Youth multilingualism in South Africa's hip-hop culture: a metapragmatic analysis
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Date
2016
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Equinox publishing
Abstract
This paper describes the practice of youth multilingualism in South Africa's hip-hop
culture, in an online social media space and an advertising space. Based on a multi-sited
ethnographic fieldwork study of youth multilingual practices, comprising of the following
data sets - multilingual interviews, observations, multilingual interactions and performances,
documents and online social networking interactions - the paper reports on
how young multilingual speakers active in the hip-hop culture of the country talk and write
about the intermixing of racial and ethnic speech forms, as well as use registers in the
practice of gendered identities. The argument I put forth in the paper is that the examples
of youth multilingualism suggest a complex picture of youth multilingual contact in
postcolonial South Africa, and one that require a sociocultural linguistic response that
accounts for the cultural influence of youth multilingualisms in local hip-hop culture.
To such an end, I suggest that multilingual policy planning in the country should be
readjusted to the complex sociocultural changes we see emerge with youth multilingual
practices.
Description
Keywords
Youth, Multilingualism, Metapragmatics, Hip-hop, South Africa
Citation
Williams, Q. (2016). Youth multilingualism in South Africa's hip-hop culture: a metapragmatic analysis. Sociolinguistic Studies, 10(1-2): 109-133