Home to
Lingua Franca Net

Back to
African Identities

Over to
Lingua Francas

Over to
WE Gate

The Corpus of Black and Coloured South African English in Contact

is the data base which we established during our project "Linguistic reflections of re-contextualised identities in global and local lingua-franca-discourse". It consists of ethnographic transcripts of group interviews, all of which involved interactions between black and coloured speakers of English. In total, the interviews amount to 25 hours. The 55 speakers participating in the interviews reflect the social diversity of South Africa, ranging from strollers via hotel employees and crafts(wo)men to university students and lecturers.

"Julia" and "Themba" are interviews with a home help and a carpenter. The "Builders" recordings are interviews with black and coloured employees at a construction site in greater Cape Town. "Art Crafters" and "Art of Beads" are recordings of group interviews with craftspeople at various CBOs throughout Cape Town. The "Wellington Gardens" recordings and the "Bay Hotel" recording are conversations between black and coloured hotel employes. And the "Students" recordings are group interviews with students at Cape Towns different universities.

The following transcripts are available for download: Art Crafters Art of Beads 1 Bay Hotel Builders 1 Builders 2 Julia Students 1 Students 2 Students 5 Themba Wellington Gardens 1 Wellington Gardens 2 Wellington Gardens 3

To open the files, you will need to obtain passwords. Please fill out the license agreement, which is available at the "License" link, and send it to us.

A sneak preview of one of the transcripts is available here, and the key to the transcription symbols is here.