The thesis investigates the factors which lead to the development of 'prestige'
terminology in the Northern Sotho vocabulary. It investigates the factors which lead to
the development of 'prestige' language varieties and 'prestige' dialects, which are
sources of 'prestige' terminology. These factors include, inter alia, urbanization,
industrialization, the missionary activities and standardisation. The thesis tries to
explain the reason why most of the Northern Sotho people do not feel free to speak
their language when they are among other communitiesK__U explains the reason why the
speakers of the so-called 'inferior' dialects of Northern Sotho have an inferiority
complex while the speakers of the 'prestige' dialects have confidence when speaking
their dialects.
The people who are residents of the urban and industrialized areas have a high
standard of living due to the availability of employment opportunities, while the rural
communities are usually unemployed and, as such, their standard of living is low. This
elevates the urban community to a high status which is shared by the type of language
they speak. The rural communities start associating themselves with the urban
communities by imitating the urban varieties in order to elevate themselves. This is
one of the reasons which lead to the widespread use of urban slang and other
language varieties which are associated with the urban areas of South Africa, i.e. the PWV (Pretoria, Witwatersrand and Vereeniging). Standardisation of Northern Sotho
and the missionary activities within the Northern Sotho communities led to the creation
of 'superior' and 'inferior' dialects. The missionary societies established missionary
stations among certain Northern Sotho communities while other communities did not
have these stations, and became the vanguards of Western civilization among the
indigenous people of Southern Africa. ~The dialects among which the missionary
stations were established came to enjoy a high status since these varieties were the
first to be converted to written forms. In this case, the first varieties to be considered
during standardisation were those which had a written orthography, and this is exactly
what happened in the standardisation of Northern Sotho. / African Languages / D.Litt. et Phil. (African Languages)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:umkn-dsp01.int.unisa.ac.za:10500/17479 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Mojela, Victor Maropeng |
| Contributors | Kosch, I. M. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (202 leaves) |
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