Language Attitudes of University of Cape Town Linguistics Students Towards Codeswitching

Language Attitudes of University of Cape Town Linguistics Students Towards Codeswitching
Author: Michael S. Schilling
Publisher:
Total Pages: 122
Release: 2013
Genre:
ISBN:

The purpose of this study is to determine the attitudes of Linguistics students and professors at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa towards codeswitching, specifically English-Afrikaans and English-Xhosa. The study also addresses how these attitudes vary in relation to the participants' attitudes towards Xhosa, English, Afrikaans, and/or other varieties that they speak, and how these attitudes relate to the linguistic landscape of the University of Cape Town campus and surrounding area. The study's importance lays in its focus on attitudes towards the phenomenon of codeswitching. It will augment the existing literature and be used as a comparison with other, similar studies, such as Ramsay-Brijball's (2004) studies on Zulu L1 students' language attitudes at the University of Durban and Gibbons's (1983) matched-guise study of Hong Kong students' attitudes towards codeswitching. Each of these studies show on some level that the participants' attitudes towards codeswitching portray a compromise of their attitudes towards the varieties involved. Student participants' attitudes were elicited primarily through a matched guise technique, during which they responded to audio clips from South African feature films using a questionnaire comprising 18 semantic differential scales; clips containing speech in English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa, and using English-Afrikaans and English-Xhosa codeswitching will be included. The questionnaire was designed to indirectly elicit the participants' attitudes, while subsequent sociolinguistic interviews were held to more directly elicit those attitudes (Garrett, 2010) and the ideologies informing them. Similar interviews were conducted with various professors and post-graduates at the University of Cape Town in order to investigate how their attitudes vary with those of the undergraduate students. Furthermore, a supplemental questionnaire asked students to rate their intrinsic and extrinsic attitudes towards the language varieties in question and collected information such as the student's gender, level of study, language varieties spoken at home, and language varieties spoken with friends, so that variation in the attitudes could be analyzed according to these factors. Finally, photographs were taken across campus of language in use in signs, posters, and advertisements to obtain a portrait of the linguistic landscape of the University of Cape Town. Triangulation of data from these mixed methods provided a much fuller picture of the language attitudes of undergraduates at UCT.

Language in Cape Town's District Six

Language in Cape Town's District Six
Author: Kay McCormick
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2002
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780198235545

The book is a sociolinguistic case study of District Six, an inner-city neighbourhood in Cape Town characterized by language mixing and switching of English and Afrikaans. Its early inhabitants included indigenous people, freed slaves of African and Asian origin, and immigrants from Europe andelsewhere. The ravages of apartheid affected the residents' attitudes towards their languages in various ways, which are described. The book examines the norms and practices regarding language choice for various functions and domains in the only surviving sector of District Six. It also containsdetailed analyses of extended bilingual conversations showing a range of social, linguistic and discourse features. Of particular interest is the paradoxical polarization and blending of the two languages. They are strongly polarized symbolically and functionally, yet they are also habituallyblended in vernacular speech through lexical borrowing and intrasentential language switching. This paradox has interesting implications for the construction of individual, community and language identity.

Code Switching. The Relationship between personality traits and attitudes toward switching behaviour

Code Switching. The Relationship between personality traits and attitudes toward switching behaviour
Author: Ismail Baniadam
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 43
Release: 2018-07-17
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 3668752885

Academic Paper from the year 2018 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, Urmia University (International Students Admission Department), course: TEFL, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between MA English students’ personality traits (PT) and their attitudes toward university teachers’ code switching (CS) in Urmia, Iran. In addition to that purpose, the correlation between each sub-scale of PT, including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience, and teachers’ CS is analyzed. Finally, the overall attitudes of MA TEFL English students toward CS behavior are discussed, as well. To this end, 150 MA English students (70 males and 80 females) from State and Azad universities of Urmia City participated in this study. Two instruments were used for data collection: In order to measure students’ PT, the Big Five Inventory designed by John & Srivastava, 1999, was administered. Secondly, to measure students’ attitudes toward teachers’ CS, the questionnaire developed by Mingfa Yoa (2011) was used. According to the results, no significant relationship was found between the PT of students and their attitudes toward teachers’ CS. Furthermore, there was no significant relationship between students' PT and their attitudes toward CS regarding the five sub-scales of PT. The findings of the study indicate that the majority of students have similar attitudes toward the CS phenomenon. Their overall attitudes were positive toward teachers’ CS, and the majority of students agreed with CS in EFL settings. As a result, it was revealed that CS is an acceptable behavior in the EFL context from MA TEFL students’ perspectives.

Corpus Linguistics and World Englishes

Corpus Linguistics and World Englishes
Author: Vivian de Klerk
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1441186557

Monograph examining English as it is spoken by the Xhosa people in South Africa

Focus on First Year Success

Focus on First Year Success
Author: Brenda Leibowitz
Publisher: AFRICAN SUN MeDIA
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2009-11-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1920338128

The importance of the first-year experience is now well recognised. This collection of papers makes a fascinating and important contribution to our understanding of students' transition to higher education. This is a scholarly, engaging and illuminating text, that is relevant not only in the context of South Africa, but for anyone interested in student learning in the first year of university education. David Gosling, Plymouth University

Language in South Africa

Language in South Africa
Author: Rajend Mesthrie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 526
Release: 2002-10-17
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780521791052

A wide-ranging guide to language and society in South Africa. The book surveys the most important language groupings in the region in terms of wider socio-historical processes; contact between the different language varieties; language and public policy issues associated with post-apartheid society and its eleven official languages.

Modern Arabic Sociolinguistics

Modern Arabic Sociolinguistics
Author: Abdulkafi Albirini
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2016-02-08
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1317407059

Modern Arabic Sociolinguistics outlines and evaluates the major approaches and methods used in Arabic sociolinguistic research with respect to diglossia, codeswitching, language variation and attitudes and social identity. This book: outlines the main research findings in these core areas and relates them to a wide range of constructs, including social context, speech communities, prestige, power, language planning, gender and religion examines two emerging areas in Arabic sociolinguistic research, internet-mediated communication and heritage speakers, in relation to globalization, language dominance and interference and language loss and maintenance analyses the interplay between the various sociolinguistic aspects and examines the complex nature of the Arabic multidialectal, multinational, and multiethnic sociolinguistic situation. Based on the author’s recent fieldwork in several Arab countries this book is an essential resource for researchers and students of sociolinguistics, Arabic linguistics, and Arabic studies.