Linguistic faces of multilingualism: Billboards and notices in Sesotho sa Leboa

Abstract

Most establishments in the private and public sectors of South Africa seem to embrace multilingualism. This is evidenced by the linguistic landscape of the country in the form of notices, announcements and advertisements. The gesture, which is in direct response to the Constitution of South Africa, reflects good intentions for inclusivity and language advancement. Since messages are imparted through language, the languages in which they are written form a crucial element of the exercise. Hence, this article aims to examine the extant linguistic landscape of South Africa with a view to highlighting linguistic drawbacks that may yield unintended results, with reference to Sesotho sa Leboa. Guided by Halliday’s systemic functional linguistics theory and Merton’s theory of unintended consequences, data were linguistically analysed against the writing conventions of the language and other aspects of communicative competence. The data reveal myriad cases of linguistic non-compliance and negligence that are inconsistent with the intended messages. It is recommended that efforts to elevate the status and advance the use of previously marginalised languages include quality assurance measures to take care of grammatical conformity, clarity of messages and pragmatic factors.