This book is based on the author's fieldwork in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Its introduction places Black South African English in its South African context and reviews previous research into this variety. Moreover, it broaches the issue of how Black South African English is adequately defined and labelled. While the study is embedded within the wider context of Black South African English, it focuses on Xhosa speakers from the Eastern Cape.
Chapter 2 presents the sociolinguistic context of Black South African English. A short sociohistorical overview sketches the development of Black South African English from the first contact with British settlers to the end of the apartheid era. This is followed by a discussion of how the social history of this variety has impacted on language policy and language in education in the post-apartheid era. A section on language attitudes and knowledge of English provides further details on the role and status of English in the new South Africa.
In chapter 3 the theoretical framework is outlined and the study is contextualised within the field of New Englishes. Particular attention is paid to the commonalities underlying all New Englishes and the stages and phases that these contact varieties go through, as highlighted in Schneider's Dynamic Model, which is outlined and applied to the South African context. Of central concern in the study of New Englishes are the characteristic features that have emerged as a result of the complex interplay of input varieties, language learning processes and substrate influence. The second part of this chapter links the study of New Englishes with the field of traditional second language acquisition research and discusses the similarities and differences between second-language indigenised varieties and learner varieties of English, as indicated by recent research.
Chapter 4 introduces the methodology used. Network-oriented approaches are briefly outlined and the data collection procedure in a Xhosa speech community through the friend-of-a-friend technique is described in detail. Furthermore, the informants are introduced and relevant issues in connection with the fieldwork are highlighted. This includes a discussion of the informants' contacts and interactional patterns and the role played by the degree of attachment to and integration into the local community.
Chapter 5 constitutes the main part of this empirical study, in which the data on Xhosa English speakers are analysed with regard to selected features. The main focus in this chapter is on morphosyntactic features, but a short overview of phonological features is given at the beginning. Based on sociolinguistic interviews and conversations, this chapter investigates how English is used by Xhosa mother-tongue speakers and which are the most salient morphosyntactic features. The quantitative analysis comprises four sections, which focus on the noun phrase, the verb phrase, agreement and negation, and discourse organisation and word order. The use of articles and the extension of the progressive and resumptive pronouns are shown to be central features and are therefore examined in more detail. Based on this analysis, the lectal continuum of Xhosa English in terms of its features is sketched and the results are then set in relation to factors such as educational background and exposure to English in order to ascertain how these affect language variation. To verify the results in the wider community, comparisons are made with de Klerk's corpus of Xhosa English.
Chapter 6 analyses the sociolinguistic interviews with regard to speakers' attitudes towards the use of English and the mother tongue and how they relate to questions of identity. The analysis yields important insights into how the speakers' linguistic behaviour is shaped by their educational background, their networks and the attitudes towards their own and others' variety of English.
Chapter 7 concludes by relating the results to issues of the status of Xhosa English. While the results confirm previous findings on Black South African English, more comparative research with speakers of other indigenous languages is clearly needed. This study contributes to the description of a particularly dynamic variety whose norms and social status have drastically changed in recent years. The results will be of interest to the study of second-language varieties of English and more generally to the field of contact linguistics.
