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Programme: accepted abstracts

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Abstract ID: 704

Part of Session 123: Non-standard and youth varieties in urban Africa (Other abstracts in this session)

Acquisition and Use of non-standard urban variety in Africa: Iscamtho among young children in Soweto.

Authors: Aycard, Pierre
Submitted by: Aycard, Pierre (University of Cape Town, South Africa)

Soweto is the biggest African location around Johannesburg, and it is characterised by a strong multilingualism; a deep urbanization of languages; and two informal codes in its history, Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho. This paper will present the first results of an on-going Ph.D research after 18 months. The research relies solely on naturalistic data, gathered with an audio recorder from children between 3 and 10. The analysis wills overview about 60 hours of recordings with a dozen children.

Slabbert & Myers-Scotton (1996) states that Iscamtho is 'generally used by males in informal in-group conversations, and the meanings [it] convey[s] [is] often not obvious to outsiders'. More recently, Hurst (2008) analysed Tsotsitaal in Cape Town as a stylect, that is 'a lexicon (lect) inseparable from a discursive practice (style) which results in the construction of a relatively stable linguistic identity', that conveys urban male style and identity.

My hypothesis is that Iscamtho has been used in households for several decades; that it is part of the native code of children in White City Jabavu; and that some use it as a primary language. The paper will first establish what distinguishes Iscamtho from urban Zulu from a linguistic perspective. It will then focus on three aspects of the use of Iscamtho by children:

1) Who speaks Iscamtho to them? Who do they learn it from? When do they learn it?

2) What proportion of children use Iscamtho? What proportion of their language can be considered Iscamtho? Is this part of the language received differently by familial, social or institutional authorities?

3) How do children use Iscamtho? Who do they speak it with? Do adults transmit and tolerate Iscamtho differently with girls than with boys?

My M.Phil research (Aycard 2008) established how sociohistorical conditions in White City allowed Iscamtho to penetrate social and private life deeper than in other parts of Soweto. This translates in the speech of young children: they can use words recognized as Iscamtho by at least part of their community, or recognized as Iscamtho by other communities, without the word carrying any stigma of slang or improper language; they can also copy the stylistic speech of older speakers from a very early age, and have an extensive command of Iscamtho before they develop actual strategies of style.

If the data confirms the native status of Iscamtho, at least as part of the natural repertoire of children in White City, it will tremendously shake the previous perspective on tsotsitaals in South Africa, and on other non-standard urban languages in Africa whose pattern of development is similar to Iscamtho's.

References:

Aycard, P. (2008). 'Speak as you wan to speak: just be free!', a linguistic anthropological monograph of first language Iscamtho-speaking youth in White City, Soweto. Thesis (M.Phil), African Studies Center, University of Leiden, Netherlands.

Hurst, E., 2008. Style structure and function in Cape Town Tsotsitaal. Thesis (PhD). University of Cape Town.

Slabbert, S. and Myers-Scotton, C., 1997. The structure of Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho: code switching and in-group identity in South African townships. Linguistics, 35 (2), 317–342.