, formerly a daily national newspaper, used APPRAISAL strategies in letters to the editor to form the bonds that unified an imagined community of readership. The couplings of interpersonal and ideational meaning around which the community affiliated are revealed by an APPRAISAL analysis. Conclusions drawn from this information indicate the nature of the imagined community in terms of how the members viewed their agency, and the cohesion of the group. Main findings show that the community affiliated around evaluations of South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), and its leader at the time, Jacob Zuma, but did so very differently. The Times’ writers also tended to be individualistic and did not rely on other community members to solve the problems they identified.

Interstitial small stories in Sandton, Gauteng, South Africa

William Kelleher — 2023-09-18

Interstices are those residual, left-over, spaces associated with movement across and between urban forms. Interstices in the business district of Sandton, Gauteng, South Africa, represent the insurgence of the lower levels in the vertical push of the high-rise offices, luxury hotels and retail spaces of the district. In interstitial spaces encounters and interactions are often fleeting and contingent. There is a discontinuity of social space. Links between people are spread out over the grid of the city, disassembled and reassembled as people leave their homes, move through different transport nodes to different destinations in the district and there, in turn, continue and discontinue their trajectory. Interstitial stories capture a reticular activity that binds people together through movement and space. In terms of narrative research, interstitial stories, a type of ‘small’ story, offer particularities that concern the intersection of the spatiality and temporality of the real and diagetic worlds, linguistic representational means and social consequentiality. The aim of this article is to explore interstitial stories, as an instantiation of small stories research and as a local storytelling practice, through three extracts that represent three different configurations of space and time: superposed spatialities, temporal and spatial identity, and movement in telling trajectory. In analysing these stories, this article hopes to shed further light on the role that narrative plays in our daily lives and interactions, bringing out local conditions and linguistic repertoires in the global South. Interstices emerge as challenging, cooperative and familiar, and, in contradistinction to what their name could imply, a strong resource for identity construction.

The colour of liquid: A sociophonetic analysis of the changing positional allophony of the South African English lateral approximant

Ian Bekker — 2023-09-18

This article provides a sociophonetic analysis of General South African English /l/, based on the naturalistic speech of 50 male and female L1-speakers of this variety of South African English (SAfE), all from Cape Town and ranging from 18-82 years of age. Emphasis falls on testing descriptions provided by the impressionistic literature of the so-called ‘colour’ of the two main allophones of this phoneme i.e. those in initial and final positions; and on determining whether there has been any change in this regard. The relevant phonetic (acoustic) analysis focuses on the parameters of F2 or F2-F1 (as general measures of ‘colour’) and co-articulatory resistance (as an additional parameter of darkening, particularly with respect to final-/l/) to determine the overall status of /l/ as well as to determine whether or not the acoustic difference between initial-/l/ and final-/l/ meets the criteria provided by Recasens (2012) for extrinsic allophony. These parameters also constitute dependent variables for a statistical analysis which determines the relative effect of one internal (positional allophony) and two external (age and gender) independent variables on these parameters. The results provide evidence to suggest that pronouncements in the impressionistic literature are incorrect. While there has been a darkening of /l/-colour in apparent time, /l/-colour in General SAfE has been and is consistently of a relatively dark kind, as in the case of the Australasian varieties of English, the closest relatives of SAfE. Furthermore, results show that any remaining difference in colour between the two positional allophones is purely the result of intrinsic allophony i.e. General SAfE does not display a full RP-like clear-dark allophony. Results do, however, confirm that female speakers have a slightly more fronted variant of initial-/l/, probably a prestige variant.

The Phonological System of TumɁi

Kelly Kilian — 2023-09-18

As part of a linguistic research team I recorded a Khoisan language currently spoken by three people in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. Since the variety of language spoken in this location is close to varieties of both the Khoekhoe and Tuu language families, the question of genetic affiliation and classification within the Khoisan language cluster becomes significant. Although reported to have significant lexical similarities due to intensive language contact (Güldemann 2006), extensive research provides evidence of numerous linguistic differences which distinguish between the varieties within the Khoisan families mentioned above (Beach 1938, Bleek 1930, Ladefoged & Traill 1994, Miller, Brugman, Sands, Namaseb, Exter & Collins 2007). Overall, this project attempts to answer the question: How unique is this undocumented language TumɁi in comparison to varieties of geographically neighbouring Khoisan language clusters? This comparative analysis is comprised of a detailed description of the vowel and consonant systems, as well as evidence of phonetic and phonological contrasts. The clear focus on the analysis of sound contrasts is a consequence of limited data due to speaker competence. As a result of intense incomplete acquisition and linguistic attrition, the consultants produce utterances using Khoisan content words within an Afrikaans framework (Killian 2009). Specific research questions include:

What is the sound inventory of this language?
Are there phonation or glottalization contrasts in vowels?
Are there laryngeal contrasts in consonants?
What kinds of clicks make up the inventory?

This project is a direct effort toward the revitalization and documentation of indigenous languages. Determining the genetic affiliations of this language which is positioned relatively equidistant to the surrounding languages, would also contribute to gaps within the linguistic isoglosses in South Africa.

Khoekhoe lexical borrowing in regionalised Afrikaans

Camilla Rose Christie — 2023-09-18

This brief paper aims to draw attention to the widespread and ongoing phenomenon of lexical borrowing from Khoekhoe-branch languages into regional Afrikaans. A case study of one Afrikaans plant name loaned from Khoekhoe-branch languages, karee (Searsia lancea, Searsia spp.), is used to demonstrate how post-shift phonological attrition can lead to lexical conflation, and hence to semantic extension. This paper strongly recommends that public-facing scientific organisations take greater care when providing linguistic information to lay communities, and also motivates increased study of the behaviour of click consonants in a post-shift context in order to develop a clearer understanding of Khoekhoe-branch language history.

Perceptions of educational interpreting at SU: Towards a more informed and supportive interpreting service

Carmen Brewis — 2023-09-18

This article reports on a study conducted in October 2019 by the interpreters in the research portfolio of Stellenbosch University’s interpreting service. The study tested student perceptions of interpreting in authentic interpreted lectures amongst two subsets of users: those listening to interpreting in English, mostly out of necessity, and those who listen to interpreted lectures in Afrikaans, largely by choice. The research project was undertaken to gain a better understanding of the value that student users take from the service, and how it helps or hinders their learning. Interpreters wanted to gain insight into their users’ evolving needs and into the role that they themselves can play in addressing these. The article concludes by recommending practical measures to support students who feel lost and helpless due to a language deficit in the language of instruction. The outcome of the investigation shows the value of interpreting for some, but also the complications and frustration experienced by users in interpreted lectures. It highlights the necessity of thinking differently about our practices and about how these may be adapted in order to meet our users’ needs. Significantly, the results suggest the need for an expanded and more active role for interpreters in and outside the classroom. It also calls for closer collaboration between interpreters, their users and lecturers, which is necessary to negotiate and formalise the terms of a shared learning space. If interpreters are to facilitate meaning-making and understanding for their users in an increasingly remote online application, then innovative measures and in-depth planning will be needed to determine how to achieve this. Through these measures, what is currently a mainly theoretical objective can be converted into the reality of multilingual teaching and learning practices at South African universities.

Optical Character Recognition and text cleaning in the indigenous South African languages

Danie J. Prinsloo — 2023-09-18

This article represents follow-up work on unpublished presentations by the authors of text and corpus cleaning strategies for the African languages. In this article we provide a comparative description of cleaning of web-sourced and text-sourced material to be used for the compilation of corpora with specific attention to cleaning of text-based material, since this is particularly relevant for the indigenous South African languages. For the purposes of this study, we use the term “web-sourced material” to refer to digital data sourced from the internet, whereas “text-based material” refers to hard copy textual material. We identify the different types of errors found in such texts, looking specifically at typical scanning errors in these languages, followed by an evaluation of three commercially available Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tools. We argue that the cleanness of texts is a matter of granularity, depending on the envisaged application of the corpus comprised by the texts. Text corpora which are to be utilized for e.g. lexicographic purposes can tolerate a higher level of ‘noise’ than those used for the compilation of e.g. spelling and grammar checkers. We conclude with some suggestions for text cleaning for the indigenous languages of South Africa.