Sociophonetics and Class Differentiation: A study of working- and middle-class English in Cape Town's Coloured Community Tracey Toefy Supervisor: Professor Rajend Mesthrie Thesis Presented for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School for African & Gender Studies, Anthropology & Linguistics, UniversityLinguistics of SectionCape Town University of Cape Town February 2014 The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgement of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Published by the University of Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University of Cape Town Acknowledgements Upon completion of what seemed at times to be an endless endeavour, I humbly acknowledge that without the help and support of many people, far more than are mentioned on the list below, this thesis would not have become a reality. Firstly, I acknowledge my supervisor, Professor Raj Mesthrie, who has supported me throughout my postgraduate career by creating an enabling environment for me as an aspiring scholar to persevere with one degree after another. I am particularly grateful for the financial assistance provided to me as a product of Prof Mesthrie’s own research success as a SARChI chair, and to SARChI and the National Research Foundation for the funding made available which has allowed me to pursue my studies. As a colleague and friend, Alida Chevalier has been a source of immeasureable help and support to me over the past few years, and to her I am also so thankful. Academics all over the world, some of whom I have never met face-to-face, have provided me with help in fields as varied as computer programming and education, and I express sincere gratitude to the following for their assistance: Keelan Evanini, Thomas Hoffmann, Martin Hilpert, Rochelle Kapp, Ian Bekker and Tyler Kendall. I am grateful to the 40 speakers who made up the sample for this project for sparing the time to talk to me, allowing me to collect the data needed for this analysis. In that vein, I duly thank Cloe Dennis, Melanie Zeederberg and Chantel Erfort for introducing me to many of the people I interviewed. Thanks are also due to Kabelo Rametse, who patiently and very competently compiled the programs I used to do my analysis. My friends and family have been a constant source of strength and support throughout this project, and I am thankful to all of them, though they are not mentioned by name here. I am particularly grateful to my father, Stan Dennis, and father-in-law, Hardie Toefy, for driving me to interviews in the more ‘dangerous’ parts of Cape Town. To my mother, Maureen Dennis, who provided me with editorial help with the thesis itself, I also express my sincere thanks. i Finally, I am most appreciative of the role played by my husband, Shukri Toefy, in the completion of this project. His own sacrifice and hard work enabled me to be a full-time scholar and full-time mother, while he provided us with a life that is comfortable, exciting and happy. I am eternally grateful for his unwavering support, encouragement and love. ii Abstract Tracey Toefy | February 2014 Thesis Title: Sociophonetics and Class Differentiation: a study of working- and middle-class English in Cape Town’s Coloured Community. This thesis provides a detailed acoustic description of the phonetic variation and changes evident in the monophthongal vowel system of Coloured South African English in Cape Town. The changes are largely a result of South Africa’s post- apartheid socio-educational reform. A detailed acoustic description highlights the most salient changes (compared with earlier reports of the variety), indicating the extent of the change amongst working-class and middle-class speakers. The fieldwork conducted for this study consists of sociolinguistic interviews, conducted with a total of 40 Coloured speakers (half male, half female) from both working-class and middle-class backgrounds. All speakers were young adults, born between 1983 and 1993, thus raised and schooled in a period of transition from apartheid to democracy. Each of the middle-class speakers had some experience of attending formerly exclusively White schools, giving them significant contact with White peers and teachers, while the educational careers of the working-class speakers exposed them almost solely to Coloured peers and educators. The acoustic data were processed using methods of Forced Alignment and automatic formant extraction – methods applied for the first time to any variety of South African English. The results of the analysis were found generally to support the findings of scholars who have documented this variety previously, with some notable exceptions amongst middle-class speakers. The changes are attributable to socio-educational change in the post-apartheid setting and the directionality of the changes approximate trends amongst White South African English speakers. The TRAP, GOOSE and FOOT lexical sets show most change: TRAP is lowering, while GOOSE and FOOT are fronting. Although the changes approximate the vowel quality used by White speakers, middle- class Coloured speakers use an intermediate value between White speakers and working-class Coloured speakers i.e. they have not fully adopted White norms for any of the vowel classes. Working-class speakers were found to have maintained the monophthongal vowel system traditionally used by Coloured speakers. iii Plagiarism Declaration 1. I know that plagiarism is wrong. Plagiarism is to use another’s work and to pretend that it is one’s own. 2. I have used the Harvard-UCT (author-date) convention for citation and referencing. Each significant contribution to and quotation in, this thesis from the work, or works, of other people has been acknowledged through citation and reference. 3. This thesis is my own work. 4. I have not, and will not allow, anyone to copy my work with the intention of passing it off as his or her own work. Full Name: Tracey Lynn Toefy Student number: DNNTRA003 Signature: Date: February 2014 Signature removed iv Contents Acknowledgements i Abstract iii Plagiarism Declaration iv Contents v List of Figures x List of Tables xiv List of Abbreviations xvi Chapter One: Introduction 1 1.1 Research Aim ............................................................................................ 2 1.2 Research Objectives .................................................................................. 2 1.3 Research Questions ................................................................................... 2 1.4 The Origins of the Coloured Community ................................................. 3 1.5 Political History of the Coloured community ........................................... 5 1.6 Apartheid South Africa ........................................................................... 10 1.7 Coloured Educational Structures: 1652-1990 ......................................... 16 1.8 Desegregation of Education .................................................................... 20 1.9 ‘Coloured’: A Problematic Label ............................................................ 24 1.10 Coloureds and Language Use ............................................................... 25 1.11 A Note on Methodology ....................................................................... 28 1.12 Delimitations ......................................................................................... 29 1.13 Chapter Outline ..................................................................................... 29 Chapter Two: Coloured South African English: History and Vowel Quality 31 2.1 History of English in South Africa ......................................................... 32 2.1.1 The Colonial Era ...................................................................... 32 2.1.2 Immigrant Influx ...................................................................... 33 2.1.3 The Apartheid Era .................................................................... 34 2.1.4 The ‘New’ South Africa ........................................................... 35 2.2 SAE as a ‘Southern’ Variety ................................................................... 35 2.3 Review of SAE literature ........................................................................ 36 2.4 Literature on CSAE ................................................................................. 39 2.5 Phonetic profile: CSAE ........................................................................... 49 2.5.1 Short Vowels ............................................................................ 50 v 2.5.2 Long Monophthongs ................................................................ 52 Chapter Three: Data Collection, Speakers and Social Categories 54 3.1 Criteria for Sample Selection .................................................................. 54 3.1.1 Coloured ................................................................................... 55 3.1.2 Cape Town Resident ................................................................ 55 3.1.3 English / English-Afrikaans bilingual ...................................... 58 3.1.4 The Generation before the ‘Born-frees’ ................................... 60 3.1.5. Gender ..................................................................................... 63 3.1.6 Social class ..............................................................................