Multilingual lyrics and cultural shifts: A case study of Isixhosa pop music
Anele Gobodwana ORCID ↗
International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science · 2025 · Vol. 14 / Issue 6 · 193-203
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Abstract
South Africa (SA) is known for its multilingualism, with 12 official languages for teaching and learning. Bi/multilingual SA allows people to speak any language of their choice when speaking, and in most educational spaces, English is still hegemony (Gobodwana, 2023). Due to human mobility for greener pastures, this study intends to examine the linguistic shifts and changes that occur over time. The projects will focus primarily on young individuals with linguistic changes in input in that language. A qualitative method will investigate the influence of language shift in multilingual cultures on South African adolescents. The interviews were done with youth between the ages of 18 and 35. It is believed that if a society experiences psychological transformation, the language of songs may shift due to accessibility across the human space. These lyrics investigated are those of the isiXhosa language (one of the African Indigenous languages).
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Anele Gobodwana
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