Overview

English is a global language which has spread historically through imperialism and more recently through communication networks throughout the world. In each location in which English is spoken it absorbs some of the idiosyncracies of the language native to that region, and one of the most fascinating areas of research for World Englishes is the African context. This research monograph examines English as it is spoken in South Africa, and is based primarily on an extensive spoken corpus of Xhosa English. Vivian de Klerk presents a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the historical development of this language, and of English in South Africa more generally. The book outlines how the corpus of spoken language was designed and built, and discusses the criteria relating to informants, spoken categories, codes and transcription conventions. The syntactic, phonological and pragmatic features of Xhosa English as demonstrated by the corpus are described in detail, and two chapters focus on discourse markers such as 'actually' and 'well'. The second section of this book examines the sociolinguistic implications of the corpus findings. Vivian de Klerk looks at language in educational, legal, social, cultural and everyday contexts. The final chapter of the book speculates as to the future of this fascinating variety of English in a globalised world. This cutting-edge study will be of interest to researchers in world Englishes, language variation and corpus linguistics.

Full Product Details

Author:   Vivian de Klerk
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd.
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.50cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.540kg
ISBN:  

9780826488411

ISBN 10:   0826488412
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   20 November 2006
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Language:   English

Table of Contents

Introduction SECTION A: THE CONTEXT 1: Xhosa English as a World English 2: The need for norms: building a spoken corpus 3: The structure of the Xhosa English corpus SECTION B: CORPUS STUDIES & SOCIOLINGUISTIC INSIGHTS 4: Topic choices and lexical characteristics 5: The role of APPRAISAL resources in discussing AIDS 6: Formulaic utterances 7: Codeswitching in the corpus 8: Informal conversation versus legal discourse SECTION C: CORPUS STUDIES & LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION 9: The syntactic features of Xhosa English Chapter 10: The use of discourse markers: the case of 'actually' 11: Procedural meanings of 'well' in the corpus. 12: Expressing levels of intensity in Xhosa English SECTION D: OVERVIEW 13: The future of Xhosa English: Social and Educational issues References Index

Reviews

mention- Book News Inc./ August 2007

In sum, de Klerk documents two important steps towards proving that Xhosa English is one of the world Englishes: the creation of a corpus, and the proof that it differs from other varieties of English, based on an analysis of this corpus -Anthropological Linguistics

Author Information

Professor Vivian de Klerk is the Head of the Department of English Language and Linguistics at Rhodes University, South Africa. She is the editor of Focus on English in Southern Africa, John Benjamins: 1996.

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