The story of South African English:A brief linguistic overview


Ian Bekker
Abstract

This article provides a linguistic overview of the history and current status of South African English (SAfE). With respect to the history of this variety it deals with its colonial origins, subsequent development as well as diversifi cation into a number of sub-varieties, both L1 and L2 in nature. Next, the article provides a brief synchronic overview of the dialect-specifi c features of this variety, focusing mainly on phonetics and phonology, but also dealing with morphology, lexis and grammar where pertinent. The last section of the article focuses on recent developments, both in terms of the variety itself and research in the field.

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Author Biography
Ian Bekker, North-West University

Ian Bekker is currently an Associate Professor at the North-West University (Potchefstroom Campus) in South Africa, from which he also received his PhD which was focused on providing an acoustic phonetic analysis of the vowels of South African English. His current interests include the contemporary and historical sociophonetics of South African English, the fi eld of New Englishes as well as dialect and language contact within the broader context of historical linguistics,although he has also written articles in the fi elds of language planning, language attitudes and critical discourse analysis. His two most recent articles are entitled South African English as a late 19th-century extraterritorial variety (English World-Wide 33:3, 2012) and Dentalisation as regional indicator in General South African English: an acoustic analysis of /z/, /d/ and /t/ (Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 29: 1, 2011).