An assessment of high school pupils' attitudes towards the pronunciation of black South African English

Abstract

South African English (SAE) represents a conglomerate of many different varieties, which used to be identified by ethnic labeling. One such variety is Black South African English (BSAE), the English of English second language speakers whose first languages are Bantu languages. It used to be looked at as a minor second language variety, deviating from the norm, usually difficult to comprehend and generally unimportant. This point of view has changed since the democratisation of South Africa, reflecting the immense socio-political changes (Smit & Wissing, 2000: 1 0). Closer contact between people from various cultures caused a decline in the prescriptive concern for (linguistic) correctness and the stigma associated with the non-standard varieties in the past has been replaced by growing confidence in BSAE (De Klerk & Gough: to appear). The role ofBSAE has undergone dramatic changes since the democratic elections in 1994, but the question is whether the attitudes of South Africans towards BSAE have changed for the better, or not. The focus of this study is the attitudes of speakers from different home language backgrounds towards BSAE. Are there differences in attitude even after the so-called democratisation of the country, and are these differences based on linguistic deviations ofBSAE from the norm, or are they based on the skin colour or race of the speaker? Pupils from Sotho, English and Afrikaans first language backgrounds were asked to rate four speakers objectively on a personality questionnaire. The four speech samples represented a basilect, a mesolect and an acrolect ofBSAE, with standard white SAE as the controlling factor. Both video input and sound input were used in order to establish whether the sight of a black/white speaker influences a person's evaluation ofBSAE/SAE. The results of the video input revealed that the Sotho pupils, as well as the English pupils, rated acrolectal BSAE the highest. The Afrikaans pupils showed a preference for standard white SAE. The Sotho pupils elevated the status of mesolectal BSAE by rating this speaker very similar to the standard white SAE speaker. This seems to reflect a newfound pride in the English language of their own kind. The results of the sound input revealed that the Sotho pupils, as was the case with the video input, showed a preference for acrolectal BSAE, while the English and Afrikaans pupils all rated the • standard white SAE speaker the highest. The responses of the Sotho pupils in both the video and the sound input reflect cultural loyalty and can probably be ascribed to their identification with the acrolectal speaker as their role model. The English pupils in the sound input test rated the mesolectal BSAE speaker higher than the acrolectal BSAE speaker, which seems to indicate that they were unable to distinguish between the two accents and merely rated them lower than the standard white SAE because of stereotypical notions about BSAE. The results indicated that pupils from all three language groups were, to some extent, guilty of racist judgements in evaluating SAE. The Sotho pupils consistently rated acrolectal BSAE the highest; the Afrikaans pupils did the same with standard white SAE. The English pupils preferred BSAE in the video input, but supported standard white SAE in the sound input. This seems to indicate that some of them have, to a certain extent, become more lenient and less critical towards BSAE. It became quite evident from this study that BSAE is evaluated most positively among black speakers, and in certain cases, also among white SAE speakers.