Anglonormativity, decoloniality and the status of IsiXhosa in an elite school in cape town: a linguistic ethnographic study

Abstract

The status and visibility of African languages in South African schooling is attributed to the perceptions and attitudes entrenched in its history with colonialism and apartheid. In the current context of South Africa, these perceptions and attitudes are still very present, particularly so in elite schools. Elite schools are commonly known as formerly white-only or Model C schools where the dominant language practice is English and, in some instances, Afrikaans. Although, schooling in South Africa is predominantly led in English, its status and power in elite schools is much more unwavering. The consequence of this in the current form of schooling is that black African mother tongue speakers are constructed as being deficient English monolingual speakers, while they carry rich multilingual resources. Additionally, while some elite schools may compel white learners to learn African languages, there is still too much anxiety around speaking an African language such as it being too difficult to learn or requiring too much effort to pronounce words properly (Tucker, 2018). However, in the present moment of South Africa, many studies show the value of African languages, not only as a means of validating its speakers but as a means of dismantling the hegemony of English in schooling and steering a decolonial praxis in education.