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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Basements of Babylon: Language and Literacy on the South African Gold Mines |
Author: | Brown, David M. |
Year: | 1988 |
Periodical: | Social Dynamics |
Volume: | 14 |
Issue: | 1 |
Period: | June |
Pages: | 46-56 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | miners literacy gold mining multilingualism Labor and Employment Education and Oral Traditions Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533958808458440 |
Abstract: | This paper focuses on language and literacy policies on the South African gold mines, covering the period from 1945 to the present. It presents empirical evidence of literacy distribution patterns amongst workers under capitalist industrialization, which indicates that there is little correlation between social mobility in the workplace, remuneration and workers' attainment in literacy. It argues that there is added complexity to any consideration of literacy and its social consequences in the case of South African industry in general and specifically of the gold mines, where the multilingual context includes a dominant former colonial language, English; an indigenous language/creole, Afrikaans; vernacular languages consisting of largely two groups, Nguni and Sotho; and the pidgin, Fanakalo. Bibliogr. |