The Language Planning Situation in South Africa

This monograph examines the language planning situation in South Africa, where language has been instrumental in the country's transition from colonialism to apartheid to democracy. In particular, it addresses, diachronically and synchronically, the issues of language spread and use, language policy and planning, and language maintenance and shift. The monograph is divided into four parts. The first part presents the language profile of South Africa to provide the background against which the aforementioned issues will be discussed. The second part discusses language spread and use, with a focus on language-in-education and the media. The third section looks at language policy and planning, with a focus on South Africa's new language policy and on attempts currently being made to implement it. It shows that there is a mismatch between the language policy and language practices, with the former promoting additive multilingualism, and the latter showing a trend towards unilingualism in English in virtually all the higher domains of language use. The implications of this trend for the current language policy and for language maintenance and shift are discussed in the final part, with special reference to the country's official languages.