Tsotsitaal

This paper examines the structure of two varieties, Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho, that are spoken predominantly by males who live in the Black urban townships of South Africa. While many think that tsotsitaal and Iscamtho lack predictable structure, this paper argues that all versions follow the same type of morphosyntactic constraints that structure code switching as well as playing a part in other language-contact phenomena. Data come largely from conversations recorded in Soweto, a major township outside Johannesburg. As in-group markers, the varieties are characterized by much slang and lexical variation across versions of the same variety. Tsotsitaal can be identified as a variety, or set of versions, with a nonstandard version of Afrikaans as its matrix language, while Iscamtho versions have a South African Bantu language — usually Zulu — as their matrix language. Issues
considered include these: how are Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho similar and
different from other language-contact phenomena; to what extent do their structures support the matrix-language frame model of Myers-Scotton (1993a)?

Tsotsitaal in South Africa has many characteristics in common with other African ‘urban youth languages’), for example, it incorporates lexical innovation, metaphor and neologisms, its origins are in criminal argot, and it is used primarily by male youth in urban centers possibly as a marker of modernism and being ‘streetwise’.
It can be considered as a set of language resources rather than a ‘language’ in any traditional sense of the term, and one of the more interesting characteristics of tsotsitaal in South Africa is its existence in multiple base languages – all the official languages in South Africa (11 in total) have their own accompanying tsotsitaal. Other non-official languages, including mixed forms of language in highly multi-lingual townships such as Soweto, also have their variety of tsotsitaal.
This paper gives examples of tsotsitaals which utilize a range of base languages – Setswana (Tswana); Tshivenda (Venda); Sesotho sa Lebowa (Northern Sotho); Sesotho (Sotho); IsiZulu (Zulu); Sepedi (Pedi); and IsiXhosa (Xhosa) – to demonstrate the core features of the phenomenon, and to try to outline why the tsotsitaal phenomenon is an exemplar of youth language practice as fluid repertoire.

Sepitori is a mixed language which Black residents of Tshwane speak as a lingua franca. In June 2017, #LearnPitori took South Africa by storm soon after a twitterati posted what s/he deemed to be Sepitori and called out other twitterati to make their submissions. As social media platforms, such as Twitter, accept contributions from all members of the public regardless of how informed or knowledgeable they are about the subject matter at hand, there was a need to establish, from speakers of Sepitori, whether they would equally regard submissions to #LearnPitori as Sepitori. The exponential non-discriminative snowballing sampling method was used to recruit participants, and fourteen of them participated in the study. Data analysis showed evidence of a blurred line between Sepitori and tsotsitaal in the analyzed #LearnPitori statements, as well as from participants. Also, the study found that participants were not aware that Sepitori, as a Matrix Language, has tsotsitaal embedded on it, inasmuch as it would be the case with recognized languages from a 'language purism' perspective.

Tsotsitaal is a South African language phenomenon spoken in urban centres around South Africa which involves the use of a range of linguistic and semiotic resources as part of a process of styling an urban identity. The tsotsitaal phenomenon originated in the urban context of Johannesburg's racially mixed townships in the 1940s and it can now be found in all provinces. Although there are calls to recognise it as a ‘national language’, it is not clear what features the different regional varieties share. This article considers two regional examples of tsotsitaal – from Durban and Cape Town – to unpack their common features.

The data analysed here was gathered in 2012, and involves video recordings of 22 young adults, aged between 16 to 25, speaking tsotsitaal together. The data was analysed to determine: the grammatical framework of each example; the lexical items both common to, and unique to, the two sites; topics areas of relexicalisation; and the use of gestures and other semiotic markers. The article demonstrates that tsotsitaals in geographically distant Cape Town and Durban share lexicon, gestures and relexicalised topics, but cautions that regionally and contextually specific features need to be taken into account in broad claims about, and descriptions of, tsotsitaals.

The study of non-standard urban forms of African languages in South Africa, or what I will refer to here as ‘tsotsitaal studies’ (based on Mesthrie’s 2008 broadening of the term ‘tsotsitaal’ to include a number of related varieties), has been a focus of sociolinguistic research for several decades. This introduction to the special issue will briefly summarise the history and development of these studies, in order to situate the articles in this issue and their relevance to, and advancement of, the field.

The data analysed in this paper is drawn from a large project investigating the use of the South African AUYL tsotsitaal in contemporary South African townships. It takes a comparative approach between two tsotsitaal speech communities from Cape Town: a peer group of young men, and a group of young women who self-identify as lesbian. Both the varieties employ a Xhosa matrix and the comparable base language allows this paper to focus on the role of peer groups and gender in the use of tsotsitaal.
The tsotsitaals used by the respective peer groups differ significantly in lexicon, density and frequency, or ‘deepness’ of the stylect.  The lesbian speakers in Cape Town primarily employ older lexical items and exhibit less creativity and neologisms than the male speakers. This trend and other aspects of the data suggest a number of things:
• That lesbian speakers use tsotsitaal lexical items as part of their gender performance, but do not create them.
• That male speakers undertake language experimentation in peer groups.
• That style is central to peer group communication, and members of peer groups experiment with ‘crossing’ to other styles for purposes of identity construction, authenticity and creativity.
• That gender performances in peer groups are supported by the choice of lexical items.
• That the identities being constructed in the female peer group, while ‘streetwise’, lean towards ‘correct’ or standard language.
The findings are in keeping with Labov’s theory that men initiate change in non-standard speech forms, yet women use higher frequencies of innovative vernacular forms, in this case ‘supralocal’ tsotsitaal items, than men do (Labov 1990).
References
Labov, William. “The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change.” Language Variation and Change 2 (1990), 205-254.

This article explores Swartafrikaans and Tsotsitaal as alternative non-standard codes of Afrikaans in two poems. The concept of standardised Afrikaans is well documented in the subject literature, but proves problematic in a context where language borders are dynamic. To this end the concept of translanguaging is useful to represent the negotiation between languages by bi- and multilinguals. Another important aspect is the use of language crossing through which languages are imitated. Swartafrikaans refers to a variety of Afrikaans historically used by non-Afrikaans speakers of African languages in South Africa. Furthermore, Tsotsitaal refers to an informal slang based on Afrikaans. The use of Tsotsitaal in ‘Last Night’ by Frans van Rensburg and Swartafrikaans in ‘Die Djêrrê en die dooiwêl’ by R.K. Belcher were explored in this article. It was found that rather than using Tsotsitaal and Swartafrikaans respectively these two poets employed a language-crossing strategy through which translanguaging takes place.

During a recent conference on African Urban and Youth Languages (AUYLs), held in Cape Town in July 2013, a number of important issues were raised regarding the status of informal and youth languages
around the African continent. Some of these informal varieties appear to be becoming ’lingua francas’ or vernaculars in the urban space. In order to function as such, an urban variety would require systematisation which seems to be at odds with their historically subcultural alignments. Additionally, the relationship between these varieties and standard languages and/or urban languages remains
ambiguous.
This paper firstly outlines some recent work in South Africa on the variety ’tsotsitaal’ which has begun to provide some answers. Investigations are being undertaken focusing on: the syntactic frame
of AUYLs and their grammatical departures from ’urban’ forms of African languages; descriptions of AUYL use by children in the home; their relationship to gesture; and gender dynamics. These new studies add to knowledge by answering some of the existing questions regarding the trajectories and statuses of AUYLs. They also enable us to delineate areas that remain open for exploration, gaps in current knowledge, and needs in future research.
Secondly, this paper presents data from a recent multi-sited research project on tsotsitaals, to illustrate the slippery nature of terms such as ’variety’, ’standard’, and even ’language’ when applied in a language practice context such as that of AUYLs. It considers the sociolinguistic proposals of ’metrolingualism’, ’crossing’ and ’linguistic repertoire’ which are being used by theorists to engage with the complexities of language in urban contexts. The paper reflects on whether these frameworks allow for the kinds of variation found in AUYLs, and ultimately considers whether any existing accounts of language are descriptively adequate.

By Ellen Hurst & Mthuli Buthelezi
Tsotsitaal is spoken in urban centres around South Africa, but there is little consensus on what features of languages constitute tsotsitaal, and how to classify the phenomenon (Mesthrie & Hurst, forthcoming). Various authors have attempted to classify the variety as inter-alia a ‘code-switching variety’ (Slabbert & Myers-Scotton 1997), a ‘continuum of use’ (Calteaux 1996), and a ‘diglossic form of Zulu’ (Rudwick 2005). However, there has been a lack of naturalistic data in the literature which has limited the impact of these studies over time. Additionally, specific geographic and temporal varieties have been described in isolation, and there has been little if any comparison across regional varieties (with the exception of varieties from different ‘base-languages’ within the Gauteng region).
This paper seeks to expand our understanding of tsotsitaal by analysing the first data from two research sites which form part of a wider project on tsotsitaal varieties in South Africa. The data analysed here was gathered in Cape Town and Durban in 2011, and involves visual recordings of young men speaking tsotsitaal together.
The data is analysed from both a visual and linguistic perspective. An analysis of the gestures of participants accompanies an analysis of linguistic features of the varieties of Xhosa and Zulu respectively. The analysis unpacks lexical, syntactic and semantic features of tsotsitaal as well as para-linguistic practices. Commonalities and differences between the regional varieties are explored, in order to begin to answer some of the questions of the broader project, for instance, is there a ‘national’ form of tsotsitaal or is it locally specific? And are there linguistic features or is it merely a matter of slang, or style?
References
Calteaux, K.V. 1996. Standard and non-standard African language varieties in the urban areas of South Africa: main report for the STANON Research Programme. HSRC Publishers, Pretoria.
Mesthrie, R. & Hurst, E. (forthcoming) Slang registers, code-switching and restructured urban varieties in South Africa: an analytic overview of tsotsitaals with special reference to the Cape Town variety.
Rudwick, S. 2005. Township language dynamics: isiZulu and isiTsotsi in Umlazi. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 233, 305-317.
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.