Historical Sociolinguistics in a

Colonial World, Resounding

Silences

Ana Deumert

University of Cape Town

ana.deumert@gmail.com

Outline

• Linguistic ideologies and the process of „erasure‟

• Example 1: Cape Dutch

• Example 2: KicheDuits

Linguistic ideologies

• „Linguistic ideologies are held not only by the immediateparticipants in a local sociolinguistic system. They are also held byother observers, such as the linguists and ethnographers whohave mapped the boundaries of languages and people and provideddescriptive accounts of them ... There is no “view fromnowhere”, no gaze that is not positioned. Of course it isalways easier to detect positioning in the views of others, such as thelinguists and ethnographers of an earlier era, than one‟s own.‟(Irvine & Gal, Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation,2000)

Silences• At times history writing consciously and unconsciously ignores

particular individuals or peoples, institutions, places,events, and sources. Additionally, it often glosses over specificdiscourses, narratives, and practices.

A related concept: erasure

• Linguistic ideologies are intimately connected to semiotic process of„erasure‟, i.e. the simplification of complex sociolinguistic fields byemphasizing certain dimensions of distinctiveness and byignoring others. Thus, rendering some speakers (and theirlanguages, linguistic varieties) invisible (Gal & Irvine, LanguageIdeologies and Linguistic Differentiation, 2000).

▫ „Facts that are inconsistent with the ideological scheme either gounnoticed or get explained away. So, for example, a linguistic group maybe imagined as homogenous, its internal variation disregarded.‟

Two examples

• Cape Dutch/ Afrikaans in South Africa

• KicheDuitsin Namibia

Afrikaans: die Witmanstaal

• Silencing those who participated in the genesis of the language, e.g.Khoisan speakers.

▫ „Die staaltjies van Khoi-Khoin se pidgin-Nederlands ... leeronsnieveelomtrent die wording van Afrikaans nie want ons het het hierbyna uitsluitend met gebroke taal te make wat nóg met Nederlands nógmet Afrikaans verband hou‟ (Raidt , Afrikaans en sy Europese Verlede,1991: 127)

• Yet: nie-2, periphrastic possessive (Jan se fiets), associative plural(pa-hulle)

• Valkhoff (Linguistic of Afrikaans, 1971) termed thisalbocentrism.

Diglossia? Silencing variation

• „In the written language women consistently used the personalpronoun ik (following the Dutch spelling) and wij for the plural,instead of ek and ons as spoken by them‟ (Raidt, Women in theHistory of Afrikaans, 1995: 134)

• But, was the society at the Cape actually diglossic?

• And why does it matter?

Interpreting the evidence

WaardeMev.

In antwoord op u advertensie in de Burger van 28ste dezer, wil ik my aanbevelen voor die betrekking maar ik sou garne eerst de antwoorden van de volgende vragen hebben.

(a) Hoe lang u plan is om die aplikante te hou wat aangeneemword.

(b) Of u ver van het spoorwegstasie is, naam van stasie en hoe ver het postkantoor is van u huis is?

(c) Wanneer applikante in dienst moet treden?

(d) Of er vry logies gegeven wordt

(e) Of er „n deel van het reiskaartje betaal word

(f) Wat u voorneme is applikantete betalen indien sy goed werk levert.

Ik ben een liefhebster van naaldwerk en ook van kinderen. ...

De Uwe

Mej. Anna Moelich (March 1922)

The conventional model

Seventeenth century Dutch dialects (regional & social) 1652

Cape Dutch Vernacular 1700

(internal language change, accelerated by language contact;

dialect mixture)

Afrikaans 1775

Is Diglossia a likely scenario?

• Roger Wright (The Conceptual Distinction between Latin andRomance, 1991) writing about the relationship between Latin andProto-Romance (which had traditionally been described as„diglossic‟)

▫ „[S]ystems of diglossia need not only be intentionally set up, but alsoto be continually reinforced subsequently – mainly by teaching theHigh variety in the education system – in order to arise at all, and donot arise naturally otherwise. What exists otherwise, and do indeedevolve unplanned, in a single wide speech community, are complexpatterns of sociolinguistic variation.

What was education like?

• Basic literacy at the Cape: protestant religious instruction;

• The ability to sign one‟s name, to „read‟ the Bible, and to recite thearticles of faith was a prerequisite for church membership

Public school system• A public school system was only established under British rule

(mid-nineteenth century);

• Racially segregated from its inception: public schools of Whites,mission schools for Blacks

• School attendance at all schools was highly irregular and resultswere poor:

▫ „In a large, by far the largest number of schools it would be an absolutewaste of time to examine the pupils in detail, so very elementarywere their attainments and so inferior was the quality ofinstruction imparted.‟ (Donald Ross 1883: 4)

• Improvements only in the late 1890s.

Book ownership?

• 1 (cheap) book = five pounds of bread, two pounds of meat or halfa gallon of wine;

• No popular street literature (as in England and North America,„penny dreadfuls‟, „shilling shockers‟);

• Newspapers existed, but they were rather „serious‟.

But everyone had a bible!?

• „The two men who lived there were father & son – and his name wasMaretts ... We gave him some tracts which he received with greatpleasure – observing this we asked if he had a bible, hefeelingly answered no, and that when he was last at the Capeabout two years ago he was about purchasing a bible, but he foundhe had not as many dollars with him as would pay for it.‟ (1819,John Campell‟s, London Missionary Society, visit to Swellendam)

Thus ...

• We are looking at what has been referred to as „minimally‟ or„intermediary‟ schooled writers (Fairman, Riting these fu lines,2000);

• Texts reflect various (written) language competencies;

• Limited and variable exposure to standard norms;

• Private, informal letters are the closest the language historian has tosomething which approaches „utterance tokens‟ (Lass, Texts asLinguistic Objects, 2004);

• Corpus of Cape Dutch Correspondence (Lecture 3).

Metalinguistic commentary

• Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (1875)

▫ Extensive differences between spoken and written language

▫ Written language is Dutch, spoken language Afrikaans

• Other commentators

▫ Not actually extensive grammatical differences, more a question ofstyle ( what is needed is simplified Dutch, not „GRA-Afrikaans‟, 1875)

▫ Dimensions of social stratification: „better class ... speak[s] HighDutch in a slightly modified form ... defective High Dutch ... it is only inthe lowest, the altogether uneducated classes, that the loss of inflectionbecomes generally perceptible‟ (beskaaftKaapsHollandsvs. platKaapsHollands, 1880);

▫ A complex variation space: „the most puzzling feature of this patois isfound in the shades or types of vernacular which are encountered‟ (1906)

‘N Tussentaalvorm

• Melt Brink (1842-1925)

▫ „Ik heb mij, wat de taal betreft, zoo veel mij zulks mogelijk was, aan de midden weg tussen goed Hollands and Patriots gehoude. De eerste omdat ik denk dat deze voor velen gemakkelijker zal lezen, en ten tweede omdat ik het Patriots te overdreven acht, wij spreken zo nietonder ons. Ik heb het Kaaps-Hollands, zoals wij het gewoonlikspreken,gevolgd‟ (1914)

• „Patriots Taal‟

▫ Loss of case and gender, loss of verbal inflection, double negation, a pronoun system different from Dutch;

▫ Highly uniform and regularized;

▫ Kaaps-Hollands was described as a language with gen kop of stert („neither head nor tail‟, Afrikaanse Patriot 1891)

And again ... what does it mean?

WaardeMev.

In antwoord op u advertensie in de Burger van 28ste dezer, wil ik my aanbevelen voor die betrekking maar ik sou garne eerst de antwoorden van de volgende vragen hebben.

(a) Hoe lang u plan is om die aplikante te hou wat aangeneem word.

(b) Of u ver van het spoorweg stasie is, naam van stasie en hoe ver het postkantoor is van u huis is?

(c) Wanneer applikante in dienst moet treden?

(d) Of er vry logies gegeven wordt

(e) Of er „n deel van het reiskaartje betaal word

(f) Wat u voorneme is applikantete betalen indien sy goed werk levert.

Ik ben eenliefhebster van naaldwerk en ook van kinderen. ...

De Uwe

Mej. Anna Moelich (March 1922)

Namibian Kiche Duits • Peter Mühlhäusler (Tracing the Roots of Pidgin German, 1984)

▫ „The data collection of overseas varieties of pidginized and creolizedforms of German is still in its infancy. Some fieldwork could still becarried out but time for linguistic rescue work is running out rapidly‟

Namibia Tanzania

Cameroon

Togo

China

PNG, Samoa,

etc.

Silences again

• „Who are the “Germans” in Namibia? Those Namibians whospeak German as their mother tongue? Those who have Germanancestry, or only those with German ancestry and white skin?Or does this include everyone who, because of their own wish or ourhistory, adopted German? The author [Wentenschuh] refers toBlack Namibians of German ancestry only once. This issignificant as it is (almost) a continuation of an old habit toignore their existence. However, we must applaud him formentioning them at all.‟ (Nora Schimming-Chase, Namibia’sGermans (epilogue), 1995)

Blind spots?

• Linguists have argued that the German settlement had little impact on local linguistic repertoires:

▫ Maho (Few People, Many Languages, 1998): „the German language does not seem to have spread much outside of the German population‟

• German-speaking Namibians too were often ignorant of the linguistic proficiencies of their employees: ja, ein paar deutsche Worte („yes, a few German words‟), nur ganz wenig („just a little bit‟).

The motivation

FLASH I

As I gather my lecture notes a student approaches me: “I didn‟t know you speak German? My grandparents also speak German.” I look at him with surprise, we have talked before, his family is from Namibia, their home language is Khoekhoegowab. “They speak German?,” I ask. He laughs: “Yes. When they don‟t want me to hear what they are saying. And also when they drink too much, then they always talk a lot of German!”

Historical overview

• European colonization began in the 19th century (missionaries and traders, 1878, British annexed Walvis Bay);

• 1884, German Schutzgebiet;

• 1904 to 1908, Herero-German war

▫ 80% of Ovaherero and between 35-50% of Oorlam and Namadama died in the war;

▫ Today considered a case of genocide (a hesitant apology was issued by Germany in 2004);

• 1920, administered as C-class mandate by South Africa;

• 1960, SWAPO (South West African People‟s Organization);

• 1966, begin of guerrilla warfare against South Africa

• 1990, independence (after 27 years of German rule and 70 years of South African occupation)

Matrilectal German in Namibia

• German settlers arrived from the 1890s onwards;

• Origin: mostly East Low German dialect area;

• Came from the social and economic fringe of German society (Deutsche Kolonialzeitung 1890);

• Population grew consistently from just over 300 Germans in 1891 to over 12.000 in 1913;

• The majority of German settlers stayed after 1920;

• German-medium schools continued to exist and German could be used in dealings with the new administration;

• 1984, German was officially recognized as third official language;

• German-speaking population in 2001 (census): just under 20.000(total population: 1.8 million, i.e. 1.1%).

A highly visible minority language

• „Although Germans as a whole constitute only a third of the [White] population, they are as individuals very active and enterprising and occupy positions of economic and social influence in their respective communities out of proportion of their numbers …Thus it is that (except for the American motor cars everywhere) the general impression given by South West African towns is that they are German settlements. The streets have German names, and are lined with German shops and stores. The hotels and pensions are German and serve German food and in the cafes German beer (locally brewed) is consumed comfortable by persons reading German newspapers … I myself spoke German almost entirely while in South West Africa as the simplest means of intercourse.‟ (American Consul to South Africa, visiting Namibia in 1939, cited in S.L. Barron, The Nazis in Africa, 1978)

Südwesterdeutsch

• In-group/Out-group: Südwester vs. Deutschländers/Dscherries

• Lexicon – extensive borrowing from English and Afrikaans

• Grammar – moderate restructuring

▫ merger of accusative and dative case

▫ periphrastic possessive (dem Peter sein Auto < Peters Auto)

▫ future tense formation with gehen (standard German werden)

▫ use of invariant was as a relative marker (ein kleines kalb, was <das)

▫ replacement of personal pronouns by definite articles (der kann gut Herero <er)

▫ loss of verb-final after weil

▫ changes in negative syntax (du musst [nicht] das ø sagen)

▫ constituent omission (die kinder sind in ø stadt)