Acceso usuarios
Ana Deumert
This article looks at a particular type of migration, that is, the often cyclical and pendulum-like movements from the villages of the Eastern Cape to Cape Town (South Africa). The ethnographic analysis focuses on the semiotic practices migrants engage in as they make the city their home, and develop urban styles of speaking and being (i.e. fashion themselves as urban personae). Drawing on Bank (2011) and Dick (2010, 2011), these two processes are referred to as place-making and people-making. Two urban ways of speaking are discussed in some detail: the emblematic use of English material in an isiXhosa frame (indexing aspiration and mobility), and the symbolic meanings of Tsotsitaal as a quintessentially urban speech style which indexes social as well local (neighborhood) identity. However, as speakers navigate the complex, shifting and often stylized variety space of the city they draw not only on speech forms which are indexical of urbanity, but also on “deep” isiXhosa, that is, a style of speaking which evokes the normativities of traditional, rural authenticity.
