Metaphor in South African tsotsitaal

Authors

  • Ellen Hurst University of Cape Town Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v10i1-2.27922

Keywords:

youth language, African languages, metaphor, antilanguage, Tsotsitaal, South Africa

Abstract

Halliday’s concept of ‘anti-language’ has been applied to a number of African Urban Youth Languages (AUYLs) in recent literature. Halliday described the concept of antilanguage as a language generated by an ‘anti-society’ which is set up as a conscious alternative to established societal norms. Anti-language, then, is a conscious alternative to the language of the wider society and it distinguishes itself primarily through relexicalization (the principle of same grammar, different vocabulary) and metaphor. Halliday states that in an anti-language, metaphor goes ‘all the way up and down the system’ – that an anti-society is a metaphorical variant of society, an anti-language is a metaphor for an everyday language, and the language itself employs metaphorical variants to distinguish it, including phonological metaphors, grammatical metaphors (morphological, lexical, and syntactic) and semantic metaphors. This article presents natural speech data from a multi-sited research project in South Africa, in order to analyze the use of metaphor in tsotsitaal – the South African AUYL used amongst peers in South Africa’s townships. The analysis considers how metaphor is used at three different levels – the level of lexical items; phrases; and social structure. Processes of innovation and creativity will be described, and the article will evaluate the use of the term anti-language to describe tsotsitaal (and, by implication, other AUYLs). The ?ndings suggest that the term is a useful one to understand the metaphorical processes in AUYLs, but that it needs to be cautiously applied.

Author Biography

  • Ellen Hurst, University of Cape Town
    Ellen Hurst is currently employed in the Humanities Education Development Unit at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where she teaches courses on critical analysis and argument, discourse, and genre. Her primary research interests include multilingualism and style in African languages, with a special focus on: youth and urban varieties; language and migration; language and globalization; and language and higher education. In 2014 she edited a special issue of Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 32(2), entitled ‘Tsotsitaal studies: Urban youth language practices in South Africa’. Previous publications include ‘Slang registers, code-switching and restructured urban varieties in South Africa: An analytic overview of tsotsitaals with special reference to the Cape Town variety’ (with Rajend Mesthrie), Journal of Pidgin & Creole Languages 28(1), and ‘Tsotsitaal, global culture and local style: Identity and recontextualisation in twenty-first century South African townships’, Social Dynamics 35(2).

Published

2016-06-04

How to Cite

Hurst, E. (2016). Metaphor in South African tsotsitaal. Sociolinguistic Studies, 10(1-2), 153–175. https://doi.org/10.1558/sols.v10i1-2.27922