Shifting prestige norms in post-colonial contexts: interpreting phonetic trends in Namibia’s lingua francas

ABSTRACT

This study sheds light on the socio-economic factors determining the (re)location of sociolinguistic prestige in postcolonial environments. It uses the case of Namibia, an ethnolinguistically diverse African country that replaced Afrikaans – an established lingua franca – with English as its official language to weaken the hold of the formerly ruling White Afrikaans-speaking minority on its linguistic marketplace while symbolically empowering the Black majority. Using phonetic features elicited from an ethnolinguistically representative sample, the study finds that Whites align with South African norms while Non-Whites are developing distinctly local varieties. While ‘Coloured’ Afrikaans varieties exert some gravitational pull on Black Afrikaans varieties, a more autonomous Black English variety spearheaded by women is emerging. Informant perceptions confirm the observed polarisation between Whites and Non-Whites, with the former not perceived as a linguistic target, while the valorisation of an ethnically neutral Black urban identity appears as a major driving force behind variation.

KEYWORDS:

• Sociolinguistics
• language contact
• indigenous languages
• second language
• multilingualism
• Namibian English
• Namibian Afrikaans

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Ethical clearance for this study was obtained from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (reference: HSEARS20180802001).

2 An expanded account of the same English dataset can be found in Stell (2020), which focuses on which ethnolinguistic group qualifies most as ‘founders’ of Namibian English.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University: [Grant Number 1-BE0G].

Notes on contributors

Gerald Stell

Gerald Stell is an Assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University's Department of English. His current research projects focus on ethnic and stylistic variation in Namibian English, as well as on multilingualism in Namibia.