Post-colonial Appropriation of English Language: Case of ELF and L1 features in HIV/AIDS Consultations in South Africa

Abstract

This study addresses a gap in medical research, especially in the field of HIV/AIDS, namely, a lack of sufficient data-driven analytical investigation into the linguistic and conversational nature of doctorpatient communication in English as lingua franca (ELF) in a multilingual setting in South Africa. It is a qualitative analytical study that investigates the features of ELF and L1 between doctors and  patients with different L1s during HIV/AIDS consultations in a postcolonial medical setting in the Western Cape Province. The data consist  of transcribed audio-recording of HIV/AIDS consultations conducted in ELF. Discourse analysis (DA) was used to decipher the  discursive features through which interactants mark their appropriation of English as a socio-cultural tool with the use of their regional  ELF. From this perspective, the results reveal characteristic linguistic features of ELF usage like borrowing, linguistic transference from L1,  the use of analogy, code-switching and local metaphors, all resulting from processes of indigenization and hybridization. The study  therefore shows that there are some linguistic and socio-cultural specificities of HIV/AIDS consultations that show that South Africans use  ELF during this discourse not just to include interactants who would otherwise have been excluded or who would have been just  minimally involved but also to put their stamp of ownership and appropriation of the English they use.