Ana Deumert
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 473593 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Ana Deumert |
| NOMBRES | Ana |
| APELLIDO | Deumert |
| FIRMA | DEUMERT A |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0199-8955 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 45 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 135 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 40 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 5 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2003 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Of Listening and Speaking
So you think you can play with me' - Louis Moholo-Moholo and the semiotics of freedom
When things fall apart
This article explores the dialectics of hope and anger as responses to what Lear (2006) called 'devastation', the colonial-capitalist destruction of the ontological groundings of life. Lear argues that 'radical hope' allows for 'survival' in such contexts, and his work has been influential. Yet, I want to be careful with relying on hope as a political affect. Hope is also a sociality-sanctioned emotion. Anger, by contrast, remains frowned upon an…
From Southern Theory to Decolonizing Sociolinguistics
Linguistics in a Minor Key—Of Atmospheres, Voice(s), and Ethics
In this article, I reflect on the complexities of signification and suggest that the study of music allows us to push forward the radical project of dis-inventing language in applied linguistics (Makoni and Pennycook 2007). In thinking about language, music, and meaning, I focus on a song that has travelled around the globe and that has sounded the Black radical tradition: Aretha Franklin’s song Respect (1967). I explore the multiple significatio…
Positive vibrations – voice, sound, and resonance as insurgency
The very idea of ‘critical language studies’ encourages one to develop a sense of criticality; that is, to interrogate the concepts that one uses, to explore the boundaries of one’s professional practice, and to push one’s thinking, if necessary, into new directions. This is typically done with the aim of contributing to epistemic as well as socio-economic justice. In this article, I think with, and through, the sociolinguistic concept of ‘voice’…
From Southern Theory to Decolonizing Sociolinguistics
Exploring (Im)mobilities
The chapters in this volume use ethnographically-based methodologies to address the interconnectedness between forms of mobility and immobility in international migratory processes or in discriminatory practices within the boundaries of national states, thus bringing to light a sociolinguistics responsive to 21st century concerns.
The sound of absent-presence
This article engages with the theme of the proposed special issue in a perhaps unexpected way: for me, the ‘translinguistic movement’ is a pertinent reminder to move beyond the boundaries of language and other visible/audible modalities that are involved in semiosis. It also encourages us to move beyond the naïve empiricism that has shaped sociolinguistic work over the decades. The ‘sociolinguistics of the spectre’ that I develop in this article …
Beachspaces
Pasts, presents and futures
In this article, I reflect on the future of macro-sociolinguistic research from a global-south perspective. I discuss the role that activism has played in scholarly work, and how such activism was hampered by persistent ideologies of ‘thingification’; that is, ideologies that created languages and nations as ‘objects’ (to be managed and controlled by states and local/national/global elites). I ground the history of such discourses in colonialism-…
The ordinariness and extraordinariness of resistance
Transcending circulations of southern and northern concepts
This paper constitutes an introduction to our special issue on Transcending circulations of southern and northern concepts: Towards mobile and dialogic perspectives on language puts the spotlight on the hegemonies and marginalizations of mainstream academic productions and the circulations of concepts in the contemporary fields that are labelled Multilingualism, Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics, etc. Transcending the demarcations that have e…
Insurgent words
This article explores language ideologies and sociolinguistic scales from the perspective of decolonization. Coloniality is a multi-scalar world system that affects micro-level interactions in multiple locales, both in the metropole and in the former colonies. Not only does coloniality exist on a world scale, resistance to it is scaled up too and engulfs the world. The linguistic tradition that I seek to trace in this article is imaginative, crea…
Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics
The discipline of linguistics in general, and the field of African linguistics in particular, appear to be facing a paradigm shift. There is a strong movement away from established methodologies and theoretical approaches, especially structural linguistics and generativism, and a broad move towards critical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology. These developments have encouraged a greater awareness and careful discussion of …
Colonial and Decolonial Linguistics
Translingual practices and neoliberal policies. Attitudes and strategies of African skilled migrants in Anglophone workplaces
In this short book (66 pages, including references) Suresh Canagarajah responds to critiques by Aneta Pavlenko, Ryuko Kubota and Nelson Flores, who have suggested that we might be witnessing a ‘col
Sensational signs, authority and the public sphere
The article explores the emotional regimes of settler colonialism in post-apartheid South Africa. The focus is on apocalyptic fears of the imagined eradication of whiteness. These fears are articulated in response to postcolonial/decolonial interpellations of abject whiteness, and are made visible in a range of sensational signs that circulate online and offline. The signs cluster around two themes that are central to the ideologies of settler co…
The multivocality of heritage – moments, encounters and mobilities
This chapter considers attitudes to, and uses of, regional dialect in places that have been affected by superdiversity: the UK, the USA and France. Regional dialects reflect earlier diversities, but are perceived as threatened by superdiversity. The first section provides a historical overview of attitudes to dialectal diversity in Britain, and more specifically in England. The second section of this chapter sets out the theoretical approaches mo…
Mimesis and mimicry in language – Creativity and aesthetics as the performance of (dis-)semblances 1
Sociolinguistics and language creativity
My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’
In this article we provide a discussion of present-day Khoisan activism in Cape Town, South Africa. The main actors in this movement are people whose heritage is complex: their history can be traced back to the early days of the colonial settlement, reflecting the interactions and cohabitation of the indigenous Khoisan, slaves and the European settlers. Currently, their main languages are English and Afrikaans; yet, efforts are also made by activ…
My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’
Article ‘My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’: Language, desire and performance among Cape Town’s Khoisan language activists was published on November 1, 2017 in the journal Multilingua (volume 36, issue 6)
A luta continua- black queer visibilities and philosophies of hospitality in a South African rural town
In 1996, the inclusion of sexual orientation in the anti-discrimination clause of South Africa's post-apartheid constitution alignedLGBT+ rights with the larger struggle against oppression and inequality. In this paper we focus on a small, rural town in the Eastern Cape, a town we call Forestville. How areLGBT+ identities made visible in this town? How do residents respond to the diverse sexualities they encounter? How do they talk about diversit…
The performance of a ludic self on social network(ing) sites
Sociolinguistics and Mobile Communication
Have wireless mobile communication technologies changed the way people talk to one another? What does it mean to be able to speak or write to anyone, anywhere, 24/7/365, and get an immediate response? And what does the current profusion of these technologies mean for the study of language in social life? Do we need to develop new approaches, methodologies and theories? Taking a global perspective, this volume provides readers with a nuanced, ethn…
Texting Africa
This paper discusses African multilingual digital writing, focusing on one digital genre: texting. Our analysis draws on quantitative and qualitative data from five highly multilingual African countries: Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa. Writers are shown to draw on local as well as global linguistic resources in crafting their messages. Being a good texter requires the performance of 'textual linguistic dexterity': the abi…
Tracking the demographics of (urban) language shift – an analysis of South African census data
This paper provides an analysis of language shift from African languages to English (and Afrikaans) in South Africa, using home language data from the South African population census (1996 and 2001). Although census data have been criticised for its ‘essentialist’ construction of language, they nevertheless provide sociolinguists with a unique opportunity to analyse language choice and shift across large populations, based on a full head-count ra…
Global Migration and Social Protection Rights
A growing number of students cross national borders for their studies. An expanding global market in higher education has been created. Yet significant gaps exist in the governance of international students' rights. As well as being educational service beneficiaries, cross-border students are migrants, workers, consumers and human beings. A broader view of students, as individuals deserving of ‘social and economic security’, is superior to that w…
Language, Informal Networks and Social Protection
Rural–urban migration is a major phenomenon in the developing world. This article is concerned with understanding the ways in which rural–urban migrants have their social protection needs met following their move to the city. We report results from a survey of rural–urban migrants in four low-income areas in Cape Town, South Africa. We look at the experiences of migrants in terms of finding employment in the urban environment, and the impact of l…
It would be nice if they could give us more language' - Serving South Africa's multilingual patient base
My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’
In this article we provide a discussion of present-day Khoisan activism in Cape Town, South Africa. The main actors in this movement are people whose heritage is complex: their history can be traced back to the early days of the colonial settlement, reflecting the interactions and cohabitation of the indigenous Khoisan, slaves and the European settlers. Currently, their main languages are English and Afrikaans; yet, efforts are also made by activ…
Sociolinguistics and language creativity
Mobile language choices — The use of English and isiXhosa in text messages (SMS)
This paper looks at language choice and use in South African SMS communication (texting) among bilingual (isiXhosa / English-speaking) users. Although English is the preferred language for most of the 22 participants (aged between 18 and 27), SMSes also create a forum for isiXhosa literacy (either in isiXhosa messages or in mixed English-isiXhosa messages). The English-language SMSes produced by these bilingual speakers share many of the features…
Digital superdiversity
Sensational signs, authority and the public sphere
The article explores the emotional regimes of settler colonialism in post-apartheid South Africa. The focus is on apocalyptic fears of the imagined eradication of whiteness. These fears are articulated in response to postcolonial/decolonial interpellations of abject whiteness, and are made visible in a range of sensational signs that circulate online and offline. The signs cluster around two themes that are central to the ideologies of settler co…
Insurgent words
This article explores language ideologies and sociolinguistic scales from the perspective of decolonization. Coloniality is a multi-scalar world system that affects micro-level interactions in multiple locales, both in the metropole and in the former colonies. Not only does coloniality exist on a world scale, resistance to it is scaled up too and engulfs the world. The linguistic tradition that I seek to trace in this article is imaginative, crea…
A luta continua- black queer visibilities and philosophies of hospitality in a South African rural town
In 1996, the inclusion of sexual orientation in the anti-discrimination clause of South Africa's post-apartheid constitution alignedLGBT+ rights with the larger struggle against oppression and inequality. In this paper we focus on a small, rural town in the Eastern Cape, a town we call Forestville. How areLGBT+ identities made visible in this town? How do residents respond to the diverse sexualities they encounter? How do they talk about diversit…
Imbodela zamakhumsha – Reflections on standardization and destandardization
While the concept of standardization is well-established in linguistics, destandardization is a more recent addition to linguistic terminology. Drawing on historiographic and ethnographic data from isiXhosa, one of South Africa's indigenous languages, this paper reflects on both of these concepts. Standardization is discussed as a modernist grand narrative whose continued application to linguistic thinking has outlived its usefulness, and standar…
The unbearable lightness of being bilingual
Markedness and salience in language contact and second-language acquisition
The ordinariness and extraordinariness of resistance
My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’
Article ‘My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’: Language, desire and performance among Cape Town’s Khoisan language activists was published on November 1, 2017 in the journal Multilingua (volume 36, issue 6)
Germanic Standardizations
This volume presents a comparative, socio-historical study of the Germanic standard languages (Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Frisian, German, Icelandic, Low German, Luxemburgish, Norwegian, Scots, Swedish, Yiddish as well as the Caribbean and Pacific Creole languages). Each of the 16 orginal chapters systematically discusses central aspects of the standardization process, including dialect selection, codification, elaboration and di…
Standard Languages As Civic Rituals – Theory and Examples
Bringing speakers back in? Epistemological reflections on speaker-oriented explanations of language change
Markedness and salience in language contact and second-language acquisition
Praatjies and boerenbrieven
From the 1820s humorous representations of the local vernacular began to appear in the periodical press of the Cape Colony. These popular texts developed into a highly productive genre and influenced the formation of an early Afrikaans written norm by shaping expectations of social, linguistic and local authenticity. Whereas the early vernacular representations fall largely into the category of racist parodies or ‘mock language’ (Hill 1995), late…
Global Migration and Social Protection Rights
A growing number of students cross national borders for their studies. An expanding global market in higher education has been created. Yet significant gaps exist in the governance of international students' rights. As well as being educational service beneficiaries, cross-border students are migrants, workers, consumers and human beings. A broader view of students, as individuals deserving of ‘social and economic security’, is superior to that w…
Language, Informal Networks and Social Protection
Rural–urban migration is a major phenomenon in the developing world. This article is concerned with understanding the ways in which rural–urban migrants have their social protection needs met following their move to the city. We report results from a survey of rural–urban migrants in four low-income areas in Cape Town, South Africa. We look at the experiences of migrants in terms of finding employment in the urban environment, and the impact of l…
The unbearable lightness of being bilingual
Loneliness and International Students
In a study of international student security, consisting of 200 intensive interviews with students, resident onshore in Australia, it was found that two thirds of the group had experienced problems of loneliness and/or isolation, especially in the early months. According to Weiss, students experience both personal loneliness because of the loss of contact with families and social loneliness because of the loss of networks. Both forms of lonelines…
Mobile language choices — The use of English and isiXhosa in text messages (SMS)
This paper looks at language choice and use in South African SMS communication (texting) among bilingual (isiXhosa / English-speaking) users. Although English is the preferred language for most of the 22 participants (aged between 18 and 27), SMSes also create a forum for isiXhosa literacy (either in isiXhosa messages or in mixed English-isiXhosa messages). The English-language SMSes produced by these bilingual speakers share many of the features…
Namibian Kiche Duits
This paper provides the first overview of the history, sociolinguistics, and structures of Namibian Kiche Duits (lit. “kitchen German”), which is today a dying contact variety. The analysis draws on archival records, colonial publications, and memoirs, as well as over 120 sociolinguistic interviews conducted in 2000. Early varieties of Namibian Kiche Duits emerged from 1900 under German colonial rule. The language was used primarily for inter-eth…
I-Dollar EYI One!1–Ethnolinguistic Fractionalisation, Communication Networks and Economic Participation–Lessons from Cape Town, South Africa
The relationship between ethnolinguistic fractionalisation and development has long been of interest to economists and linguists. While econometric analyses have shown relatively stable interactions between high levels of fractionalisation and low indices of development, the mechanisms underlying this relationship are still unclear. This paper explores the importance of fragmented versus unified communication networks for socio-economic developme…
Imbodela zamakhumsha – Reflections on standardization and destandardization
While the concept of standardization is well-established in linguistics, destandardization is a more recent addition to linguistic terminology. Drawing on historiographic and ethnographic data from isiXhosa, one of South Africa's indigenous languages, this paper reflects on both of these concepts. Standardization is discussed as a modernist grand narrative whose continued application to linguistic thinking has outlived its usefulness, and standar…
Tracking the demographics of (urban) language shift – an analysis of South African census data
This paper provides an analysis of language shift from African languages to English (and Afrikaans) in South Africa, using home language data from the South African population census (1996 and 2001). Although census data have been criticised for its ‘essentialist’ construction of language, they nevertheless provide sociolinguists with a unique opportunity to analyse language choice and shift across large populations, based on a full head-count ra…
It would be nice if they could give us more language' - Serving South Africa's multilingual patient base
‘Every day a new shop pops up’ – South Africa's ‘New’ Chinese Diaspora and the Multilingual Transformation of Rural Towns
In this paper we will provide a preliminary overview of the Chinese diaspora in South Africa, with particular focus on non-metropolitan, rural contexts. The migrations of the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries have produced a complex array of Chinese communities around the world. While we know a fair amount about the Chinese diasporas in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and also diasporic communities within Asia,…
Xhosa in town (revisited) - space, place and language
This article looks at a particular type of migration, that is, the often cyclical and pendulum-like movements from the villages of the Eastern Cape to Cape Town (South Africa). The ethnographic analysis focuses on the semiotic practices migrants engage in as they make the city their home, and develop urban styles of speaking and being (i.e. fashion themselves as urban personae). Drawing on Bank (2011) and Dick (2010, 2011), these two processes ar…
Texting Africa
This paper discusses African multilingual digital writing, focusing on one digital genre: texting. Our analysis draws on quantitative and qualitative data from five highly multilingual African countries: Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa. Writers are shown to draw on local as well as global linguistic resources in crafting their messages. Being a good texter requires the performance of 'textual linguistic dexterity': the abi…
The performance of a ludic self on social network(ing) sites
Digital superdiversity
Sociolinguistics and Mobile Communication
Have wireless mobile communication technologies changed the way people talk to one another? What does it mean to be able to speak or write to anyone, anywhere, 24/7/365, and get an immediate response? And what does the current profusion of these technologies mean for the study of language in social life? Do we need to develop new approaches, methodologies and theories? Taking a global perspective, this volume provides readers with a nuanced, ethn…
My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’
In this article we provide a discussion of present-day Khoisan activism in Cape Town, South Africa. The main actors in this movement are people whose heritage is complex: their history can be traced back to the early days of the colonial settlement, reflecting the interactions and cohabitation of the indigenous Khoisan, slaves and the European settlers. Currently, their main languages are English and Afrikaans; yet, efforts are also made by activ…
My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’
Article ‘My tribe is the Hessequa. I’m Khoisan. I’m African’: Language, desire and performance among Cape Town’s Khoisan language activists was published on November 1, 2017 in the journal Multilingua (volume 36, issue 6)
A luta continua- black queer visibilities and philosophies of hospitality in a South African rural town
In 1996, the inclusion of sexual orientation in the anti-discrimination clause of South Africa's post-apartheid constitution alignedLGBT+ rights with the larger struggle against oppression and inequality. In this paper we focus on a small, rural town in the Eastern Cape, a town we call Forestville. How areLGBT+ identities made visible in this town? How do residents respond to the diverse sexualities they encounter? How do they talk about diversit…
The multivocality of heritage – moments, encounters and mobilities
This chapter considers attitudes to, and uses of, regional dialect in places that have been affected by superdiversity: the UK, the USA and France. Regional dialects reflect earlier diversities, but are perceived as threatened by superdiversity. The first section provides a historical overview of attitudes to dialectal diversity in Britain, and more specifically in England. The second section of this chapter sets out the theoretical approaches mo…
Sociology (37 obras) · Linguistics (27 obras) · Multilingual Education and Policy (24 obras) · Philosophy (21 obras) · Political science (16 obras) · Anthropology (13 obras) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (13 obras) · Sociolinguistics (13 obras) · Psychology (11 obras) · Gender Studies (10 obras)