Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus

Radical homoscapes: The linguistic landscape of a gay sauna in Africa

2026-03-22T10:15:48+00:00

This article examines the linguistic landscape of a homosexual space (homoscape), specifically a gay sauna located in a major city in South Africa – one of the two openly homosexual male bathhouses in Africa. By using the embodied type of an autoethnographic method and couching the observations within the broader scholarship of linguistic landscapes, the author demonstrates that the South African homoscape complies with several characteristics of the homoscapes located in other countries and analysed in scholarship thus far. That is, signage indexes homosexual semiotics and produces a homospace/identity; signage has a restrictive effect on the homosexual landscape/identities; signage is multimodal (visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile); English entertains a leading position in the signage; and graffiti is the most transgressive orthographic signage type used. Nevertheless, certain differences between the South African homoscape and the other documented homoscapes can also be observed. The most important of them is the absence of glocalization and any references to local African cultures and indigenous languages and, overall, a barely noticeable extent of multilingualism. The author concludes that the researcher’s body can form part of a homoscape and argues for the ethically driven inclusion of researchers in their research as the objects of their study.

Deconstructing the concept of colonial languages: The South-West Indian Ocean Islands

2026-03-22T10:37:13+00:00

The central argument of this paper is that it is misleading to adopt simple, homogeneous frameworks that are based on the traditional understanding of colonial domination and the legacies of colonialism when examining the link between languages and colonization. The label colonial language is not a first-order phenomenon. Its meaning is not determined by how the main historical events unfolded. While narratives of colonialism vary from one country to another—and this lies beyond the scope of the present paper in spite of some empirical research undertaken—it may be argued that the term colonial language does not carry a universal meaning that can be applied across all national contexts.

This article analyses some of the main socio-political events linked to languages which have unfolded in the South-West Indian Ocean Islands and which can shed light on the connection between languages and colonization-decolonization. The South-West Indian Ocean comprises several islands grouped into four island states (namely, Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles) and two French island territories (namely, La Réunion and Mayotte). The first section will show that there is no strict correspondence between colonization defined from a chronological and geographical/political perspective and the meanings attached to colonial languages. The second section will examine the construct of colonial languages which implies that colonial powers adopted a clear and stereotypical approach to languages in their colonies. The third section challenges the idea that there is a single colonial legacy in terms of the relationship between languages and society. In particular, the meanings that colonial languages can have in the contemporary era depend on changing contextual issues and socio-cultural mutations.

On two developments of (deontic) must in L1 South African English

2026-03-27T16:38:00+00:00

This paper reconsiders the status of what is normally described as deontic must in L1 South African English (SAE), presently understood as a medium-to-weak obligation marker in the grammar (Wasserman & van Rooy 2014). The paper focuses on two uses of the modal where an additional meaning of the speaker’s desire and wish (for the addressee) parasites on the modal. These two uses also exhibit distinctive morphosyntactic behaviour. The first part of the paper presents recorded data and gives an informal descriptive account of the modal in the two cases of interest. The second part argues that, in these cases, must has undergone a process of change known as pragmaticalization, language change that leads into the discourse domain (Biberauer 2018; Diewald 2011; Müller & Axel-Tober 2025). Tests from Coppock (2012) and Potts (2005) indicate that new discourse-related meaning has lexicalized into the content of the modal in each case, such that it is distinct from the medium-to-weak obligation marker. The paper finally considers the elements of meaning in these two cases that make must different from canonical deontic must, showing how the components of meaning in its canonical interpretation provide optimal material for the SAE interpretation evidenced in this paper. A new label for SAE must is then proposed for the modal.