‘The greasy pole of dehumanisation’: Language and violence in South Africa

Abstract

The study attempts a preliminary investigation of the nexus between language and violence in democratic South Africa. The backdrop for the study is the recent spiral of violence in all its forms and guises that keeps growing and threatens to erode the political and legal gains of the post-apartheid era, and the discourses of violence that characterise public life in South Africa. The basic tenet of the study is that South Africa's multilingual dispensation offers ample opportunities to embrace linguistic diversity as a tool for understanding and promoting a culture of peace. The study traces progress made as regards some of the elements that may ensure that a culture of peace is promoted and maintained in multilingual South Africa, such as respect for human rights, the ecology of languages, building strong social institutions and greater language awareness.

Keywords:

• culture of peace
• discursive practices
• language and violence
• language attitudes
• language diversity
• peace linguistics
• Soweto uprising
• xenophobia