| dc.description.abstract | South Africa’s National Language Policy Framework was formulated in 2003. The framework
was designed to create an enabling environment for the development of instruments and
initiatives intended to promote multilingualism in the country. Following the formulation of
the National Language Policy Framework, National Parliament, in collaboration with the
Western Cape and the Eastern Cape Legislatures, commissioned a project of developing a
Terminology List of terminology that is used in these settings. This Terminology List was taken
over and expanded in 2005. According to the Terminology List’s preface, “stakeholders
embarked on the enlarged terminology project in order to ensure that multilingualism was
possible in this field. The Multilingual Parliamentary/Political Terminology List will promote
multilingualism in Parliament and elsewhere, and will facilitate effective communication
between parliamentarians, politicians, national and provincial language offices, provincial
legislatures and Hansard offices” (DAC (2005: iii-iv). With perhaps one exception
(Rondganger, 2012) focusing on the English-Afrikaans language pair, there are no known
studies evaluating the Multilingual Parliamentary/Political Terminology List. As a result, it is
not known to what extent envisaged target users (e.g. language practitioners) in National and
Provincial Legislatures are even aware of its existence. It is also not known to what extent the
terminology resource is able to support target users in the typical usage situations envisaged in
the preface. More generally, there has also been no determination of how the Multilingual
Parliamentary/Political Terminology List has contributed to language development,
specifically, making possible the use of the nine indigenous African languages for
parliamentary-related discourse. As a consequence of the above dearth of knowledge around
the Multilingual Parliamentary/Political Terminology List, there also is no empirical database
upon which suggestions can be made for improving it; that is, responding to the call in the
preface for suggestions: “the compilers acknowledge that it might be useful to expand the
collection, and any suggestions in this regard will be welcomed” (DAC (2005: iv). This
research draws on the sociology of dictionary use (Kühn 1989, Flinz 2010) and on a
knowledge-attitude-practice (KAP) approach to terminology evaluation (Antia 2000, Antia &
Clas 2003; Rubin 1977, Kummer 1983) to analyse the Multilingual Parliamentary
Terminology List. | en_US |
