Theodorus du Plessis
Biographic Data
| ID | 5904095 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Theodorus du Plessis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Theodorus |
| FAMILY NAME | du Plessis |
| SIGNATURE | DU PLESSIS T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of the Free State |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0982-4842 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 17 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Officialisation of South African Sign Language—What Is There to Gain
The Constitutional Review Committee's 2017 recommendation that the South African Constitution be amended to include South African Sign Language (SASL) as one of South Africa's official languages gives rise to the question: What gains will such a step bring for the Deaf community, given the special status this language already enjoys? This question is answered by undertaking a comparative study on language officialisation in South Africa from a la…
The Officialisation of South African Sign Language
The South African Parliament’s Constitutional Review Committee recommended in 2017 that South African Sign Language (SASL) be declared the country’s 12th official language and that the Constitution be amended accordingly. Since the officialisation of a language entails its routinised use in official language domains and functions, one would expect this to be applicable to SASL. This would include, among other things, place-name standardisation, g…
The role of Language Planning Agencies in higher education in South Africa - comparing two cases
The question about the role of Language Planning Agencies (LPAs) in higher education is very relevant within the South African context. A range of policy provisions regarding language in higher education are characterised by the use of language policy and planning (LPP) jargon found in the Framework for Language Planning Goals, pointing to the need for a range of LPAs to be involved in this language domain. Since such involvement has been documen…
The Socio-onomastic Features of American Cattle Brands
The use of hot-iron brands as marks of livestock ownership is a tradition that has been practiced by successive generations of American cattle ranchers for over two hundred years. Research carried out by Lombard (2015 Lombard, C. 2015. The socio-onomastic significance of American cattle brands: A Montana case study. PhD diss., University of the Free State. [Google Scholar]) in the State of Montana shows that in addition to signifying ownership, c…
Language Policy Evaluation and Review at the University of the Free State
This article presents the results of an archival study of language policy review at the University of the Free State (UFS). Factors prompting a review came to the fore after unfavourable external evaluations of the institutional language policy were made public in two reports released in 2008. Since policy evaluation usually corresponds to policy review, the question probed in this article concerns how the UFS has responded to the findings from t…
Beyond the Branding Iron
For more than two centuries, American cattle ranchers have used hot-iron brands as the primary means of identifying and asserting ownership of their animals. American cattle brands consist of highly visible symbols containing letters, numbers, and/or images which may appear individually or in any combination. Every cattle brand symbol has a corresponding name that occurs in spoken and written (alphabetized) form. By virtue of purposeful naming st…
Dealing with disparities
Disparities emanating from South Africa's apartheid history still pose a number of challenges to the country, especially in education. Since the transition to democracy in 1994, the prescribed government school curriculum has undergone several revisions in an endeavour to set standards and provide instruction of a high quality. On the language education front, laws and policies have been adopted to ensure, inter alia, the maintenance and developm…
The South African Language Rights Monitor and information on language policy and planning in South Africa
The South African Language Rights Monitor (SALRM) was launched in 2003 for the purpose of making available an annual comprehensive report on the language rights situation in South Africa. Since then the focus of the report has been broadened to cover language matters in general. The core question being investigated in this article is whether the Monitor contains relevant information on language policy and planning. Joseph Lo Bianco's distinction …
Language conflict and change in language visibility in South Africa's Free State Province number plate case
Using print media coverage of language discontent between 1994 and 2002 regarding three number plate changes, which were applied in the North West, Northern Cape and Free State Provinces of South Africa, this article will analyse the dynamics of language conflict. This will be done against the background of theoretical considerations pertaining to the use of language legitimisation and delegitimisation as instruments for changing language regimes…
The role of language policy in linguistic landscape changes in a rural area of the Free State Province of South Africa
Following previous studies on language policy and language visibility changes in the Free State Province of South Africa, which yielded evidence of the systematic Anglicisation of the public domain, a question arose as to whether the same tendency is encountered in a rural context. In pursuance of this, a comprehensive linguistic landscape survey was conducted during 2008 and 2009 in three major towns of the Kopanong Municipality, in the rural so…
Language-in-education policy development in Tanzania
Tanzania is a multilingual country with 150 ethnic languages spoken within its borders. The current sociolinguistic situation in Tanzania necessitates the continued use of Kiswahili as a unifying language. The majority of urban children now actually acquire it as their first language. It is also the language most frequently used in government offices, as well as in everyday activities countrywide. Despite the adoption of one of Africa's largest l…
Neville Alexander obituary
Language policy, language visibility and the standardisation of geographical names in South Africa – the quest for coherency
Geographical names add to the realisation of ‘language visibility’ on bilingual name signs. However, bilingual name signs cannot always be divorced from the overall phenomenon of bilingual signs. A measure of coherency sometimes exists between language policy, language visibility and geographical names. Language visibility therefore comprises an important variable in analysing such coherency; geographical names are central to such an analysis. Ou…
Language politics in Africa
Language visibility in the Xhariep – a comparison of the linguistic landscape of three neighbouring towns
The majority of current linguistic landscape (LL) studies concentrate on urban areas. This study concentrates on the LL of the southern Free State, with the aim of investigating whether the LL of rural areas is as responsive to broader socio-political changes as cityscapes are. The LL not only reflects societal changes, but is also employed to impact on society by creating and maintaining power relations and (collective) identities. For this reas…
Language planning from below
The Xhariep District is the largest district municipality of the Free State Province of South Africa, covering 26% of the total land surface of this province. It comprises three local municipalities, namely Letsemeng, Kopanong and Mohokare and contains a total of 17 towns. The District is a multilingual area, with Afrikaans (37.1%) and Sotho (37.1%) as the two predominant home languages, followed by Xhosa (19.9%) as the third most prevalent home …
Language visibility and the transformation of geographical names in South Africa
This article addresses an aspect of the regulation of language visibility that is not usually covered, namely the language choice in a standardised geographical name. The decision regarding language has implications in respect of the eventual sign whereby the name is displayed in public. Decisions on the language of such names may lead to either bilingual or multilingual names. A typology of ‘bilingual names’ is thus proposed, which could also ap…
Language planning from below
The Xhariep District is the largest district municipality of the Free State Province of South Africa, covering 26% of the total land surface of this province. It comprises three local municipalities, namely Letsemeng, Kopanong and Mohokare and contains a total of 17 towns. The District is a multilingual area, with Afrikaans (37.1%) and Sotho (37.1%) as the two predominant home languages, followed by Xhosa (19.9%) as the third most prevalent home …
Beyond the Branding Iron
For more than two centuries, American cattle ranchers have used hot-iron brands as the primary means of identifying and asserting ownership of their animals. American cattle brands consist of highly visible symbols containing letters, numbers, and/or images which may appear individually or in any combination. Every cattle brand symbol has a corresponding name that occurs in spoken and written (alphabetized) form. By virtue of purposeful naming st…
Language visibility and the transformation of geographical names in South Africa
This article addresses an aspect of the regulation of language visibility that is not usually covered, namely the language choice in a standardised geographical name. The decision regarding language has implications in respect of the eventual sign whereby the name is displayed in public. Decisions on the language of such names may lead to either bilingual or multilingual names. A typology of ‘bilingual names’ is thus proposed, which could also ap…
Language politics in Africa
Language visibility in the Xhariep – a comparison of the linguistic landscape of three neighbouring towns
The majority of current linguistic landscape (LL) studies concentrate on urban areas. This study concentrates on the LL of the southern Free State, with the aim of investigating whether the LL of rural areas is as responsive to broader socio-political changes as cityscapes are. The LL not only reflects societal changes, but is also employed to impact on society by creating and maintaining power relations and (collective) identities. For this reas…
Language planning from below
The Xhariep District is the largest district municipality of the Free State Province of South Africa, covering 26% of the total land surface of this province. It comprises three local municipalities, namely Letsemeng, Kopanong and Mohokare and contains a total of 17 towns. The District is a multilingual area, with Afrikaans (37.1%) and Sotho (37.1%) as the two predominant home languages, followed by Xhosa (19.9%) as the third most prevalent home …
Language policy, language visibility and the standardisation of geographical names in South Africa – the quest for coherency
Geographical names add to the realisation of ‘language visibility’ on bilingual name signs. However, bilingual name signs cannot always be divorced from the overall phenomenon of bilingual signs. A measure of coherency sometimes exists between language policy, language visibility and geographical names. Language visibility therefore comprises an important variable in analysing such coherency; geographical names are central to such an analysis. Ou…
The role of language policy in linguistic landscape changes in a rural area of the Free State Province of South Africa
Following previous studies on language policy and language visibility changes in the Free State Province of South Africa, which yielded evidence of the systematic Anglicisation of the public domain, a question arose as to whether the same tendency is encountered in a rural context. In pursuance of this, a comprehensive linguistic landscape survey was conducted during 2008 and 2009 in three major towns of the Kopanong Municipality, in the rural so…
Language-in-education policy development in Tanzania
Tanzania is a multilingual country with 150 ethnic languages spoken within its borders. The current sociolinguistic situation in Tanzania necessitates the continued use of Kiswahili as a unifying language. The majority of urban children now actually acquire it as their first language. It is also the language most frequently used in government offices, as well as in everyday activities countrywide. Despite the adoption of one of Africa's largest l…
Neville Alexander obituary
Language conflict and change in language visibility in South Africa's Free State Province number plate case
Using print media coverage of language discontent between 1994 and 2002 regarding three number plate changes, which were applied in the North West, Northern Cape and Free State Provinces of South Africa, this article will analyse the dynamics of language conflict. This will be done against the background of theoretical considerations pertaining to the use of language legitimisation and delegitimisation as instruments for changing language regimes…
The South African Language Rights Monitor and information on language policy and planning in South Africa
The South African Language Rights Monitor (SALRM) was launched in 2003 for the purpose of making available an annual comprehensive report on the language rights situation in South Africa. Since then the focus of the report has been broadened to cover language matters in general. The core question being investigated in this article is whether the Monitor contains relevant information on language policy and planning. Joseph Lo Bianco's distinction …
Dealing with disparities
Disparities emanating from South Africa's apartheid history still pose a number of challenges to the country, especially in education. Since the transition to democracy in 1994, the prescribed government school curriculum has undergone several revisions in an endeavour to set standards and provide instruction of a high quality. On the language education front, laws and policies have been adopted to ensure, inter alia, the maintenance and developm…
Beyond the Branding Iron
For more than two centuries, American cattle ranchers have used hot-iron brands as the primary means of identifying and asserting ownership of their animals. American cattle brands consist of highly visible symbols containing letters, numbers, and/or images which may appear individually or in any combination. Every cattle brand symbol has a corresponding name that occurs in spoken and written (alphabetized) form. By virtue of purposeful naming st…
Language Policy Evaluation and Review at the University of the Free State
This article presents the results of an archival study of language policy review at the University of the Free State (UFS). Factors prompting a review came to the fore after unfavourable external evaluations of the institutional language policy were made public in two reports released in 2008. Since policy evaluation usually corresponds to policy review, the question probed in this article concerns how the UFS has responded to the findings from t…
The Socio-onomastic Features of American Cattle Brands
The use of hot-iron brands as marks of livestock ownership is a tradition that has been practiced by successive generations of American cattle ranchers for over two hundred years. Research carried out by Lombard (2015 Lombard, C. 2015. The socio-onomastic significance of American cattle brands: A Montana case study. PhD diss., University of the Free State. [Google Scholar]) in the State of Montana shows that in addition to signifying ownership, c…
The Officialisation of South African Sign Language
The South African Parliament’s Constitutional Review Committee recommended in 2017 that South African Sign Language (SASL) be declared the country’s 12th official language and that the Constitution be amended accordingly. Since the officialisation of a language entails its routinised use in official language domains and functions, one would expect this to be applicable to SASL. This would include, among other things, place-name standardisation, g…
The role of Language Planning Agencies in higher education in South Africa - comparing two cases
The question about the role of Language Planning Agencies (LPAs) in higher education is very relevant within the South African context. A range of policy provisions regarding language in higher education are characterised by the use of language policy and planning (LPP) jargon found in the Framework for Language Planning Goals, pointing to the need for a range of LPAs to be involved in this language domain. Since such involvement has been documen…
The Officialisation of South African Sign Language—What Is There to Gain
The Constitutional Review Committee's 2017 recommendation that the South African Constitution be amended to include South African Sign Language (SASL) as one of South Africa's official languages gives rise to the question: What gains will such a step bring for the Deaf community, given the special status this language already enjoys? This question is answered by undertaking a comparative study on language officialisation in South Africa from a la…
Sociology (15 works) · Linguistics (14 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Geography (9 works) · Language policy (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (8 works) · Language planning (6 works)