Paper Topic:

Describe the current language situation in the New South Africa and the role of English in the development of a coherent language policy.

RUNNING HEAD : Language and South Africa

Language and South Africa

[Name of Writer]

[Name of Institution

Introduction

Language , literacy and communication are intrinsic to human development and central to lifelong learning . South Africa was declared a democratic state in 1994 , after surviving the `divide and rule apartheid system for five decades . The apartheid system can be defined as a social policy or racial segregation involving political and economic and legal discrimination against non-whites . Since then onwards , South Africa is trying to break loose from the legacy of many rules

that have inherited from the system due to its long stay . In the apartheid era , South Africa had African and English as the two official languages . After the declaration of the apartheid 's system as obsolete , the new government is supporting a multilingual policy giving official recognition not only to English and Afrikaans but also to nine African languages : Xhosa , Zulu Ndebele , Swati , Tswana , Sotho , Pedi , Venda , and Tsonga . One of the main objectives of the new language policy has been to promote the status of the nine African languages by , among other things , using them as media of learning ( HYPERLINK "http /digital .georgetown .edu /gurt /2000 /gurt_2000_09 .pdf http /digital .georgetown .edu /gurt /2000 /gurt_2000_09 .pdf

South Africa : Sociolinguistic Pro

There are about four essential stages in the multifaceted history of language development in South Africa : The first can be credited to the Dutch , when in 1652 they settled in South Africa with the Dutch East India Company '- it was titled the Dulcification . The second came from the British first from 1795 and then from 1806-1948 (the periods they subjugated South Africa ) - it was referred to as Anglicization . The third occurred between 1948 and 1994 during the regime of the Afrikaners , this resulted in the massive advancement of the Afrikaans language itself this in turn helped the Afrikaans-English bilingualism - it was identified as the Afrikanerization of the South African society The final stage took place from1994 when there was a transfer from Afrikaans-English Bilingualism to pluralism - this was the Language democratization (Cobarrubias 1983 ( HYPERLINK "http /digital .georgetown .edu /gurt /2000 /gurt_2000_09 .pdf http /digital .georgetown .edu /gurt /2000 /gurt_2000_09 .pdf

When South Africa finally gained freedom from the apartheid system it was acknowledged that South Africa is not a bilingual state , it is a multilingual state in actual that can support people with so many languages and declaring it a bilingual state officially would be unfair to the people living in this country

Existence in Multi-Lingual Environment

The National Education Policy Act (Act 27 of 1996 ) empowers the Minister of Education to determine a national policy for language in education . Subsequently the Language-in-Education Policy was adopted in 1997 . This policy operates within the following paradigm (paragraph 1 :In terms of the new Constitution of the Republic of South Africa , the government , and thus the Department of Education , recognizes that our cultural diversity is a valuable national asset and hence is tasked amongst other things , to promote multilingualism , the...

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