The initial purpose of this study was to describe and analyse the language situation at Baragwanath Hospital. This was seen as a microcosm of the language situation in urban South Africa. As such, this study set out to identify problems and offer suggestions in resolving the difficulties experienced in communication in this hospital as well as in other medical institutions in the rest of the country. Before attempting such an investigation, a sound theoretical framework had to be established. In order to gain familiarity with the research field, concepts on sociolinguistics had to be researched and described. In order to apply particular concepts to the situation under investigation, the concepts had to be defined and interpreted first. This study has made a contribution to the theoretical debate regarding various sociolinguistic concepts, in that it has shown how these concepts apply to the South African situation. The next step in the research process involved making a decision about which method would be most appropriate for collecting data. Therefore, various approaches were investigated in order to find the appropriate one. The techniques of data collection and the recruitment of respondents had to be refined before the main data collection process could begin. Then began the journey of discovery. The detailed description of the language situation at Baragwanath Hospital presented in chapter 3 forms the crux of this study. This is the first time that such a comprehensive, qualitative description of the entire language situation in this hospital has been done. An appropriate method for data analysis had to be devised. This entailed various levels of analysis and interpretation. A description of the language situation at Baragwanath Hospital would have been incomplete without presenting a few of the various scenarios that took place in this hospital. Many important conclusions were reached during the course of the research. The most important of these were: 1. A huge communication problem exists at Baragwanath Hospital. 2. Either interpreters will have to be hired to overcome this problem; or nurses will have to be paid more for their interpreting services. / African Languages / D. Litt. et Phil.

Introduction to the Theory of Language Correctness. The theme of this Thesis is the novel conceptualization of the subject field, which is, in the Czech context, traditionally dealt with within the theory of language cultivation, from the perspective of the so-called ontological "socialism" (esp. Itkonen, 1978; 2003). The first two chapters explain why the subject field of the (theory of) language cultivation is to be newly approached from this very perspective. The conceptual discussion in the first chapter identifies three underresearched factors (reaction of the Protectorate elites to the Nazi occupation policy; variety-based approach to the "language" and physicalism) that had negative effect to the debate on these questions and therefore they should not be taken into consideration; the terminological discussion in the second chapter supports the claim that it is not suitable to associate the traditional term (theory of) language cultivation with this novel conceptualization. The third chapter introduces in detail the so-called ontological "socialism" according to which there are not only spatiotemporal entities, i.e. language means, but also non-spatiotemporal entities, i.e. language rules qua actually existing social facts, in the subject field of linguistics. The fourth chapter provides a...