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The interaction between multilingualism and emotions has so far mostly been researched in Northern contexts. The findings obtained suggest that the first language is typically preferred for emotional and mental activities (i.e. ‘first language primacy’). In this article, we extend this area of investigation to Africa. We use the Bilingualism and Emotions Questionnaire to probe first language primacy in South Africa, employing a novel analytical approach – multiple correspondence analysis – that allows us to examine the relationship between particular languages and their order of acquisition. Our findings, in part, do reflect favouring of the L1, but with two important qualifications. First, English is also widely used for emotional expression in non-intimate domains. Second, L1 isiXhosa speakers prefer English for mental calculations, and isiXhosa is generally not associated with positive emotional characteristics. We explain these trends in relation to the multilingual context of South Africa, which, like many postcolonial countries, uses a former colonial language extensively in formal institutional spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article centres multilingualism in relation to gender, sexuality, culture, and race, presenting the narrative of one participant, Samson, who self-identifies as a black, queer, man and refers to several linguistic varieties that he has some proficiency in. The narrative emerged from an interview conducted in which Samson discussed his language portrait, a multimodal biographical method. Thematic analysis was used as a starting point in interpreting how Samson discursively constructs language in relation to gender, racial, sexual, and cultural positions. To unpack Samson's constructions of self and others we bring decolonial feminist theoretical approaches in conversation with linguistic citizenship. We argue that Samson is trying to undo the normative conceptions of a range of identity categories and that he narrates several different discursive and social strategies to develop new subjectivities for himself and to create new relationalities. In his decolonial project of being, he tries to queer the norm and norm the queer. Samson's story provides us with the possibility of living and languaging outside of colonial structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This exploratory study provides an overview of prominent themes pertaining to portrayals of sign languages (SLs) and Deaf people in the South African press (2011–2019), as well as an analysis of a subset of articles to illustrate the discursive constructions of each of the prominent ideological framings. The findings of the paper suggest that many ways of representing South African Sign Language (SASL) and their users align with international trends. The two most prominent ideological framings are the medical/disability model and the linguistic minority model. Within the medical model, SLs are seen as inferior means of communication used by a disabled minority. Within the linguistic minority framework SLs are regarded as natural, legitimate languages deserving equal status to spoken languages. The paper also identifies an ideological framing that is not predicted by the international literature, coined here as ‘diversity tokenism’. Diversity tokenism is when SL is mentioned only to increase perceived diversity, where diversity is a commodity that holds social capital. This portrayal of SASL seems to be increasing and holds a warning: although SASL users have received official recognition and rights through the recent declaration of SASL as an official language, it might not be the end of the battle to ensure that users of SASL can live out their linguistic citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue responds to an increasing interest in decolonial and Southern thinking in applied linguistics. In this Introduction, we first discuss some basic historical facts about colonization, and we highlight some key concepts. We then present the six contributions in the special issue. Three contributions compellingly expose the pervasiveness of coloniality and give reason to doubt that it can ever be overcome; the other three contributions open spaces for the decolonial possibilities of healing, hope, and futurity. We then discuss some key issues in decolonial and Southern scholarship, including the role of non-conventional writing in decolonial research, the differences between decolonial and social justice projects, the difficulties of decolonizing Eurocentric knowledge through Euro-Anglo-Northern tools, and deep inequities in the geopolitics of knowledge. We hope that the special issue will enable readers to re-see long-standing applied linguistics questions through decolonial and Southern lenses. We also hope to make the case why decolonial projects are worth the trouble. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discourse of mastery is prominent in applied linguistics. The idea of mastery, however, does not remain only on the discourse level: curricula and policies are meant to be implemented, and therefore mastery and all that is associated with it (near perfection, dominance over something, etc.) is also practiced. In this paper, I argue that we might survive mastery by recuperating other ways of being, thinking, and learning. By drawing on examples from the South African higher educational context, I show glimpses of other ways of doing and thinking about language. Drawing inspiration from decolonial theory, I extend the notion of linguistic citizenship by showing that, for applied linguists, vulnerability, relationality, and failure could be points of focus as productive as mastery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic repertoire is regarded as one of the foundational concepts of sociolinguistics but despite its prominence during the early years of the discipline, it is commonly believed that for decades scant theoretical development on repertoire occurred. This situation is seen to change in the early 2000s when several (Northern) researchers increasingly advocated that linguistic repertoire could be more productive to theorize contemporary communicative practices than language. In this paper, I aim to foreground the South/North entanglements in the coinage and development of linguistic repertoire and present erased, forgotten, or obscured parts of the linguistic repertoire story. I show how Southern thinkers, both linguists and non-linguists came up with precursors to the way in which repertoires are currently conceptualized. By presenting this obscured narrative from the South, I want to offer critical questions about the trajectories of concepts and the kind of knowledge that gets excluded by the sidelining of Southern thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the central argument is that research on the semiotic repertoire should also focus on how repertoires are racialized, and race is evoked through the semiotic repertoire. The article uses data from the South African educational context to advance a position in which semiotic repertoires simultaneously give and restrict access, evoke evaluation and construct identities in particular ways because of their entanglement with (racialized) bodies. I propose that this simultaneity can be theorized by viewing the black body as 'intercorporeal' and 'grotesque' (Bakhtin 1984). By drawing on such an approach, processes of racialization are explicitly connected to how semiotic resources are evoked in discourse. This article thus theoretically contributes to the recent movements in applied linguistics that view language as embodied, re-examine repertoires, and view language as multiplex and entangled. In addition, it also offers a framing that can theoretically challenge discourses of post-racialism with its multi-layered account of how race continues to be experienced as a significant form of meaning-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article offers a critical appraisal of resemiotisation through the investigation of a controversial comment made by South African president, Jacob Zuma. The comment (that Jacob Zuma took a shower to minimise his risk of contracting HIV/AIDS) was made during a rape trial in 2006. Over a period of eight years, this comment has been continually recontextualised into different modes, and has served different functions. This article investigates newspaper reports, cartoons and YouTube clips which were collected from 2006 to 2014. All of these texts refer to the “Shower comment” in linguistic, visual or multimodal ways. Drawing on a multimodal analysis, focussing specifically on modes of representation, the article critically discusses the notions of mode, time and space in connection to resemiotisation. I argue that a Bakhtinian account of time, space and body allows for a non-binary view of semiotic phenomena that will lead to a deeper theoretical understanding of semiotic transformations in all their complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformation of higher education has been a pressing concern for policy makers and practitioners. This article provides examples of the transformative potential of assessments designed within the framework of a multi-literacies and heteroglossic pedagogy in an Applied English Language course at a South African university. These assessments, which used multiple semiotic resources and created spaces for contesting voices, allowed students to bring their own expertise into the learning experience. This, it is argued, ultimately led to enhanced student voice and agency, two crucial components in transformative practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently there has been an increased focus on narratives produced within or about the workplace. A number of different analytical approaches to narrative exist and there has been quite a vigorous debate between researchers interested in life stories (or so-called big stories) and those researchers proposing an increased focus on small stories. This paper will use small story analysis (SSA) to examine workplace identity in discourses on organizational processes in one workplace in South Africa. The data for this study were collected by conducting interviews and focus group discussions with 19 members of a large South African retail company. We find that participants often introduce small stories which offer discourses that contradict or contest 'official' company discourses (or the so-called sanctioned grand narrative stories). We argue that small stories can be a valuable resource to investigate organizational discourses, as participants often introduce questions of identity which do not necessarily fit the dominant organizational discourses through small stories. Small story analysis seems to be an ideal tool to investigate contradictions and inconsistencies which occur in all discourses but are typical of contexts of diversity and transformation such as the South African workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on a study of a community of multilingual adolescents in Johannesburg which examines participants’ linguistic repertoires and how they use their linguistic resources as a basis for identity construction, integration and performance. This kind of linguistic multiplicity lends itself to subtle and occasionally subversive positioning, as well as the creation of complex identities. Multilingual speakers call into play different aspects of their linguistic identity according to what particular circumstances dictate. For the most part, learners use their repertoires, which in some cases include non-standardised, mixed forms such as Tsotsitaal, to integrate and negotiate; and they are open to learning and accommodating other languages, with perhaps (in this data-set) one exception, namely Xitsonga. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to language use in educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There exists an abundance of literature on the use of wordless picturebooks in literacy development, yet very little research exists on their use in the South African context. South Africa is facing what researchers have referred to as a 'national crisis of reading'. Only 5 per cent of parents read with their children, as a result, many children are not exposed to books or book‐sharing activities prior to entering formal school. Despite the acknowledgement and acceptance of the importance of mother tongue education, especially in Foundation Phase, there still exists a lack of indigenous language picturebooks for young readers. The article reports on the findings of an exploratory study in which wordless picturebooks were used in parent–child joint reading. By moving the reading environment from a community centre or daycare to participant homes, the main aim was to determine the perceptions of the parents or primary caregivers and children that participated in the programme regarding the value of utilising wordless picturebooks in their homes. The research sought to gain an understanding of how wordless picturebooks could assist in ensuring that literacy‐poor families are supported as a child's first educator. We argue that wordless picturebooks warrant further investigation in the South African context, as key findings indicated that they can be viewed as a valuable tool in fostering a culture of reading in the South African context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the relationship between grammatical aspect and motion event construal has posited that speakers of non-aspect languages are more prone to encoding event endpoints than are speakers of aspect languages (e.g., von Stutterheim and Carroll 2011). In the present study, we test this hypothesis by extending this line of inquiry to Afrikaans, a non-aspect language which is previously unexplored in this regard. Motion endpoint behavior among Afrikaans speakers was measured by means of a linguistic retelling task and a non-linguistic similarity judgment task, and then compared with the behavior of speakers of a non-aspect language (Swedish) and speakers of an aspect language (English). Results showed the Afrikaans speakers' endpoint patterns aligned with Swedish patterns, but were significantly different from English patterns. It was also found that the variation among the Afrikaans speakers could be partially explained by taking into account their frequency of use of English, such that those who used English more frequently exhibited an endpoint behavior that was more similar to English speakers. The current study thus lends further support to the hypothesis that speakers of different languages attend differently to event endpoints as a function of the grammatical category of aspect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]