Enhancing the vocabulary inventory of Xitsonga in the academic domain by importing from initiation schools and traditional health practice

Abstract

The article aims to discover how university students and their lecturers can contribute to the valuing of Xitsonga as one of the South African indigenous languages in the academic domain. It focuses on ways of enhancing Xitsonga vocabulary’s inventory in the academic domain from a translation perspective. The study employs a functional analysis in a paradigm for descriptive translation studies to examine the ways in which meaning is expressed in the English-Xitsonga pair. It explores the ‘free voices’ of some Xitsonga postgraduate students evoked in their research reports’ front matters, with a focus on the ‘acknowledgements’. It argues that the tone of verisimilitude found in these front matters seems detached from the other parts constituting the content’s style. It also argues that the style applied by students in their ‘free space’ should serve as a benchmark, and precede the standardisation of the Xitsonga orthographic system for a formal academic register. It concludes that omission of this creative parlance and stilted diction in the development of the report’s content turns out to be a stumbling block to meaningful enhancement of the vocabulary inventory of Xitsonga in the academic domain. The study posits that this approach should be exploited to expand the language repertoire in the academic domain.