Language policy incongruity and African languages in postapartheid South Africa

TLDR

South Africa has responded constitutionally to language imperatives, yet policy implementation remains slow. The study seeks to evaluate PanSALB’s performance and argue that language planning agencies are essential for addressing attitudes toward African languages and for ensuring their ecological wellbeing through marketing strategies. The authors assess PanSALB’s role by investigating its performance as a statutory agency and by proposing language planning as a marketing strategy to reform policy. The research concludes that South Africa’s language policy is trapped between intention and performance.

Abstract

Abstract This study explores some of the reasons why, in spite of the exemplary fashion in which democratic South Africa responded to the constitutional imperatives pertaining to language, policy implementation has been slow. It is argued that language policy and planning in South Africa have become trapped in a gap between 'intention' and 'performance'. This study investigates the performance of the Pan South African Language Board, as government's statutory language planning agency mandated to promote the use of the African languages. The study argues that language planning agencies, such as PanSALB, are pivotal in addressing attitudinal problems regarding the role of African languages in education. Language planning as a marketing strategy is proposed as an integral part of reviewing and remaking policy, with a view to ensuring the ecological wellbeing of African languages, and hence their future as languages of learning and teaching.