World Englishes: National Standards & Attitudes Towards non-Standard Forms of English in South Africa and Australia

Having always existed in a complex multicultural and multilingual environment, South African English has been largely influenced by other languages (especially Afrikaans), most of all in its lexicon. For this reason, it is difficult to isolate the L1 variety from English as used by competent L2 speakers (Melchers & Shaw, 2003: 116). However, the present-day varieties of English spoken in South Africa are usually broadly divided into L1 and L2 varieties. The former are mainly spoken by White South Africans of British descent, and are usually labelled “White South African English” (WSAE). One should not make the mistake of considering white South Africans as the only native speakers of English; in fact, as Kasanga (2006: 67) points out, “a growing number of South Africans of Asian descent (especially Indians), Coloureds (or people of mixed origins) and Blacks, in the decreasing order, claim to be (monolingual or not) native speakers of English”. WSAE presents some social and regional variations, which justify its differentiation into three groupings, the same conventionally used for Australian English (as will be described in Part 4.3 of the present work): Cultivated, closely approximating RP and associated with the upper class; General, associated with the middle class, and Broad, associated with the working class and/or Afrikaans descent. The latter approximates the L2 Afrikaans English variety (Mesthrie, 2004: 931).
On the other hand, L2 varieties of South African English (SAfE) can be classed with specific ethnic groups, i.e. Afrikaans, Black, Coloured and Indian people. The latter are also called non-standard varieties, obviously in relation to the recommended standard, i.e. British English (see previous section). Such a standard privileges the dominant group which is, historically, the one who has always had access to the finest institutes of education. This results in a hegemony being imposed, “bringing with it an ideological bias and ultimately a linguatocracy, i.e. a minority group who controls the registers necessary to enter influential levels of decision-making, leadership and power” (de Klerk, 2006: 18). Nowadays, the debate of whether a South African English Standard needs to be created is more fervent than ever, especially regarding the role of the most widespread variety of English spoken in the country, i.e. Black South African English (BSAE). In fact, after the democratic shift the speakers of BSAE have started to take up the political and social majority position they have always had numerically (de Klerk, 2006: 18), and this fact will have some sort of impact on the linguistic ecology of South Africa. The discussion of this topic will be carried out in the field study (Part 3.3).
The origins of L2 varieties of South African English (SAfE) can be found in the first half of the nineteenth century when the British influence was very strong in the Cape. When the British took over the Cape, the Coloured communities were part of the Dutch/Afrikaans speaking communities and the resulting exposure to English led to a widespread bilingualism in the Coloured communities. As far as Indian SAfE is concerned, it derives from the Indian immigrants who arrived in Natal soon after the British settlements as labourers. Though the first generation immigrants were L1 speakers of an assortment of Indian languages, an almost complete language shift to English happened within two or three generations (Smit, 1996: 82).