The Cape Colony, Natal and the Standard Model

The history of English in South Africa begins with the first British occupation of the Cape in 1795 (Giliomee and Mbenga, Reference Giliomee and Mbenga2007: 85), which was followed by the second and final occupation in 1806. It is not, however, until the arrival of the 1820 Settlers at Algoa Bay in the eastern Cape Colony (see Figure 1) that a new dialect of English is ‘conceived’.Footnote ¹ This episode constitutes what Trudgill (Reference Trudgill2004: 26) refers to as a tabula rasa context, ‘in which there is no prior-existing population speaking the language in question, either in the location or nearby’. The upshot of this is that koineization (or dialect-mixing) took place among the various English dialects that served as inputs, the output of which was a new variety of English, which can be referred to as Cape English (CE) for the sake of convenience. The existing literature generally claims that the 1820 Settlers were predominantly lower-class and mainly from the southeast of England (including, of course, London). The picture, therefore, is of a variety similar to early 19th-century Cockney (and therefore similar in many regards to Australian English or New Zealand English).Footnote ² However, according to historians such as Welsh (Reference Welsh1998: 127) and Giliomee & Mbengwa (Reference Giliomee and Mbenga2007: 85–6), the approximately 4000 settlers in fact included a high proportion of middle class, educated settlers, many of whom had some means upon their arrival in the Cape and did not intend to become farmers or labourers. Thus, the received opinion among linguists concerning the working-class ‘flavour’ of CE is open to debate. In fact, an updated view may Footnote ³ help to explain why SAfE, unlike closely-related varieties like Australian English, does not display certain typical Cockney features e.g. the use of –in as present participle (talkin’ for talking). An added complication relates to the fact that the Cape Colony (including the eastern frontier area where the 1820 settlers found themselves) had already been settled to a large degree by Cape-Dutch/Afrikaans speakers. There was much subsequent and intensive contact (e.g. intermarriage) between the two groups, even if political relations were often strained (Branford, Reference Branford and de Klerk1996: 38–9). There is therefore some debate as to whether CE (and on the standard account, SAfE) was influenced by Afrikaans on a ‘deeper’ level (e.g. accent) than the simple borrowing of words.

Figure 1.

Map of South Africa in 1898

Another immigration ‘moment’ took place during the 1840s and 50s, the focus being on Natal, following on from the British annexation of this area from the Afrikaners in 1843. Here the normal ‘picture’ is of settlers from a more middle- to upper-class origin and with a distinctly north-of-England bias (Yorkshire and Lancashire featuring prominently), although this bias was no doubt tempered, but not completely, by the use of Standard English (and thus an early form of Received Pronunciation) by many of these middle- to upper-class immigrants. By all accounts, there was virtually no Afrikaans influence on the dialect-mixing process. The output of this process can usefully be termed Natal English (NE) and for many commentators the formation of SAfE ends here. This Standard Model of the formation of SAfE is, for example, summarized by Schneider (Reference Schneider2007: 176) who explains, with respect to the eastern Cape Colony and Natal periods, that ‘despite their relatively small numbers … these two groups laid the foundations for the main accents of present-day SAfE’.

Bekker (Reference Bekker2012), however, argues that an important third phase was the establishment and development of Johannesburg, itself based on the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand.Footnote ⁴ A discussion of the technical details is not provided here, but in essence the argument is that Johannesburg constituted yet another tabula rasa context and that a third dialect-mixing (koineization) process took place. The relatively radical thesis presented in Bekker (Reference Bekker2012) is that the ‘conception’ of SAfE took place at this moment. The next section looks at the facts supporting this model: the Three-Stage Koineization Model of the formation of SAfE.

Johannesburg and the Three-stage Koineization Model

A third major influx of British subjects occurred during the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century as well as the early part of the twentieth century. It was part of a more general influx of immigrants to South Africa. Lanham (Reference Lanham, Bailey and Görlach1982: 327) mentions ‘400,000 immigrants who arrived between 1875 and 1904 … mainly from Britain and eastern and western Europe’, this influx being the result of the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley and the 1886 discovery of gold on the Rand.Footnote ⁵ According to Van Onselen (Reference Van Onselen1982: xv), ‘into this cauldron of capitalist development [compare Figures 2 and 3] poured men, women and children drawn from all over the world’ and in terms of L1-English dialects there were many to choose from, including non-English but British (i.e. Scottish and Irish) as well as colonial (e.g. Australian and American) varieties. As far as English English varieties are concerned, Van Onselen (Reference Van Onselen1982: 5) mentions Cornwall, Cumberland and Lancashire as prominent areas from which particularly working-class miners came, and there were, as usual, also working-class immigrants from the southeast of England, including London. Many of the mainland European immigrants were Jewish and together constituted the first un-ancestral population to be integrated into the SAfE speech-community. The vast majority would have been Yiddish speakers. This influx from the outside was accompanied by a more local migration of CE, NE and Afrikaans-speakers. The varieties of English spoken during the early days of the Rand therefore included at least the following:

• • Cape English: in terms of the standard ‘picture’ and very loosely-speaking, a mixture of early 19th-century Cockney and, conceivably, the L2-English of Afrikaans speakers;

• • Natal English: mainly north-of-England, but with a distinctively middle-to-upper-class ‘flavour’;

• • Regional dialects from all over the British Empire (including RP); and

• • Possibly the second-language varieties spoken by Yiddish and Afrikaans individuals.

Figure 2.

Johannesburg around 1890

Figure 3.

Johannesburg around 1910

Most importantly, it seems clear enough that Johannesburg constituted a tabula rasa context for dialect-mixing and resultant new-dialect formation. As Trudgill (Reference Trudgill2004: 84) emphasizes, ‘certain sorts of sociolinguistic situation involving contact between mutually intelligible dialects – colonial situations, new towns, rapid urbanization – can lead to the development of new dialects’. Early Johannesburg fits this description: it was created as the direct result of the discovery of gold and on no reasonable interpretation of ‘nearby’ was there any ‘prior-existing population [of English-speakers] … in the location or nearby’ (Trudgill, Reference Trudgill2004: 26). There was rapid urbanization and all immigrants, including CE and NE speakers, were emigrating to a non-British country i.e. the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek, one of the two Boer states established in the nineteenth century and overthrown by the British as a consequence of the Second Anglo-Boer War. There was therefore ample opportunity for mixing to occur and for the emergence of a variety different to the two original colonial koines (i.e. CE and NE). Figure 4 provides a graphic schematization of this new model for the formation of SAfE. This is, of course, a working model and is open to revision, particularly with respect to the proposed strength of any one input.

Figure 4.

The Three-Stage Koineization Model of the formation of SAfE

As can be seen in Figure 4, the output of this protracted formation-process was a sociolectal continuum. This continuum is traditionally broken up into three sociolects, referred to by Lass (Reference Lass and Mesthrie1995: 93) as ‘the great trichotomy’ and a feature shared with other Southern Hemisphere Englishes like Australian English:

1. 1 A standard with an external reference: in terms of pronunciation this is near-RP in Wells’ (Reference Wells1982: 297–301) sense and often approximates an older form of RP. This variety is hardly used among young speakers any longer (Lass, Reference Lass and Mesthrie2002: 110) and is referred to in the literature as either Conservative or Cultivated SAfE. From the beginning it would have been associated with strong, direct ties to Britain, as well as with upper-class status and/or wealth.

2. 2 A more local standard that has gradually become the most widely spoken variant of SAfE; it is referred to as either Respectable or General SAfE. According to Lanham & Macdonald (Reference Lanham and Macdonald1979), this sociolect is, roughly speaking, NE absorbed into Johannesburg and reanalysed as a sociolect, a position which implicitly rejects the tabula rasa status of Johannesburg and which emphasizes the role that prestige and identity played during this stage in the history of SAfE. According to this ‘picture’, Johannesburg simply ‘re-allocated’ the two original colonial (regional) lects to two of the socioeconomic classes (lower and middle) of early Johannesburg society, effectively ignoring the other varieties of English brought in during this period of immigration. It is this version of the Standard Model that has, I believe, been unquestioningly taken up by later commentators. In Lanham & Macdonald's (Reference Lanham and Macdonald1979) time at least both Cultivated SAfE and General SAfE were associated with ‘rejection of South Africanism in favour of links with the wider Anglo-Saxon world, a low level of patriotism, and hostility towards Afrikaners’ (Jeffery, Reference Jeffery1982: 254).

3. 3 A variety alternatively known as Extreme or Broad SAfE: the indexicality of this variety is more than just working-class, an observation which, we suspect, remains as valid today as it was in Lanham & Macdonald's (Reference Lanham and Macdonald1979) time. As explained by Jeffery (Reference Jeffery1982: 253–5), Broad SAfE is associated with attributes such as being ‘tough, manly, sport-mad, sociable, patriotic and other things beside … Ext SAE is loaded with political-ideological meaning as well as social: the South African tradition is to be not only tough etc. but also conservative, right-wing, authoritarian, unsympathetic to African aspirations … Ext SAE speech reliably predicts such views … which are a significant part of the stereotype of the “typical local man’’. And indeed you do not have to be LC [Lower Class] to conform to the stereotype.’ It should also be pointed out that ‘the more extreme the variety is, the harder it becomes to distinguish it from second-language Afrikaans English’ (Lass, Reference Lass and Hickey2004: 373). For Lanham & Macdonald (Reference Lanham and Macdonald1979) the idea is, very roughly again, that CE was re-allocated by Johannesburg as a sociolect or at least as a lect with some working-class associations; the point being again that what was originally a regional variety becomes associated with class and other socio-ideological constructs.

During the twentieth century this sociolectal continuum has dispersed geographically, creating a typical Southern Hemisphere level of regional homogeneity and largely doing away with the original regional lects, CE and NE. In terms of both the Three-Stage Koineization Model and the Standard Model this continuum had its origins in Johannesburg. The difference is that in terms of the former model this sociolectal continuum (i.e. SAfE generally) was the product of a completely new mixing process during which CE and NE constituted minority inputs and which created something completely new; while in terms of the latter model, Johannesburg simply re-allocated the existing colonial varieties with socio-ideological as opposed to regional associations. This article argues that the former model has merit and requires closer consideration. In Bekker (Reference Bekker2012) it has already been shown that at least one aspect of SAfE (so-called START-Backing) can be more elegantly explained by giving Johannesburg its due.

Some further complications

The Three-Stage Koineization Model outlined above still needs to be backed up with more confirmatory evidence before it takes over from the Standard Model, i.e. much work still needs to be done in order to show convincingly that koineization during the Johannesburg period did in fact take place and that this last stage of dialect-mixing and the subsequent focusing period between 1886 and approximately 1936Footnote ⁶ would have had the main role to play in the establishment and nature of SAfE as we know it today. There are some potential complications, however, that need to be considered as part and parcel of such a research programme.

Firstly, the Three-Stage Koineization Model given above largely assumes Trudgill's (Reference Trudgill2004) recent model of new-dialect formation, which asserts that dialect-mixing in tabula rasa contexts proceeds on a face-to-face (deterministic) basis among children who are largely insensitive to broader prestige and identity issues (particularly at the level of national identity). Trudgill's (Reference Trudgill2004) model has, however, been critiqued from a variety of perspectives, not the least of which is his emphasis on the ‘social insensitivity’ of the dialect-mixing process. If, on the other hand, we allow for the construction of a South African identity (a particularly post-1900 phenomenon – see below) as playing an integral role in the construction of SAfE then the Standard Model is perhaps resurrectable and Lanham & Macdonald's (Reference Lanham and Macdonald1979) identification of General SAfE with NE and Broad SAfE with CE might in fact be the correct one. As mentioned above, on this basis no true mixing took place, and the Standard Model holds true.

Secondly, an intriguing possibility is that the relevant koineization process in Johannesburg did not really get under way until 1900 (which would mean that SAfE only became a focused variety after World War 2); this is based on two observations. Firstly, prior to the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), Johannesburg was largely a male-dominated society. Women were few and far between and many of them were in fact prostitutes; English speech-networks among the few first-generation children that were in Johannesburg at the time no doubt existed, but they were presumably small, tentative and fragile. Secondly, on the eve of war (i.e. at the end of 1899) there was a wholesale exodus from Johannesburg of the vast majority of the so-called Uitlander Footnote ⁷ population, with many individuals leaving for other parts of South Africa. Any existing speech-networks among Johannesburg-born children would have been severely compromised by the war. It is thus conceivable that long-term speech networks were only put in place during the post-war period of reconstruction: while many of the pre-War population returned, some of course did not, and there were many newcomers as well.

Thirdly, if there was a genuine mixing process during the early Johannesburg period (regardless of whether this began in all earnest before or after the war), it is quite possible that this mixing was complicated by the existence (and participation) of non-L1-English speakers in this mixing process. Traditionally a (somewhat artificial) distinction is made between language contact and dialect contact. In the early-Johannesburg context there is good reason to believe that the English spoken by L1-Yiddish speakers and L1-Afrikaans speakers (or, more accurately, the English of children who had L1-Yiddish and L1-Afrikaans parents but English as a second first-language i.e. acquired during the critical period on the basis of interaction with British peers) would have played a role in any putative koineization process. In some areas (see below) such speakers might in fact have been the majority, with L1-English speakers oddly enough being forced to (presumably) creolize a second-language variety.Footnote ⁸

The last complication (and one hinted at in footnote 4) is the fact that gold and other mining activities (and the associated immigration) was not only a feature of Johannesburg proper, but the whole of the Witwatersrand. Many of the towns of the East Rand (e.g. Boksburg) and West Rand (e.g. Krugersdorp) formed separate urban areas, with different demographic characteristics. To use just one example, Benoni on the East Rand was strongly associated with Cornwall and also had a very prominent Jewish population in the early years. Many of the East and West Rand areas are (and were) also more strongly associated with an Afrikaans input than Johannesburg itself. How (if at all) the mixing process differed across these various areas and the impact this might have had on the eventual status of SAfE are matters that still require close attention.