Constructing multilingua franca scales

Using notions of scale and space, this study explores how Black African immigrants (BAIs) experience communication and negotiate, shape and reshape their social identities through language use in Johannesburg (South Africa) – a city characterised not only by complex multilingualism but also by quotidian violence. Drawing from qualitative interviews and group discussions, an analysis of BAIs’ metalinguistic discourses on their communicative practices as they move across spaces suggests that they view Johannesburg as a layered space characterised by dissimilar scales of interaction. Utilising negotiation strategies predicated on variegated scales, BAIs make space for home and host nation language varieties using forms that function as ‘multilingua francas,’ thereby resisting and unsettling the dominant local scales based on regimented ethnolinguistic boundaries.