Project
The onomastic (re)presentation of ‘self’ and ‘other’ in Zimbabwean political discourse (1980-2025)
The Zimbabwean political landscape has been toxic and polarised since the formative years of African nationalist movements in the early 1950s.
Project
The Expansion of West African Pidgin: Social and Linguistic Factors
West African Pidgin (Pidgin) is a group of related, mutually intelligible varieties that emerged from contact between English and African languages in coastal West Africa.
Project
Activist Language Scholarship: A Framework for Integrity
Our project joins sociolinguistics, philosophy of science, and research ethics in an extensive and close collaboration to explore the conditions of integrity in politically engaged scholarship.
Project
Literacy Practices of Multilingual Students
Traditionally, teachers of reading and writing have assumed texts as monolingual and monomodal.
Publication
Language, translanguaging, and epistemic justice: Multilingual learning across the curriculum
Kerfoot, Caroline. 2024. Language, translanguaging, and epistemic justice: Multilingual learning across the curriculum. South African Journa...
Publication
“Eish it’s getting really interesting”: borrowed interjections in South African English
Unuabonah, Foluke O. and Mampoi I. Mabena. 2024. “Eish it’s getting really interesting”: borrowed interjections in South African English. Mu...
Project
Space and temporality in family language policy: Multilingualism, linguistic repertoires and lived experiences
With increased transnational migration in recent years, children growing up with more than one language has become more and more common as people cross borders, integrate into new cultural-linguistic landscapes, form intermarriages and partnerships, and create multilingual families.
Publication
Multilingual pragmatic markers in South African English
Unuabonah, Foluke and Noloyiso Mtembu. 2023. Multilingual pragmatic markers in South African English. Southern African Linguistics and Appli...
Publication
Borrowed Swahili discourse-pragmatic features in Kenyan and Tanzanian Englishes
Unuabonah, Foluke Olayinka and Loveluck Philip Muro. 2022. Borrowed Swahili discourse-pragmatic features in Kenyan and Tanzanian Englishes. ...
Project
The ambiguity of English as an academic lingua franca: Perspectives from South Africa
Grounded in linguistic anthropology, the primary objective of this project is to provide a nuanced ethnographic account of how the sociocultural ambiguity of English as an academic lingua franca is one of its most defining features in the South Africa education system.
Project
Pragmatic Marker Borrowing in African Englishes: A Corpus-Based Study
There is extensive study of pragmatic marker borrowing from Asian languages by speakers of Asian Englishes, without a full exploration of pragmatic markers borrowed from African languages into African Englishes.
Project
Multilingual ecologies
Languages change and adapt as they exist in the minds and practices of multilinguals.
