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Language and Education
Vol. 24, No. 4, July 2010, 283–294
School language profiles: valorizing linguistic resources
in heteroglossic situations in South Africa
Brigitta Busch∗
Department of Linguistics, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
(Received 4 February 2010; final version received 4 February 2010)
Although South Africa is committed to a policy of linguistic diversity, the language-in-
education policy is still plagued by the racialization of language issues under apartheid
and, more recently, by new challenges posed by internal African migration. Drawing on
the experience of a school in the Western Cape Province, this paper explores the role of
language profiles in a speaker-centered approach to school language policy. Attention is
paid to the ways in which the attribution of learners to clear-cut linguistic categories –
in this case English and Afrikaans – and their ‘monolingualization’ within the process
of literacy learning are at odds with both their everyday experiences of language and
their linguistic aspirations. Using biographic and topological multimodal approaches
with 13- to 15-year-old students at the school, it makes a contribution to the growing
corpus of research that foregrounds the learner perspective and emphasizes emotional
dimensions of literacy and language learning.
Keywords: South Africa; heteroglossia; language policy; language profiles
Introduction: a learner centered approach to school language policy
The recognition of some 11 official languages in the 1993 South African Constitution has
attracted considerable attention. However, progress in transfor ming the principles embedded
in the Constitution into a coherent language-in-education policy has been slow. Drawing on
the experience of a school in the Western Cape Province that has attempted to draft a school
language policy using a learner-centered approach, this paper will provide insights into the
complex language repertoires of a group of children in a Cape Town school. It will explore
the ways in which monolingually oriented language ideologies and ascriptions of distinct
social/linguistic identities can fuel tensions and conflict within a school community. More
specifically, it will show how school language profiles can be used to highlight linguistic
hierarchies and suggest possible ways forward.
A learner-centered school language policy acknowledges and valorizes the resources
and aspirations that the school community – learners, teachers and parents – bring with
them. It refuses to reduce the heteroglossia of individual speakers either to monolingualism
or to a dichotomy between ‘mother tongue’ and ‘target language’. The awareness of diversity
not only in the sense of a multitude of separate and bounded language communities but
also within a community, within a network of communication or within a given situation
relies on the concept of heteroglossia, i.e. the multilinguality, the multivoicedness and
the multidiscursivity of society, developed by Bakhtin (1981). Such an approach views
multilingualism in terms of situated practices and not as abstract and absolute competences.
∗Email: brigitta.busch@univie.ac.at
ISSN 0950-0782 print / ISSN 1747-7581 online
C
"2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09500781003678712
http://www.informaworld.com
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284 B. Busch
The idea of a perfect mastery of two or more languages is dismissed in favor of the notion
of multilingual competencies organized around activities, situations and topics. In this
view, linguistic practice differing from the normalized standard, such as language crossing
(Rampton 2005), or the appropriation of elements across language boundaries, is understood
as resource rather than as deficiency.
This paper explores the role which a biographic approach1to language profiles can
play in the development of a school language policy, highlighting how individual actors
experience the broader social context for their language practices, their ambitions and
desires. Although this approach relies on individual narratives, it is not primarily interested
in the uniqueness of a particular life story but rather in the social dimensions of the language
practices and ideologies that it exposes. The value ascribed to particular language practices
cannot be understood in isolation from the people who employ them or the larger networks
and social relationships in which they are engaged. We understand repertoire not as static
but as a bundle of linguistic dispositions subject to transformation or modification over
time. Similar to Bourdieu’s (1986) notion of habitus, the notion of ‘dispositions’ refers, on
the one hand, to knowledge of language varieties, registers and pragmatics and, on the other
hand, to the emotions (Pavlenko 2007) and desires (Kramsch 2006) linked to linguistic
practices.
The paper examines the assumptions underlying a learner-centered approach to school
language policy. Against the background of the post-apartheid language-in-education pol-
icy, it introduces the linguistic situation of the community in which Riverside School
is based, explaining why it was decided to experiment with dual-medium English and
Afrikaans classes as a means of addressing growing tensions between the separate English
and Afrikaans streams. Next, it describes a specific intervention in the form of a workshop
with students, discussions and interviews with teachers and an analysis of the linguistic
landscape of the school. Finally, the implications for policy implementation of making
linguistic diversity more visible are considered.
Language-in-education policy in South Africa
Language-in-education policy in the apartheid era in South Africa reflected a divide-and-
rule strategy, which stipulated that each ‘ethnic’ group was to be taught in its own language.
English and Afrikaans enjoyed equal status, although a de facto affirmative action policy
was implemented in favor of Afrikaans-speaking whites (Alexander and Heugh 1999, 19).
Language policy also played a role in the struggle against apartheid: the 1976 Soweto
uprising was triggered by protests against attempts to establish Afrikaans as the main
language of education by school students classified as black or colored. In post-apartheid
South Africa, in contrast, language is seen as an important element in nation-building
and language policy; its aim is to make linguistic diversity visible. The 1993 Constitution
recognizes 11 official languages (Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga,
Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu). The raising of the status of the
nine African languages was thus designed to reverse the effects of decades of language
engineering.
Constitutional recognition of language rights, however, has yet to be translated into a
coherent language-in-education policy (Pl¨
uddemann et al. 2004; Braam 2004, 9). Since the
1990s, Afrikaans has been seen mostly as the language of the oppressor, and English has
been preferred in all public domains. Despite this, Afrikaans has remained the first language
and the main language of communication among large sections of the formerly classified
colored population in the rural areas of the Western Cape. Two basic tendencies have been
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Language and Education 285
observed in Western Cape schools: the decision of isiXhosa-speaking families to send
their children to previously English and Afrikaans mainstream schools and the growing
interest in English as the medium of instruction. These developments have occurred at the
expense of learners’ home languages, with the consequence that Afrikaans and isiXhosa
have become marginalized, even in those areas where English is used rarely or not at all
by families or in daily communication. The failure to exploit children’s first languages in
learning and teaching is seen as one of the main reasons for underachievement and high
dropout rates (Alexander 2000).
Constructing and deconstructing languages as categories
Riverside School2is located in the Cape Flats, a mixed working- and lower-middle-class
area to the southeast of the central business district of Cape Town, where those able to
find employment work mainly in nearby factories, orchards and vegetable gardens. Under
apartheid, the Cape Flats was reserved for so-called coloreds, i.e. those classified as neither
white nor black. Although most residents understand both Afrikaans and English, language
is clearly a marker of social class. On one side of the river which runs through the area,
lower-income residents speaking mostly Afrikaans are housed in blocks of flats. On the
other side, their slightly more affluent neighbors live in rows of small houses; most of
them originally spoke Afrikaans but have shifted to English later in life. While Afrikaans
remains the most commonly spoken language in the Western Cape, English is considered
the language of social mobility.
Until 1990, Afrikaans had been the sole language of instruction at Riverside. Ever
since the introduction of English-medium classes, the demand for English has grown
steadily. The school has two separate parallel streams from grades one to seven, one taught
through the medium of Afrikaans, the other through English. Even parents whose children
grow up only with Afrikaans increasingly insist on enrolling their children in the English
stream (Braam 2004, 22). Differences in the socioeconomic status, attitudes toward literacy
and the school enrollment policy all aggravate the cleavages between the two language
streams. These differences are also mirrored in exam results, with a higher failure rate
in the Afrikaans than in the English stream (Braam 2004, 34). Teachers reportedly move
successful Afrikaans-speaking learners from the Afrikaans classes to the English stream
because they are performing well.
In 2004, the school started to develop a language policy, monitored by the Project for the
Study of Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA), an independent research and
development unit attached to the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town.
Toward the end of the 2005 school year, the situation had escalated to the point where
playground fights and the exchange of insults between the two streams were commonplace.
To counter these problems, dual-medium classes were introduced on a trial basis in grades
five to seven. Given the patterns of language use in the area, it could safely be assumed that
nearly all learners had at least a passive competence in the other language.
Dividing the children into two language streams (roughly) according to their home
languages means that they find themselves assigned to stable and clear-cut categories
linked to ideological constructions of social, ethnic or racial belongings. Althusser (1970)
talks in terms of the ideological construction of ‘the subject’ within and through the state
apparatuses, and the internalization and recognition of the ‘Self’ as the structured ‘Other’.
‘Interpellating’, or recognizing individuals as subjects with respect to an (imaginary) center,
always entails elements of misrecognition. In our case, the ideological center is formed by
a reified notion of language, by a mutually exclusive pure English or pure Afrikaans. At
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286 B. Busch
Riverside, children are addressed either as ‘Afrikaans speakers’ or as ‘English speakers’,
categories preestablished, for instance, by census, education and school language policies,
before they have conceived of themselves as such.
To conceive of language as split into bounded units is the product of an ideological
process (Blommaert 2006, 515) which reduces the complexity of heteroglossic life worlds.
The school language profiles aim at deconstructing the preconceived dichotomies – in
our case symbolically represented by Afrikaans or English – taking into consideration the
linguistic dispositions of the learners, which comprise not only different varieties but also
pragmatic knowledge, as well as desires and imaginations linked to language learning.
Thus, the language profile approach as developed in this paper understands and addresses
the learners as multilinguals.
Language portraits – multimodal biographic accounts
Three months after the start of the dual-medium program, we decided to organize a bilin-
gual workshop with 13- to 15-year-old students in order to explore their linguistic practices
and language attitudes. Students were asked to complete a language portrait by coloring in
a body silhouette, using different colors to represent different elements of their linguistic
dispositions. The drawings were used to elicit narratives on language practices. Learners
also responded to a questionnaire which, together with the portraits and narratives, estab-
lished a kind of personal language profile that addressed not only current language learning
and language use but also plans and aspirations for the future. The data collected in this
way was supplemented by group discussions with teachers and an analysis of the linguistic
landscape of the school described below. We turn first, however, to the language portraits.
Our multimodal approach develops the idea of language portraits originally employed
in language awareness exercises (Krumm and Jenkins 2001); we draw on a growing body of
work in social and cultural sciences that emphasizes the relevance of visual representations
in meaning-making processes in almost all domains of social life. The change in mode
of representation from the written or spoken word to the visual helps to shift the focus of
attention (Busch 2006). Processes that influence language use tend to operate unconsciously
and cannot easily be verbalized. The switch in mode of representation from word to image
helps to deconstruct internalized categories, to reflect upon embodied practices and to
generate narratives that are less bound to genre expecatations. While the logic of the word
is characterized by a time-bound linear sequence, visual representation is characterized by
space and simultaneity and requires attention to the ways in which the various components
of the picture relate to each other. Language portraits thus foreground the current situation
rather than emphasizing the path which has led to it.
The language portrait of Elaine (see Figure 1) is similar to a range of other portraits
drawn by her classmates. Her home languages are Afrikaans and English. Up to the start
of the 2006 school year, she had attended the English stream. Interpreting her drawing,
she reports speaking mainly English to her parents and siblings and Afrikaans to her
grandparents and some friends. While she thinks that English is her stronger language,
she claims Afrikaans to be her favorite language. In her language portrait, the brown color
representing Afrikaans fills the body. She comments, ‘[Brown] becaues it is a very nies
color and i love it and i am broun. Becaues God made me broun and i am bles of it’. Her
proud identification with Afrikaans and her interweaving of language and identity stand in
marked contrast to how she views English. In her portrait, English is located in her arms
and hands, because she sees this language as the tools she needs, in particular ‘to write my
assignments’. Elaine maps IsiZulu, brought into the family by her stepfather, onto the legs:
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Language and Education 287
Figure 1. Elaine’s language portrait.
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288 B. Busch
she feels that knowledge of an additional South African language will be useful in helping
her find a job. Her headspace (on the portrait) is taken up by ‘Bee-Bee’, the language of
rap music.
The ways in which the languages relate to each other and to the different body parts
and colors vary considerably from student to student. The silhouette possibly reinforces the
use of body metaphors in structuring narratives about linguistic practices and facilitates the
expression of emotions linked to language.
None of the drawings produced in workshops were monochrome, depicting monolin-
gualism; even those with only two colors are the exception rather than the rule. People
define for themselves which aspects of language use deserve a color of their own. In many
cases, the varieties portrayed are low status, marginalized or nonstandard, but emotionally
important means of expression closely linked with students’ linguistic identity. Needless to
say, language portraits allow speakers to attach positive value to these varieties. Often the
same variety was represented in different colors, relating to different functions, e.g. English
as a lingua franca and English for leisure time activities like music and film. Varieties with
high emotional value are often represented in bright colors, such as red and yellow; those
that only play a marginal role at the moment of the drawing tended to be depicted in pale
shades; and those with negative connotations were frequently represented in the ‘noncolor’
gray. While no universal meaning can be attached to a particular hue, color nonetheless
becomes a signifier, a bearer of meaning, in a particular situation and in association with
its cultural history (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001, 59).
Afrikaans or English: monolingualization through literacy learning
Language choice in responses to a bilingual questionnaire also offered interesting insights.
Twenty-one children chose to respond to this questionnaire in English, and 14 opted for
Afrikaans, but many mixed the two languages. Language choice corresponded roughly,
but not in all cases, to the division of the learners into the English and the Afrikaans
classes before the two streams were merged. The responses demonstrated that one cannot
simply divide the learners into Afrikaans speakers, English speakers and Afrikaans–English
bilinguals. Most children report using both languages with different generations of their
family and with their friends: Lizelle, for instance, said that she spoke mainly Afrikaans
with her friends and Afrikaans and English with her elders and her brothers and sisters; Kim
reported that she uses Afrikaans, English and sign language with her friends and Afrikaans
at home with family members.
Children were asked which language they mostly thought in when in class. While
we interpret their responses as an indication of their preferences rather than their actual
linguistic practices, there were some interesting apparent peculiarities. From the 21 English
responses to this question, three claimed to think in English and Afrikaans and three
expressed a preference for Afrikaans only. In a similar way, among those who responded in
Afrikaans, four claimed that they thought in both Afrikaans and English, and one in English
only. This paradox highlights the problems associated with classifying students according
to their ‘home languages’ or language streams.
Although the presence of English in the urban public space is overwhelming, it is
important to bear in mind that this does not reflect language preferences in daily life.
The 2001 census disclosed English to be only the third language after isiXhosa in the
Western Cape, where Afrikaans is the first language of most respondents. English cannot
be considered as a widespread lingua franca either. As the Pan South African Language
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Language and Education 289
Board survey (2000, cited in Deumert 2008, 73) shows, ‘more than 40% of the people in
South Africa often do not, or seldom, understand what is being communicated in English’.
Children had only positive things to say about English – in itself no surprise, given the
high status and prestige enjoyed by English in the wider society. Reflections include the
following:
English is the langu that I like most because it is a nice langu. It is esy to lerne and also fun to
learn.
English is my best, my friends are mostly English.
Om det is hull taal praat dan kan ek die vir staan.
[When they speak their language I can understand it.]
I would like to no English well so that I can camunicate well.
The fear expressed by the Riverside School management that learners from the former
English stream would experience Afrikaans as the language of learning and teaching as
an additional and unnecessary burden proved unfounded. On the contrary, the language
profiles confirmed that for many children who had formerly attended the English stream,
Afrikaans was the main home language, as teachers in the dual-medium classes had long
suspected. Only one girl who said she spoke Hindi within the family expressed a negative
attitude toward Afrikaans: ‘Im not interested in knowin it but I have to’. The importance of
Afrikaans was usually related to the immediate environment:
Ek hou van Afrikaans ondat meeste kinders in die omgewing Afrikaans is. Ek dink dis beter
vir my om dit te praat. Ek kan ok ander tale prat.
[I like Afrikaans because most of the children in the area are Afrikaans. I think it’s better for
me to speak it. I can also speak other languages.]
Surprisingly, among those who responded in English, several indicated that Afrikaans
was important for finding a job; one also noted, ‘Chines is cool, Afrikaans is also cool’.
The children’s positive attitudes came as a surprise to teachers who seem to have
internalized the double stigmatization attached to Afrikaans. On the one hand, the standard
variety is seen as the ‘language of the oppressor’ used to reinforce the racist agenda of
the white establishment. On the other hand, Afrikaans, as spoken in parts of Cape Town,
is generally stigmatized as ‘kombuis (kitchen) Afrikaans or die slang (the slang), i.e. not
a language but an informal disreputable mixture of terms’ (Stone 2002, 385). Kaaps, the
variety associated with the non-white working class, is still to a large extent ignored,
although it figures in some literary texts and in music (Kriel 2008). It was certainly the case
that some of the Riverside teachers expressed negative views, such as: ‘Most of the children
come out of the [Flats] – out of a certain area where the spoken language is more a slang –
there’s not the correct Afrikaans’. A type of reappropriation, however, appears to be taking
place in which Afrikaans – or at least certain varieties of Afrikaans – is being freed from
its negative image as the language of the oppressor and defined as an African language
(Wicomb 2001, 167–8). It was also the case that Riverside students expressed more positive
attitudes, as in the comment already quoted in which Afrikaans was associated with being
brown and proud.
Of the 35 language profiles from the dual-medium class, only two learners regarded
themselves as monolingual: one in Afrikaans, the other in English. The others viewed them-
selves as bilingual at the very least. Practically all learners felt comfortable in both languages
in oral communication (understanding and speaking). Not so for written communication
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290 B. Busch
(reading and writing), however. At the start of the year, most children in the English stream
experienced considerable difficulties in reading Afrikaans, while those in the Afrikaans
stream struggled with complex texts in English. One of the teachers confirmed:
The problem is that a lot of them can’t, man, a lot of the English children can’t read Afrikaans,
but they understand it if you speaking it to them, and same with the Afrikaans children – they
can’t read English . . . ja, a lot of them can’t read the other language.
The school compels parents and children to choose only one language for teaching
and learning. Because in many cases this will be the language of higher status – namely
English – children find themselves in a diglossic situation: one language is limited to oral
communication within the circle of family and friends, while another becomes the sole
language for use in ‘higher’ domains, i.e. those linked to print. Learning to read and write
is more than a mere technical skill. For students in the English stream, there is hardly
any exposure to the standard variety of Afrikaans associated with writing. This serves to
strengthen the assumption that English is, per se, the language of education and often goes
hand in hand with the devaluing of Afrikaans and the stereotyping of its speakers. The high
prestige of English leads parents to enroll their children in the English stream even if they
have only limited contact with English at home. One of the Riverside teachers explains how
problematic this can be:
Then I’ve got from the English [stream] children who I just speak Afrikaans with because the
Afrikaans is their home language. So this one girl in front said, now, yesterday, juffrou ek wil
nie meer in die Engelse klas wees [Teacher, I do not want to go to the English class ever again,
you know].
School thus functions as an ‘engine’ that reduces the linguistic complexity of students’
everyday lives and monolingualizes heteroglossic speakers by making them literate in a
language which is often, in Derrida’s words, ‘the language of the other’ (1996, 47).
The monolingual habitus of the multilingual school produces learners who are not
necessarily recognized as legitimate speakers of the language they learn for the purposes
of literacy. Educational discourse constructs and institutionalizes categories describing
children as learners of English as a second language or nonnative speakers; they are thus
defined in terms of a quality they lack. There is an obvious danger that students will begin
to perceive themselves as double semilinguals who have failed to ‘master’ any of their
languages ‘properly’.
Languages of imagination and desire
Almost half of the children in class mention isiXhosa and/or another African language
(isiZulu or Setswana) as playing a role in their lives, because they are present within the
family (e.g. stepfather, brother-in-law), within the community or because they aspire to
learn an African language:
Ek wou graag Xhosa meer leer ken omdat is iemand Xhosa praat dan verstan ek ook. En om
‘n werk te kry.
[I would really like to learn more Xhosa, because when someone speaks Xhosa, I will under-
stand. And to get work.]
Xhosa almal praat dit by ons huis en ek kan det nie praat nie.
[Everyone in our house speaks Xhosa and I cannot speak it.]
Im going to need to get a job one day.
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Language and Education 291
Immigration from the rural Eastern Cape has increased the importance of isiXhosa in
the Cape Town metropolitan area where, according to the 2001 census, it is the second
most commonly spoken language after Afrikaans. The strong interest in African languages,
however, came as a surprise to the school authorities. Linking African languages with
increasing opportunities in the labor market thus indicates that African languages have
gained considerably in prestige among this generation. Taking into consideration these
developments, it is obvious that isiXhosa should play a role in the language policy in this
school, perhaps in the form of a second additional language.
Another language that was also mentioned by almost half the children was Arabic. This
is less surprising, as many of them encounter Arabic through the mosque and in greetings.
But the interest in Arabic goes also beyond reciting and listening to the Qur’an. Statements
such as ‘Arabic, it’s cool’ or ‘I want to learn Arabic to make my life a success’ indicate its
high prestige, sometimes linked with positive attitudes toward Dubai and the Emirates.
French is mentioned by eight children as a language they would like to know. This
choice can probably be explained by the increasing number of people from Francophone
Central and West African countries that have settled in the area. Chinese is mentioned by
five children, possibly because of the considerable number of Chinese shops in the area
selling toys, clothes and other affordable ‘goodies’ at accessible prices. One of the girls
indicated in her language portrait that she speaks sign language with her brother; four other
students already know some signs and claim that they would like to learn more. Linguistic
encounters with the media are also evident in the children’s biographical accounts, from the
Spanish of the popular telenovelas (‘I love the way they speak there slang’) to the language
of text messages and Bee-Bee, the language of rap music. Students linked their attraction
to given languages with aspirations to travel or to particular lifestyles, or simply to the
promise of a better life.
Finally, a number of languages in the portraits play a role as family languages: ‘Hindi
is my faverite. Its culture and languages touches my heart’. Others figure as heritage
languages and as the focus of desire and imagination: ‘German because im german, my
momy is a German my all uncles and pa. I am going to germany [sic] when I am 17
years old with my family’. The figure of the (lost) heritage language that is mentioned in
several of the children’s language biographies under the label of German, Scottish [sic] or
Dutch corresponds to the topos that Derrida (1996, 118) describes as the invention of a
first language or rather an antecedent of the first language. The interest in these languages
cannot be explained simply as a ‘back to the roots’ phenomenon, but is rather a desire for
a third space (Bhabha 2005) beyond ethnonational categories. Applied to language, this
concept designates a space beyond languages as distinct and separated systems serving as
markers for ascribed unambiguous belongings.
Local language regimes: a topological approach
The learners’ language experiences are not the only source of data for a school language
profile. The resources and attitudes of other members of the school community – parents
and staff – are also important. The teachers’ linguistic repertoires and practices went well
beyond the competence acquired through formal language learning and teacher training.
These neglected resources have a potentially important role in the everyday life of the
school. Interviews with Riverside teachers revealed that – although all had been employed
to teach either in the Afrikaans or in the English stream – many felt confident to work in dual-
medium classrooms. While older teachers were often ambivalent about the use of vernacular
Afrikaans, younger teachers tended to consider it a valuable resource. Further, some teachers
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292 B. Busch
were competent in ‘foreign’ languages, such as French, an asset of considerable interest in
working with the growing numbers of students from a migrant background.
To explore the local language regime in and around the school, the biographic approach
described above was complemented by a topological approach also based on multimodal
data (Busch 2009). Understanding school as a nexus of practice (Scollon and Scollon 2004)
makes it possible to examine how linguistic dispositions are enacted in an institutional
setting. The ethnographic description of the school as a spatial entity can make apparent
linguistic hierarchies and power relations, as well as competing and subversive practices.
Involving students in taking photographs of the linguistic landscape (Shohamy and Gorter
2009), including both official notices and posters and also graffiti and writing on walls and
desks, can be an interesting language awareness activity. Similarly, observation of linguistic
practices encompassed communication during break times, with the parents and with the
school authorities, as well as teaching and learning. The exploration of the local language
regime questions tacit routines and can be the beginning of the negotiation of a school
language policy understood as an ongoing process.
The Riverside analysis confirmed the predominant status of English in the current South
African school system. The school administration was completely anglicized: English was
the preferred language in matters such as correspondence with the Department of Education,
drafting lesson plans for the attention of curriculum advisors, writing reports and answering
telephone calls. Even in the Afrikaans stream, the authoritative discourse of timetables,
inventories and school rules was presented only in English. In the bilingual Afrikaans–
English stream, most of the new and colorful posters related to actual learning areas were in
English; the few in Afrikaans were mainly homemade. Examining the inventory of books
in the school library and the stock of teaching and learning material showed that the present
language hierarchy was superimposed on a previous one enforced by the apartheid regime
in which pure, ‘suiwer’ Afrikaans and English figured as the languages of the (white) ruling
class. Materials from the apartheid period with their overtly racializing discourse were still
in use in some of the classrooms.
Discussion and conclusions
The merging of the Afrikaans and English streams had initially been more an emergency
measure to counteract the growing polarization between learners. However, the language
biography workshop with the learners, the group discussion and interviews with teachers
and the exploration of the linguistic practices and environment which made linguistic
hierarchies visible all contributed to raising understanding and awareness of the dual-
medium approach. It opened up debates on how dual-medium teaching practice can be
implemented in a structured and conscious way and on the possibility of introducing
isiXhosa as an additional subject in the school curriculum. Teachers’ observations suggested
that communication among learners during leisure time had significantly increased within
six months of the merger:
It was amazing to see how, by June, they were already interacting with each other, making
jokes with each other, socializing so nicely – and that whole barrier of language, it wasn’t there
any more. The other good thing is you’ll find now that they’ll try and talk to each other in their
language.
What was especially striking in the example of the Cape Town school was that learners
who enter school with multilingual repertoires and desires corresponding to their heteroglos-
sic life worlds are within the education system reduced to an either–or monolingualism – in
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Language and Education 293
the case discussed above, either to English or to Afrikaans. Learners are identified as mother
tongue speakers of either the one or the other language. Failing to recognize the learners as
multilingual subjects and to valorize their linguistic dispositions in a comprehensive way,
this identification is per se a misidentification and leads to a reduction of complexity. In the
context of the South African education system, the mismatch between their heteroglossic
environments and the monolingualizing school practices is reinforced by the tendency of
parents to enroll their children in English-medium schools and streams. Literacy learning
through the language of the other, becoming literate in a standard language which is not
considered as theirs, defines learners as deficient according to a norm which is by defi-
nition an unattainable ideal. Internalizing ascriptions that draw attention to what learners
lack inevitably has negative implications for students’ self-concept. However, the damage
inflicted by categorization according to the ascribed mother tongues can – as the experience
of Riverside shows – be reversed when these categories are deconstructed.
This speaker-centered approach to school language policy understands school as a
location, as a nexus of practice, where heteroglossic practices intersect. These practices
comprise, in the Bakhtinian sense, a plurality of individual voices expressing personal
experiences and desires, the diversity of codes, languages and registers present in the lo-
cal environment and finally a copresence of competing discourses on language and, more
particularly, on language in education. A speaker-centered school language policy aims at
acknowledging, making visible and valorizing the heteroglossic resources present within
the school community; at developing strategies which guarantee comprehension and mutual
understanding; and at enabling learners to make themselves heard. The valorizing of the
heteroglossic practices has the effect of raising understanding and awareness of the dual-
medium approach and points to ways in which the principles of linguistic equality laid out
in the South African constitution can be implemented at the level of school and classroom.
Notes
1. The multimodal biographic approach presented here is being further developed at the research
group ‘Spracherleben’ at the University of Vienna. See www.cis.or.at.
2. This paper is based on data deriving from a study of bilingual education in South Africa,
coordinated by PRAESA (University of Cape Town). I wish to thank the PRAESA staff –
especially Daryl Braam, with whom I jointly gathered the data on which this paper is based. The
names of the school and the learners have been changed.
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