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Speaking with a forked tongue about multilingualism in the language policy of a South African university

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Abstract

As part of a broader student campaign for ‘free decolonized education’, protests over language policies at select South African universities between 2015 and 2016 belied widespread positive appraisals of these policies, and revealed what is possibly an internal contradiction of the campaign. The discourse prior to the protests (e.g. “excellent language policies but problematic implementation”), during the protests (e.g. silence over the role of indigenous African languages in the “Afrikaans must fall” versus “Afrikaans must stay” contestations), and after the protests (e.g. English becoming a primary medium in some institutional policy reviews) warrant attention to critical literacy in language policy scholarship. Based on a theoretical account of speaking with a forked tongue, this article analyzes the language policy text of one South African university. The analysis suggests, simultaneously, why similar policies have tended to be positively appraised, why students’ calls for policy revisions were justified, but why the changes clamoured for arguably amount to complicity in self-harm.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge suggestions made by anonymous reviewers as well as funding from the South African National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Paul Duncan and Lynn Mafofo are also thanked for comments on parts of the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Linguistics, University of the Western Cape, Bellville, South Africa

    Bassey E. Antia & Chanel van der Merwe

  2. Department of Applied Language Studies, Nelson Mandela University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa

    Chanel van der Merwe

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  1. Bassey E. Antia
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  2. Chanel van der Merwe
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Correspondence to Bassey E. Antia.

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Antia, B.E., van der Merwe, C. Speaking with a forked tongue about multilingualism in the language policy of a South African university. Lang Policy 18, 407–429 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-018-9493-3

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