Abstract

This study discusses Kasietaal, a continuum of language practices associated with youth in the low-income areas of Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. To what extent does Kasietaal fit the description of an urban youth speech style or of a new lingua franca? To answer this question, this study discusses sociolinguistic perceptions of younger and older residents of Katutura, Windhoek's historically Black neighbourhood. It also uses linguistic materials produced by a Kasietaal performance elicited from a subset of the younger informants. The data suggest that Kasietaal is a post-independence phenomenon, with a manipulated lexicon of diverse origins as its most salient feature. But Kasietaal is not just a “floating lexicon” like South Africa's Tsotsitaal: It is tied to an Afrikaans variety with low-status lingua franca functions, with which it is likely to be co-evolving for want of other linguistic options for projecting urban inter-ethnic solidarity.

摘要

这项研究讨论了Kasietaal，这是纳米比亚首都温得和克低收入地区与青年有关的语言实践的连续体。卡西耶塔尔在多大程度上适合描述城市青年的演讲风格或新的通用语言？为了回答这个问题，本研究讨论了温得和克历史上黑人聚居区卡图图拉（Katutur）的年轻人和老年人的社会语言观念。它还使用了由一些较年轻的线人产生的Kasietaal表演所产生的语言材料。数据表明，Kasietaal是独立后的现象，其最突出的特征是操纵了各种起源的词典。但是Kasietaal不仅像南非的Tsotsitaal一样是“浮动词典”：它与具有低状态通用语功能的南非荷兰语品种联系在一起，