Prestige terminology and its consequences in the development of Northern Sotho vocabulary

Abstract

The thesis investigates the factors which lead to the development of 'prestige' \nterminology in the Northern Sotho vocabulary. It investigates the factors which lead to \nthe development of 'prestige' language varieties and 'prestige' dialects, which are \nsources of 'prestige' terminology. These factors include, inter alia, urbanization, \nindustrialization, the missionary activities and standardisation. The thesis tries to \nexplain the reason why most of the Northern Sotho people do not feel free to speak \ntheir language when they are among other communitiesK__U explains the reason why the \nspeakers of the so-called 'inferior' dialects of Northern Sotho have an inferiority \ncomplex while the speakers of the 'prestige' dialects have confidence when speaking \ntheir dialects. \nThe people who are residents of the urban and industrialized areas have a high \nstandard of living due to the availability of employment opportunities, while the rural \ncommunities are usually unemployed and, as such, their standard of living is low. This \nelevates the urban community to a high status which is shared by the type of language \nthey speak. The rural communities start associating themselves with the urban \ncommunities by imitating the urban varieties in order to elevate themselves. This is \none of the reasons which lead to the widespread use of urban slang and other \nlanguage varieties which are associated with the urban areas of South Africa, i.e. the PWV (Pretoria, Witwatersrand and Vereeniging). Standardisation of Northern Sotho \nand the missionary activities within the Northern Sotho communities led to the creation \nof 'superior' and 'inferior' dialects. The missionary societies established missionary \nstations among certain Northern Sotho communities while other communities did not \nhave these stations, and became the vanguards of Western civilization among the \nindigenous people of Southern Africa. ~The dialects among which the missionary \nstations were established came to enjoy a high status since these varieties were the \nfirst to be converted to written forms. In this case, the first varieties to be considered \nduring standardisation were those which had a written orthography, and this is exactly \nwhat happened in the standardisation of Northern Sotho.

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