Lanham (1995) describes the influence of English in South Africa in the following
manner: ‘Throughout its history…the formative and constraining influence on
Black South African English (BSAfE) has been the English of mother-tongue
speakers in South Africa’ (36). The implications of Lanham’s perspective continue
to find further expression in the media, academic discourse, and government
policy statements regarding the perceived status of English in South Africa after
1994. However, I do not wish to survey positions, articulated so often they have
become clichéd (see, for example, McDermott 1998; Barnes 1999;
Kamwangamalu and Virasamy 2000), but rather to contend that, far from
supporting English as a lingua franca, the key arguments made for both BSAfE,
and Standard South African English (SSAE), potentially misrepresent each other
and obscure concomitant debates which must surely arise for standardised
indigenous languages as well.
If any debate consists of centrist and peripheral (though that is not to say
marginal) perspectives then this one is also no exception. Thus I wish, initially, to
explore the implications of arguments presented by Alexander (1989, 2001), and
Makalela (1998), and others for the use of Black South African English (BSAfE)
as a lingua franca in South Africa. I then contrast these arguments with those
made for the continued use of Standard South African English (SSAE) as
presented by Wright (1995 in Lanham) and Lanham et al (1995). It is possible to
suggest that the claims made for the defence or promotion of both varieties appear
to exaggerate or at least simplify cited research. These distortions, in turn, provide
some opportunity to explore assumptions made in the debate, if only to show
where these cease to be useful for a constructive engagement with the issues. The
debate concerning English as a lingua franca, as represented in paragraphs to
follow, is selective of certain perspectives and, though I have indicated where
points made within academic discourse are echoed or distorted in the media, it has
not been possible to list and describe all the arguments to date.1