Heather Brookes
Biographic Data
| ID | 90198 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Heather Brookes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Heather |
| FAMILY NAME | Brookes |
| SIGNATURE | BROOKES H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stellenbosch University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1210-9356 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 120 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Linguistic Practices of Youth in Bi‐/Multilingual Contexts
Youth linguistic practices are performative registers rather than distinct languages or varieties. Emerging in the transitional life stage between childhood and adulthood, these practices are closely tied to identity formation, resistance to authority, and social differentiation. Rather than being uniform varieties, they are dynamic practices, marked by innovation, ambiguity, and stylistic manipulation. Ecological approaches, grounded in the obse…
Examining Noun Bias in the Vocabulary Development of Xitsonga-Speaking Children Aged 16 to 32 Months
Studies of early lexical development have examined children’s vocabulary composition with the aim of quantifying early preference in the acquisition of nouns, predicates (verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), and closed-class/function words. Their findings show that a noun bias is common, suggesting it could be a universal aspect of early language development. However, only a small percentage of the world’s languages have been investigated. This paper…
Instrument adaptation for measuring early child language development across multilingual and sociocultural diverse settings
This article describes the adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for South Africa's 11 official spoken languages. The CDI is a parent-report tool that measures early language development from 8 to 30 months. We developed cross-linguistically comparable CDIs, representing two distinct language families, West Germanic and southern Bantu, using a common protocol. We describe our approach to item construction and…
Mean Length of Utterance
Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) has been widely used to measure children’s early language development in a variety of languages. This study investigates the utility of MLU to measure language development in four agglutinative and morphologically complex Southern Bantu languages. Using a variant of MLU, MLU3, based on the three longest sentences children produced, we analysed the utterances of 448 toddlers (16-32 months) collected using the MacArth…
A Crosslinguistic Study of Gesture and Lexical Development in South African Infants
This study compares early gesture and lexical development in 1,199 infants (0;8–1;6) across South Africa’s 11 official spoken languages using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures. We examined the effect of age, sex, ecological (urban-rural) setting, and maternal level of education (MLE) on early language development. Age was a significant predictor of gesture, comprehension, and production. There was no evid…
The development of speech and gesture in Sesotho narratives
Studies show that speech and gesture develop together with age, and the nature of gestures changes with increasing cognitive and discursive abilities. While there are common developmental trends, cultural differences may also impact development. We examined gesture development in narratives of Sesotho speaking children aged 5 to 6 years ( n = 12), 9 to 10 years ( n = 12) and adults ( n = 12), who watched a wordless cartoon and narrated the story …
Práticas de língua e mudança linguística entre migrantes transnacionais para a África do Sul, 1990-2020
Este artigo revisa pesquisas sobre o uso da língua entre migrantes transnacionais da África do Sul desde 1990, tomando isso como um ponto de partida conveniente como o ano do primeiro anúncio oficial da renúncia ao apartheid, levando ao seu desmantelamento legal em 1994. Considerando que a África do Sul havia incentivado a migração europeia para o país, a migração limitada da Ásia (principalmente de Taiwan) e uma migração circular controlada de t…
English in the identity practices of black male township youth in South Africa
This paper explores the role of English in peer interactions among black male youth in two Johannesburg townships. We demonstrate how social meanings attached to English shape ways of using English in the expression of social identities. English is a central tool in processes of authentification and delegitimization in relation to notions of African urban male township identity. Longitudinal ethnographic work, with recordings of spontaneous peer …
Gesture studies and anthropological perspectives
This contribution is the introduction for the special issue of Gesture entitled “Anthropology of Gesture”. As such, it raises two main questions: how do gestures contribute to the field of anthropology? And, inversely, how anthropology can improve our understanding of gesture and gestural behaviours? Of particular importance for this special issue, is the emphasis on what Lempert called “the anthropological sensibility” which aims at taking a mor…
The role of gestural polysigns and gestural sequences in teaching mathematical concepts
In this paper, we examine the conceptual pedagogical value of representational gestures in the context of teaching halving to first graders. We use the concept of the ‘polysign’ as an analytical tool and introduce the notion of a ‘mathematics gesture sequence’ to assess the conceptual role gestures play in explicating mathematical concepts. In our study of four teachers each teaching a lesson on halving, they produced representational polysign ge…
Urban Youth Languages in South Africa
Urban male youth "language" spoken in many townships in South Africa is a multimodal performance register through which status is negotiated and identities are expressed. Locally dominant languages act as a grammatical base into which a slang lexicon is inserted, accompanied by distinctive patterns of intonation and gesture. Variation reflecting social level, ranging from styles close to urban varieties of Bantu languages to metaphorically dense …
Amangama amathathu ‘The three letters’
This paper describes the emergence of a quotable gesture for HIV/AIDS in South Africa. The gesture has its origin in the Zulu phrase amangama amathathu ‘the three letters’, an expression South Africans began to use from the mid-1990s to refer to the acronym HIV. This phrase generated a plethora of words and phrases for HIV using the concept of ‘three’. With these spoken references, speakers would sometimes use a manual expression for ‘three’ by s…
Preventing Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission Among South African Adolescents
Although prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) programs are predicated on maternal behavior change, little is known about sociocultural factors affecting maternal—child care practices in this arena. The authors used narrative methods (key informant workshops, questionnaires, focus groups, and case study analysis) to explore how sociocultural context shapes adolescent mothers' ability to adhere to programmatic recommendations in r…
Factors Influencing Teen Mothers' Enrollment and Participation in Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission Services in Limpopo Province, South Africa
In this article, we examine barriers to HIV testing uptake and participation in prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) services among adolescent mothers aged 15 to 19 years in rural and urban Limpopo Province, South Africa. We used the narrative research method involving key informants constructing typical case studies of adolescent experiences with HIV testing and entry into PMTCT. Case studies formed the basis of a community-bas…
What gestures do
A Repertoire of South African Quotable Gestures
Among black urban South Africans in Gauteng province, quotable gestures are a prominent part of everyday communication. Using observations and video recordings of spontaneous communicative interactions, elicitation interviews, and a decoding test, this study presents the repertoire of quotable gestures in current use. Quotable gestures fall within three main gestural types: lexical, holophrastic, and concept, with lexical gestures constituting th…
O clever ‘He’s streetwise.’ When gestures become quotable
Among urban black South Africans in the province of Gauteng, quotable gestures are a prominent feature of everyday communication. Most notable is a gesture commonly glossed as clever meaning ‘streetwise’ and ‘city slick.’ An analysis of the clever gesture in everyday communicative situations shows that it conveys a variety of meanings and functions related to the core paradigmatic meaning of ‘seeing’ and the core sociointeractional function of ac…
Suit, Tie and a Touch of Juju'—The Ideological Construction of Africa
This paper examines the ideological construction of Africa through a critical discourse analysis of news on Africa in the British press. Through a comparative analysis of two British papers with opposing ideological positions, it demonstrates that there is a stereotypical, naturalized and dominant discourse on Africa. The analysis illustrates how the features of this discourse combine to produce particular meanings which give rise to a neo-coloni…
A Repertoire of South African Quotable Gestures
Among black urban South Africans in Gauteng province, quotable gestures are a prominent part of everyday communication. Using observations and video recordings of spontaneous communicative interactions, elicitation interviews, and a decoding test, this study presents the repertoire of quotable gestures in current use. Quotable gestures fall within three main gestural types: lexical, holophrastic, and concept, with lexical gestures constituting th…
Suit, Tie and a Touch of Juju'—The Ideological Construction of Africa
This paper examines the ideological construction of Africa through a critical discourse analysis of news on Africa in the British press. Through a comparative analysis of two British papers with opposing ideological positions, it demonstrates that there is a stereotypical, naturalized and dominant discourse on Africa. The analysis illustrates how the features of this discourse combine to produce particular meanings which give rise to a neo-coloni…
What gestures do
O clever ‘He’s streetwise.’ When gestures become quotable
Among urban black South Africans in the province of Gauteng, quotable gestures are a prominent feature of everyday communication. Most notable is a gesture commonly glossed as clever meaning ‘streetwise’ and ‘city slick.’ An analysis of the clever gesture in everyday communicative situations shows that it conveys a variety of meanings and functions related to the core paradigmatic meaning of ‘seeing’ and the core sociointeractional function of ac…
Factors Influencing Teen Mothers' Enrollment and Participation in Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission Services in Limpopo Province, South Africa
In this article, we examine barriers to HIV testing uptake and participation in prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) services among adolescent mothers aged 15 to 19 years in rural and urban Limpopo Province, South Africa. We used the narrative research method involving key informants constructing typical case studies of adolescent experiences with HIV testing and entry into PMTCT. Case studies formed the basis of a community-bas…
Amangama amathathu ‘The three letters’
This paper describes the emergence of a quotable gesture for HIV/AIDS in South Africa. The gesture has its origin in the Zulu phrase amangama amathathu ‘the three letters’, an expression South Africans began to use from the mid-1990s to refer to the acronym HIV. This phrase generated a plethora of words and phrases for HIV using the concept of ‘three’. With these spoken references, speakers would sometimes use a manual expression for ‘three’ by s…
Urban Youth Languages in South Africa
Urban male youth "language" spoken in many townships in South Africa is a multimodal performance register through which status is negotiated and identities are expressed. Locally dominant languages act as a grammatical base into which a slang lexicon is inserted, accompanied by distinctive patterns of intonation and gesture. Variation reflecting social level, ranging from styles close to urban varieties of Bantu languages to metaphorically dense …
Preventing Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission Among South African Adolescents
Although prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) programs are predicated on maternal behavior change, little is known about sociocultural factors affecting maternal—child care practices in this arena. The authors used narrative methods (key informant workshops, questionnaires, focus groups, and case study analysis) to explore how sociocultural context shapes adolescent mothers' ability to adhere to programmatic recommendations in r…
Gesture studies and anthropological perspectives
This contribution is the introduction for the special issue of Gesture entitled “Anthropology of Gesture”. As such, it raises two main questions: how do gestures contribute to the field of anthropology? And, inversely, how anthropology can improve our understanding of gesture and gestural behaviours? Of particular importance for this special issue, is the emphasis on what Lempert called “the anthropological sensibility” which aims at taking a mor…
Suit, Tie and a Touch of Juju'—The Ideological Construction of Africa
This paper examines the ideological construction of Africa through a critical discourse analysis of news on Africa in the British press. Through a comparative analysis of two British papers with opposing ideological positions, it demonstrates that there is a stereotypical, naturalized and dominant discourse on Africa. The analysis illustrates how the features of this discourse combine to produce particular meanings which give rise to a neo-coloni…
O clever ‘He’s streetwise.’ When gestures become quotable
Among urban black South Africans in the province of Gauteng, quotable gestures are a prominent feature of everyday communication. Most notable is a gesture commonly glossed as clever meaning ‘streetwise’ and ‘city slick.’ An analysis of the clever gesture in everyday communicative situations shows that it conveys a variety of meanings and functions related to the core paradigmatic meaning of ‘seeing’ and the core sociointeractional function of ac…
A Repertoire of South African Quotable Gestures
Among black urban South Africans in Gauteng province, quotable gestures are a prominent part of everyday communication. Using observations and video recordings of spontaneous communicative interactions, elicitation interviews, and a decoding test, this study presents the repertoire of quotable gestures in current use. Quotable gestures fall within three main gestural types: lexical, holophrastic, and concept, with lexical gestures constituting th…
What gestures do
Preventing Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission Among South African Adolescents
Although prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) programs are predicated on maternal behavior change, little is known about sociocultural factors affecting maternal—child care practices in this arena. The authors used narrative methods (key informant workshops, questionnaires, focus groups, and case study analysis) to explore how sociocultural context shapes adolescent mothers' ability to adhere to programmatic recommendations in r…
Factors Influencing Teen Mothers' Enrollment and Participation in Prevention of Mother-to-Child HIV Transmission Services in Limpopo Province, South Africa
In this article, we examine barriers to HIV testing uptake and participation in prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) services among adolescent mothers aged 15 to 19 years in rural and urban Limpopo Province, South Africa. We used the narrative research method involving key informants constructing typical case studies of adolescent experiences with HIV testing and entry into PMTCT. Case studies formed the basis of a community-bas…
Amangama amathathu ‘The three letters’
This paper describes the emergence of a quotable gesture for HIV/AIDS in South Africa. The gesture has its origin in the Zulu phrase amangama amathathu ‘the three letters’, an expression South Africans began to use from the mid-1990s to refer to the acronym HIV. This phrase generated a plethora of words and phrases for HIV using the concept of ‘three’. With these spoken references, speakers would sometimes use a manual expression for ‘three’ by s…
Urban Youth Languages in South Africa
Urban male youth "language" spoken in many townships in South Africa is a multimodal performance register through which status is negotiated and identities are expressed. Locally dominant languages act as a grammatical base into which a slang lexicon is inserted, accompanied by distinctive patterns of intonation and gesture. Variation reflecting social level, ranging from styles close to urban varieties of Bantu languages to metaphorically dense …
The role of gestural polysigns and gestural sequences in teaching mathematical concepts
In this paper, we examine the conceptual pedagogical value of representational gestures in the context of teaching halving to first graders. We use the concept of the ‘polysign’ as an analytical tool and introduce the notion of a ‘mathematics gesture sequence’ to assess the conceptual role gestures play in explicating mathematical concepts. In our study of four teachers each teaching a lesson on halving, they produced representational polysign ge…
Gesture studies and anthropological perspectives
This contribution is the introduction for the special issue of Gesture entitled “Anthropology of Gesture”. As such, it raises two main questions: how do gestures contribute to the field of anthropology? And, inversely, how anthropology can improve our understanding of gesture and gestural behaviours? Of particular importance for this special issue, is the emphasis on what Lempert called “the anthropological sensibility” which aims at taking a mor…
English in the identity practices of black male township youth in South Africa
This paper explores the role of English in peer interactions among black male youth in two Johannesburg townships. We demonstrate how social meanings attached to English shape ways of using English in the expression of social identities. English is a central tool in processes of authentification and delegitimization in relation to notions of African urban male township identity. Longitudinal ethnographic work, with recordings of spontaneous peer …
Práticas de língua e mudança linguística entre migrantes transnacionais para a África do Sul, 1990-2020
Este artigo revisa pesquisas sobre o uso da língua entre migrantes transnacionais da África do Sul desde 1990, tomando isso como um ponto de partida conveniente como o ano do primeiro anúncio oficial da renúncia ao apartheid, levando ao seu desmantelamento legal em 1994. Considerando que a África do Sul havia incentivado a migração europeia para o país, a migração limitada da Ásia (principalmente de Taiwan) e uma migração circular controlada de t…
The development of speech and gesture in Sesotho narratives
Studies show that speech and gesture develop together with age, and the nature of gestures changes with increasing cognitive and discursive abilities. While there are common developmental trends, cultural differences may also impact development. We examined gesture development in narratives of Sesotho speaking children aged 5 to 6 years ( n = 12), 9 to 10 years ( n = 12) and adults ( n = 12), who watched a wordless cartoon and narrated the story …
Mean Length of Utterance
Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) has been widely used to measure children’s early language development in a variety of languages. This study investigates the utility of MLU to measure language development in four agglutinative and morphologically complex Southern Bantu languages. Using a variant of MLU, MLU3, based on the three longest sentences children produced, we analysed the utterances of 448 toddlers (16-32 months) collected using the MacArth…
A Crosslinguistic Study of Gesture and Lexical Development in South African Infants
This study compares early gesture and lexical development in 1,199 infants (0;8–1;6) across South Africa’s 11 official spoken languages using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures. We examined the effect of age, sex, ecological (urban-rural) setting, and maternal level of education (MLE) on early language development. Age was a significant predictor of gesture, comprehension, and production. There was no evid…
Linguistic Practices of Youth in Bi‐/Multilingual Contexts
Youth linguistic practices are performative registers rather than distinct languages or varieties. Emerging in the transitional life stage between childhood and adulthood, these practices are closely tied to identity formation, resistance to authority, and social differentiation. Rather than being uniform varieties, they are dynamic practices, marked by innovation, ambiguity, and stylistic manipulation. Ecological approaches, grounded in the obse…
Examining Noun Bias in the Vocabulary Development of Xitsonga-Speaking Children Aged 16 to 32 Months
Studies of early lexical development have examined children’s vocabulary composition with the aim of quantifying early preference in the acquisition of nouns, predicates (verbs, adjectives, and adverbs), and closed-class/function words. Their findings show that a noun bias is common, suggesting it could be a universal aspect of early language development. However, only a small percentage of the world’s languages have been investigated. This paper…
Instrument adaptation for measuring early child language development across multilingual and sociocultural diverse settings
This article describes the adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI) for South Africa's 11 official spoken languages. The CDI is a parent-report tool that measures early language development from 8 to 30 months. We developed cross-linguistically comparable CDIs, representing two distinct language families, West Germanic and southern Bantu, using a common protocol. We describe our approach to item construction and…
Psychology (11 works) · Linguistics (10 works) · Gesture (8 works) · Hearing Impairment and Communication (8 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Communication (6 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Art (5 works)