Creating multilingual spaces: Sindiwe Magona’s autobiographical works

Abstract

Writing against the backdrop of a complex postcolonial, multilingual scenario and discriminatory language policies of post-apartheid, independent South Africa, contemporary South African anglophone writers resort to appropriation and abrogation of English language by mixing marginalised languages to actualise their own linguistic identities. Sindiwe Magona has amalgamated her mother-tongue isiXhosa with the English language to counter the dominance of the English language and to question the language policies of both apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. Specifically, in
her autobiographical writings, To My Children’s Children (1990) and Forced to Grow (1992), she has used code switching, translation and transliteration to relate the Xhosa culture and life. These works exemplify the process of a South African writer’s linguistic struggle to reach a global audience and to enlighten them about the issues of linguistic discrimination in South Africa while writing in English. Applying the theory of translanguaging, this paper analyses Magona’s autobiographies and aims to discuss how bilingual or multilingual writers gain their authority or linguistic competence in a lingua franca and create a dialogic space in their literary works that dismantles the hegemony of English.