Part of
Social Lives in Language – Sociolinguistics and multilingual speech communities: Celebrating the work of Gillian SankoffEdited by Miriam Meyerhoff and Naomi Nagy
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 24] 2008
► pp. 95–109
Edited by Miriam Meyerhoff and Naomi Nagy
[IMPACT: Studies in Language, Culture and Society 24] 2008
► pp. 95–109
"I've been speaking Tsotsitaal all my life without knowing it": Towards a unified account of tsotsitaals in South Africa.
This chapter focuses on varieties that flourish in South African townships with names like Tsotsitaal, Flaaitaal, Iscamtho, Gamtaal etc. Some speakers and scholars argue that these are new languages arising out of urbanisation and underworld culture in multilingual settings. This chapter examines the extent of overlap in names and defining characteristics of these varieties. It concludes that we may possibly be dealing with just one phenomenon: essentially a set of lexical items associated with gang and prison culture at one end and that of youth culture at the other, which is attached to the syntax of previously existing languages. Evidence for this claim comes from unearthing a similar variety that uses English as its base language.
Cited by
Cited by 27 other publications
Avera, Emily
2023. “Blood Has No Colour”: Racialized Donor In/Ex-clusion in the South African National Blood Service. Medical Anthropology 42:3 ► pp. 207 ff. 
Beck, Rose Marie
2010. Urban Languages in Africa. Africa Spectrum 45:3 ► pp. 11 ff.
Beyer, Klaus
2014. Urban language research in South Africa: achievements and challenges. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 32:2 ► pp. 247 ff.
Botha, Werner, Bertus van Rooy & Susan Coetzee‐van Rooy
2021. South African Englishes: A contemporary bibliography. World Englishes 40:1 ► pp. 136 ff.
Brookes, Heather
2019. Youth Language in South Africa: The Role of English in South AfricanTsotsitaals. In English in Multilingual South Africa, ► pp. 176 ff.
Brookes, Heather
2021. Rethinking Youth Language Practices in South Africa:. In Youth Language Practices and Urban Language Contact in Africa, ► pp. 66 ff.
Brookes, Heather & Tshepiso Lekgoro
2014. A social history of urban male youth varieties in Stirtonville and Vosloorus, South Africa. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 32:2 ► pp. 149 ff.
Cowie, Claire
2023. Interview with Rajend Mesthrie. Journal of English Linguistics 51:4 ► pp. 405 ff.
Cecelia Cutler & Unn Røyneland
2018. Multilingual Youth Practices in Computer Mediated Communication,
Dixon, Kerryn & Belinda Mendelowitz
2016. Giving Voice to the Citizen Scholar: Generating Critical Thinking by Combining Traditional and Non-Traditional Genres in a First-Year English Course. In Universities, the Citizen Scholar and the Future of Higher Education, ► pp. 85 ff.
Gumede, Zempilo Silindokuhle, Linda van Huyssteen & Thabo Ditsele
2021. A morphological and lexical analysis of Mandeni urban vernacular. South African Journal of African Languages 41:1 ► pp. 105 ff.
Gunnink, Hilde
2014. The grammatical structure of Sowetan tsotsitaal. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 32:2 ► pp. 161 ff.
Hurst, Ellen
2014. Preface. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 32:2 ► pp. iii ff.
Hurst, Ellen & Mthuli Buthelezi
2014. A visual and linguistic comparison of features of Durban and Cape Town tsotsitaal. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 32:2 ► pp. 185 ff.
Hurst-Harosh, Ellen
2019. Tsotsitaal and decoloniality. African Studies 78:1 ► pp. 112 ff.
Hurst-Harosh, Ellen & Fridah Erastus Kanana
2020. Metaphors and their link to generational peer groups and popular culture in African youth languages. Linguistics Vanguard 6:s4
Isiaka, Adeiza
2020. A Tale of Many Tongues: Towards Conceptualising Nigerian Youth Languages. Language Matters 51:2 ► pp. 68 ff.
Kębłowska-Ławniczak, Ewa
2017. Fear of Multilingualism and the Uses of Nostalgia in Ivan Vladislavić’s The Restless Supermarket. In Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self: Literature and Culture Studies [Second Language Learning and Teaching, ], ► pp. 3 ff.
Makukule, Idah & Heather Brookes
2021. English in the identity practices of black male township youth in South Africa. World Englishes 40:1 ► pp. 52 ff.
Maribe, Tebogo & Heather Brookes
2014. Male youth talk in the construction of black lesbian identities. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 32:2 ► pp. 199 ff.
Mesthrie, Rajend
2014. English tsotsitaals? − an analysis of two written texts in Surfspeak and South African Indian English slang. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 32:2 ► pp. 173 ff.
Mesthrie, Rajend & Lulu Mfazwe-Mojapelo
2023. Speaking Xhosa multilingually. Language Dynamics and Change 14:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Ravyse, Natasha
2018. Against All Odds: The Survival of Fanagalo in South African Mines. Language Matters 49:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Simango, Silvester Ron
2019. English Prepositions in isiXhosa Spaces: Evidence from Code-Switching. In English in Multilingual South Africa, ► pp. 310 ff.
Stell, Gerald
2020. Urban Youth Style or Emergent Urban Vernacular? The Rise of Namibia's Kasietaal. Language Matters 51:2 ► pp. 49 ff.
Stell, Gerald
2022. Ethnicity and codeswitching. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 477 ff.
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 18 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.