Attitudes towards English in South Africa

ABSTRACT: The future language dispensation in South Africa has been widely discussed, yet little is known about the attitudes of ordinary second‐language speakers towards English, the language all agree will remain dominant for the foreseeable future. This paper attempts to begin to remedy this lack of knowledge by reporting on a series of interviews conducted with Zulu‐speakers in Durban. Two groups of respondents, on the one hand 20 students and professionals, and on the other 15 (domestic and other) workers, were interviewed by two Zulu‐speakers, who asked a series of questions based in the main on their own intuitions about English; the paper evaluates the responses discursively. No significant differences between the two groups were noted. English was generally seen in instrumental terms, as a very necessary job skill and lingua franca; and the link between English and education was constantly stressed. In interpreting these findings, it is suggested that a perception of English in these terms only is not without its dangers and that, in spite of the expectation that a general competence in English will help bring about a juster society, it might well on the contrary contribute to a further perpetuation of the present inequities in South Africa.