Abstract
This talk will focus on meta-linguistic reflections about Khoekhoegowab, or Nama language, among KhoeSan reclamation activists in Cape Town. It argues that activists’ discourses about Khoekhoegowab are multiple, and while some are affirming, celebratory, and inclusive, others are more exclusive. The KhoeSan reclamation movement has taken root among people classified as Coloured during Apartheid who are Afrikaans and English speaking, and I argue that the discourses of inclusion and exclusion connected to Khoekhoegowab are mirrored in more general Africanizing and unAfricanizing discourses.
Within the KhoeSan movement, there are activists trying to learn about and reconnect with their African heritage. They emphasize the history of language contact and how the Khoe language shaped other African languages, but there are also activists for whom being Khoe today means being a distinct grouping. Discourses connected to Khoekhoegowab also differ in other ways. For example, there are discourses which view the language as an object on the one hand, and discourses which see it in more affective, experiential, and poetic terms on the other.
The paper argues that there is a broad tension between what I call thingifying language ideologies on the one hand, and affective and poetic language ideologies on the other. In the latter, an emphasis is placed on the beauty of the language, its uniqueness, and the special relationship the language has with the landscape and with nature more generally. The language is compared to a living being, and bodily analogies are used to describe both the language itself, and the way it is embodied within speakers. These affective descriptions however, co-exist with other discourses about Khoekhoegowab which are marked by more thingifying language ideologies such as the notion that the language is the key marker of national or cultural identity, and that a group’s recognition is dependent on having their own language.
I argue that affective and poetic language ideologies are more aligned with the broader discourse of inclusion. The exclusionary discourses fit more with the thingifying label - in the sense that they resonate with ideas of language ownership, mother tongue nationalism, identity politics, but also with notions of language objectification and/or reification.
Bio
Justin Brown was educated at the University of Cape Town, where he now works as a lecturer in the Department of African Studies and Linguistics. His academic interests include linguistic anthropology, language ideologies, language politics, discourses around language endangerment and revitalization, the colonial legacy in linguistics, and the history of linguistic thought.