Multilingualism in late-modern Cape Town: a focus on popular spaces of hip-hop and tshisa-nyama

Abstract

In highly mobile societies, the voice and agency of speakers will differ across contexts depending on the linking of forms and functions. This thesis is thus about the complexities introduced to the notion of (form-function linkages) multilingualism in late-modern globalizing and mobile Cape Town in transition. Essentially, it takes its point of departure in the idea that multilingualism is a 'spatial concept', i.e. the form that interacting languages take, how they are practiced by speakers, and how multilingualism is perceived, is determined to a large extent by the affordances of particular 'places'. To research this, I postulate that a major parameter in the organization and differentiation of places is that of scale. The thesis studies two research sites that can be considered as diametrical opposites on a scale from local (descaled) to translocal (upscaled), namely Hip-Hop performances at Stones, Kuilsriver, and Mzoli's Meat at Gugulethu. Although both sites are found in local townships, they differ in terms of their basic semiotics. That is to say, to what extent the interactions, physical spaces, and activities, are infused with local meaning and local values (downscaled in the case of Hip-Hop) - granted this may be a problematic concept - and to what extent the semiotics of place are oriented towards upscaling or transnational values and practices (upscaled in the case of Mzoli's Meat). Each of these sites is characterized in terms of the assemblage of trans modal semiotics that contribute to defining it as a place of descaling and upscaling (buildings, linguistic landscapes, patterns of interaction and movement and posture, stylizations of selves, artifactual identities (car makes, et cetera). We find that the Hip-Hop site is 'predominantly' local in branding, in who participates, and in the linguistic landscape and the aesthetics of photographic embroidery. Mzoli's Meat, on the other hand, with its ATMs, sit-down-for-tourist-spaces, and international website, is very much more upscaled.