Contacts and contexts: Varying diasporic interactions and koineisation outcomes for Indian languages in South Africa

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on (a) a period of forced and semi‐forced migration to newly established colonies under slavery and indenture in the era of European imperialism; and (b) a post‐independence period of economic migration involving voluntary movements of large numbers of individuals to those colonies. It will show that there is no one‐size‐fits‐all outcome regarding the linguistics of migration. Rather, the patterns of migration matter greatly. The paper describes past and ongoing research into five Indian languages of South Africa: Bhojpuri‐Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Konkani and Gujarati. The diaspora varieties that evolved over a 150‐year period fall into four sociohistoric types, chiefly involving the formation of koinés as against individual dialect persistence. Implicated in these differential outcomes are important input factors like (a) areas of recruitment and origin and their linguistic diversity, (b) patterns of migration, whether unilinear, circular or chain migration, (c) internal relations among migrants with other Indian groups and (d) varied power relations involving other South Africans. The paper also presents research on the relations and interactions between the older diasporas and new Indian migrants of the global era.

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