Chasing a phantom: Afrikaans in higher education in the globalisation era

Abstract

The chapter explores an under-researched aspect of South African higher education (HE), namely its language dynamics, from a relatively new perspective of effects of globalisation on language dynamics in South African HE. With a specific focus on Afrikaans, and using three data sets derived from an on-going research on sociolinguistics of South Africa’s higher education at the University of the Free State (UFS) in South Africa, the chapter brings to the fore the complexities attendant to policy and programme initiatives aimed at maintaining Afrikaans as a language of HE in the face of globalisation forces. The first data set—referred to as “sociolinguistics of social justice”—first presented in Mwaniki (2012a) points to Afrikaans in South Africa’s HE being perceived as inimical to social justice; an idea that is largely associated with the spread of democracy, a spread which in turn is a consequence of globalisation. The second data set—referred to as “sociolinguistics of knowledge production and dissemination”—first presented in Mwaniki (2014) demonstrates how globalisation pressures emanating from the now widely accepted international benchmark in HE of publishing research in internationally accredited journals has led to a publishing shift at this South African university. The third data set—referred to as “sociolinguistics of learning resources”—presented for the first time in this chapter shows how, despite UFS’s overt language policy that advocates for use of Afrikaans in teaching and learning, non-availability of up-to-date learning resources in Afrikaans largely due to global book market dynamics beyond institutional or country control is gradually eroding the status of Afrikaans as a language of teaching and learning in South African HE.