English in the prison services: a case of breaking the law?
- De Klerk, Vivian A, Barkhuizen, Gary P
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A , Barkhuizen, Gary P
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6133 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011585
- Description: In this paper we report on an investigation into the use of English in a prison in the Eastern Cape Province, run by the Department of Correctional Services (CS) five years after the declaration of an official multilingual policy. The investigation consisted of a range of interviews and observations in this institution, aimed at establishing the extent to which the national language policy is actually being implemented on the ground. Findings suggest that the use of English predominates in the high, official domains, that there is a marked avoidance of Afrikaans, and that Xhosa, the main language of the Eastern Cape Province, increasingly occupies the lower, unofficial domains. Tensions between policy and practice are discussed, and it is argued that the CS has shown that pragmatism is a much stronger force than ideology. While the roles of Xhosa and Afrikaans appear to be in the process of reversing in the Grahamstown prison, English has emerged as stronger there than it has ever been before. And because it will continue to be a necessary prerequisite for the mobility and promotion of staff in the country as a whole, and the lingua franca for an increasingly mobile criminal population (which means the prisons are likely to become increasingly linguistically diverse, rather than settling into regional patterns), everyone will have to have some proficiency in English, which, ironically, will promote and strengthen it even more.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A , Barkhuizen, Gary P
- Date: 2002
- Language: English
- Type: Article
- Identifier: vital:6133 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1011585
- Description: In this paper we report on an investigation into the use of English in a prison in the Eastern Cape Province, run by the Department of Correctional Services (CS) five years after the declaration of an official multilingual policy. The investigation consisted of a range of interviews and observations in this institution, aimed at establishing the extent to which the national language policy is actually being implemented on the ground. Findings suggest that the use of English predominates in the high, official domains, that there is a marked avoidance of Afrikaans, and that Xhosa, the main language of the Eastern Cape Province, increasingly occupies the lower, unofficial domains. Tensions between policy and practice are discussed, and it is argued that the CS has shown that pragmatism is a much stronger force than ideology. While the roles of Xhosa and Afrikaans appear to be in the process of reversing in the Grahamstown prison, English has emerged as stronger there than it has ever been before. And because it will continue to be a necessary prerequisite for the mobility and promotion of staff in the country as a whole, and the lingua franca for an increasingly mobile criminal population (which means the prisons are likely to become increasingly linguistically diverse, rather than settling into regional patterns), everyone will have to have some proficiency in English, which, ironically, will promote and strengthen it even more.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
Towards a corpus of black South African English
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469514 , vital:77249 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073610209486296
- Description: This paper describes the proposed structure and design for a corpus of Xhosa English, which should ultimately form part of a larger corpus of Black South African English (BSAE). The planned corpus (which already comprises 100 000 transcribed words) is exclusively based on spoken spontaneous Xhosa English, and full justification for this decision is provided in the paper. In order that this corpus will be mutually compatible with similar corpora elsewhere, the guidelines of the Wellington corpus of spoken New Zealand English (based in the International Corpus of English (ICE)) have been closely followed, both in terms of transcription and mark-up conventions and in the referencing system used. Where there are differences, these have been carefully motivated. It is hoped that researchers in other parts of South Africa will collaborate in creating additional corpora of other "indigenous" varieties of Black English, following the guidelines provided here, so that ultimately all such corpora will be compatible and can be combined to form a large and comprehensive corpus of BSAE.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
- Authors: De Klerk, Vivian A
- Date: 2002
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/469514 , vital:77249 , https://doi.org/10.2989/16073610209486296
- Description: This paper describes the proposed structure and design for a corpus of Xhosa English, which should ultimately form part of a larger corpus of Black South African English (BSAE). The planned corpus (which already comprises 100 000 transcribed words) is exclusively based on spoken spontaneous Xhosa English, and full justification for this decision is provided in the paper. In order that this corpus will be mutually compatible with similar corpora elsewhere, the guidelines of the Wellington corpus of spoken New Zealand English (based in the International Corpus of English (ICE)) have been closely followed, both in terms of transcription and mark-up conventions and in the referencing system used. Where there are differences, these have been carefully motivated. It is hoped that researchers in other parts of South Africa will collaborate in creating additional corpora of other "indigenous" varieties of Black English, following the guidelines provided here, so that ultimately all such corpora will be compatible and can be combined to form a large and comprehensive corpus of BSAE.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2002
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