Abstract
This article reports on multilingual adolescent youth’s negotiation of identities in a languaging South African environment. Focus group dialogues of 17 Grade 11 multilingual students from the South Western Townships (Soweto) in Johannesburg were analysed using conversational analysis techniques from a selected data pool that was generated over a period of three hours. The results of the study show a rift between classroom language and out of school language practices. We demonstrate that (i) the Soweto youth have a wide range of linguistic flexibility that indexes the new socio-linguistic status of South Africa in the post independent era and (ii) that monolingual classroom language are no longer adequate spaces for creativity and plural identity formation. Adopting a mathematical reasoning of approximates, rather than fixed sets, we coin the concept “fuzzy languaging logic” to argue that indigenous African languages are embedded in one another and that the respondents use this hybrid language space to identify and ethnify – choosing who they want to become beyond traditional linguistic and exact ethnic affiliations. Considerations for language in motion and social change as key features of globalization are made at the end of the article.
Acknowledgement
We thank the two anonymous reviewers for the feedback and valuable insights that helped refine the article.
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