RECLAIMING MULTILINGUALISM: AFRICAN LANGUAGES IN THE LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE OF CAPE TOWN (OBSERVATORY, SALT RIVER AND WOODSTOCK)

This article studies the visibility of African languages (official/statal and non-official/non-statal as well as autochthonous/traditional and migrant/new) in the linguistic landscape (LL) of three nei ghborhoods in Cape Town (South Africa): Observatory, Salt River and Woodstock. The empirical evidence demonstrates that African languages are highly visible in the signage, both in quantitative and qualitative terms. Signs with African languages are frequent and constitute the second most common signage type after English. African signage draws on a diversified range of Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic languages, exploits various kinds of supports, pertains to different domains of use, and attests to several manners of multilingual coexistence, with African linguistic elements ranging from simple to complex. The presence of non-South-African African languages in the signage is attributed to migratory pressures or the religion-related identity of a local ethnic group. As most such signs are bottom-up, the visibility of African languages in the signage and its profoundly mul tilingual character stem from (the agency of) the local communities themselves. Members of the autochthonous and migrant groups reclaim the landscape of the area in which they live by marking it with the linguistic material that reflects their own linguistic repertoires. Overall, the LL of Obser vatory, Salt River and Woodstock closely matches the neighborhoods’ soundscape – a phenomenon that is relatively rare in LLs across Africa.