Vinsamlegast notið þetta auðkenni þegar þið vitnið til verksins eða tengið í það: https://hdl.handle.net/1946/20406
There is a general consensus among educators and researchers looking into the state of
education in Africa that the primary language of the students is the language through which
education should take place. As each formerly colonised territory in Africa has achieved
independence, policies for the newly independent states have been formulated. The last four
decades have shown us that very often the articulation of policy, particularly language policy,
has more to do with a sense of political expediency than reasons of economic or educational
development (Alexander, 1989, 1992). Multilingual language policies which recognize
linguistic pluralism as resources for nation-building are increasingly becoming commonplace.
Many of these policies envision implementation through bilingual education, which open up
new possibilities for oppressed language groups (both indigenous and immigrant languages
groups) and their speakers. However, Akinnaso (1993) points out that there is often a
mismatch between policy and the plan for implementation, particularly with regard to
language policy in education. Thus the implementation plan has little potential for achieving
the goals of the policy. The situation in South Africa is one in which multilingualism is both
supported and contested, despite the progressive commitment to equality of language rights in the country’s constitution (Alexander, 1992).
The new Constitution of 1993 in post-apartheid South Africa embraces language as a basic
human right and multilingualism as a national resource, introducing nine major African
languages (Ndebele, Xhosa, Zulu, Sepedi, Sotho, Tswana, Swati, Venda, and Tsonga) as
official languages alongside English and Afrikaans, along with the dismantling of the
apartheid educational system. To transform the previous apartheid education system into a
diversifying one, where the “rainbow” of identities and languages are accepted, and to
construct a national identity that is multilingual and multicultural constitute ideological
paradoxes which are a challenge to implement (Hornberger, 1991). For Hornberger (1991)
multilingual language policies are essentially about opening up ideological and
implementational space in the environment for as many languages as possible, and in
particular, endangered languages if they are to evolve and flourish rather than dwindle and
disappear. In this investigation I analyze the effectiveness of the South African multilingual
language policy in promoting additive and functional multilingualism and in opening up the ideological and implementational space needed for the survival of the previously oppressed
African languages.
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Holmarsdottir_avhandling.pdf | 2.61 MB | Opinn | Heildartexti | Skoða/Opna |