Ten years of democracy: attitudes and identity among some South African school children
Abstract
Ten years into South Africa’s democracy, how do school children feel about themselves as
part of specific groups, and what is the role of language in their socio-cultural identities?
This paper looks at the ways in which two groups of fourteen-year-old Xhosa-speaking and
mixed-race ‘Coloured’ South African secondary school learners in a new housing area near
Cape Town negotiate their identities through language in a context of rapid social change. It
analyses their beliefs and attitudes about the languages and speech communities to which
they are exposed.