Politics of Language in COVID-19: Multilingual Perspectives from South Africa

ABSTRACT

This study is based on a discourse analysis of official COVID-19 addresses by South African national government ministers with a focus on linguistic choices. While access to healthcare is an obvious issue of social justice during the pandemic, language plays a covert role in processes of access and inequality. Linguistic understanding influences social participation and during an epidemic crisis, access to language plays a significant role in improving responses of affected individuals. Although English is widely accepted as a common lingua franca in the country, it excludes those who are not proficient in the language. In this article, we analyse code-switching practices, translanguaging, and increasing African language usage among ministers of parliament during official COVID-19 speeches and briefings. We argue that the growing use of multilingual resources among South African politicians carries ramifications on language politics, i.e. a shift away from an unquestioned monolingual discourse purporting English as ‘the’ lingua franca which has in the past characterised most national speeches. From this new multilingual perspective, the pandemic has effected an inward orientation rather than the previously dominating concern with international relations.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• language
• politics
• translanguaging
• social justice

Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Sabelo Ndwandwe for assisting with tricky isiZulu translations and providing some relevant interpretations. Furthermore, we thank Tolulope Adebola Oke for insights and remarks on code-switching in Nigeria. Stephanie Rudwick also thanks the Stellenbosch Institute of Advanced Studies (STIAS) and its staff for the support provided during the COVID-19 crisis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 A recent study (Jeewa and Rudwick 2020, 167) shows that some South African students seem to carry the erroneous belief that ‘most people speak English’.

2 ‘Faranani’ means ‘working together’ in Venda. The slogan has been introduced by Mbeki as his programmatic vision in his inauguration address in 1999 (South African Government Information 1999).

3 ‘Masakhane’ meaning ‘Let's build together’,(literally: ‘Let us build each other’) in the Nguni languages was a campaign introduced in 1995 by Mandela (Mthembi-Mahanyele 5 September 1996).

4 ‘Letsema’ means ‘coming together’ in Northern SeSotho.

5 ‘Arise and Act!’ in isiZulu (South African Government Information 2004a/1).

6 Meaning ‘Open the gates!’ (literally: ‘Open the ways!’) was a call that Mbeki borrowed from the deceased South African singer Brenda Fassie (South African Government Information 2004b/2).

7 ‘People First’ in SeSotho.

8 ‘We Pay’ in SeSotho, is an initiative of the Department of Public Works to address payment backlogs to service providers.

9 Blommaert criticises CDA for its ideological tentativeness and foregone concluding about power structures and over-simplification (2006, 51). CDA should not criticise power per se but reveal power effects in specific contexts (Blommaert 2006, 1).

10 Blommaert describes CDA's analysis tools as ‘Hallidayan systemic/functional linguistics and social semiotics, conversation analysis, cognitive–linguistic approaches to metaphor, argumentation theory, text linguistics, and discursive social psychology’ (2006, 24).

11 Luthuli examines the MMP report ‘News in Black and White: An Investigation into Racial Stereotyping in the Media’ (1999) for its ill application of CDA resulting in presumably wrong conclusions of racism in the South African media (2004, p. 3).

12 All translations and emphases from by present authors. We thank Sableo Ndwandwe for support.

13 While their avatar names where visible, we would like to keep them anonymous for the context of this paper.

14 On 24th of August, UDM President Bantu Holomisa issued an open letter to the president accusing Nzimande of misconducting tender processes with regards to Covid-relief funds (Holomisa 2020). Nzimande responded he deliberately circumvented tender protocol to avoid delays and corruption and accused Holomisa of false campaigning (Nqgakamba 26 Aug 2020).