Impediments in promoting the functional status of African languages in higher education

Abstract

This paper seeks to provide an analysis of obstacles that hinder progress in promoting the functional status of African languages in the South African higher education sector. African languages suffer marginalisation despite the existence of various empowering and restorative legislative provisions and policies. In this study, we argue that African languages have a central role in driving the transformation agenda in the South African higher education sector. In particular, marginalising African languages has disastrous implications for the achievement of social justice and cohesion, and the access to and success of indigenous African language-speaking students. A language management approach was adopted as a foregrounding theory for this paper. A language planning and policy framework was also employed as a complementary theory. The study is based on data collected through semi-structured interviews with academics in the college of humanities at a university in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. The study revealed a number of challenges, ranging from negative linguistic ideologies, orthography, weak bilingualism, among other factors. In rising to these pertinent challenges, higher education institutions need therefore to consider language management strategies designed to address language problems, particularly in multilingual contexts.