Masters Degrees (Linguistics and Language Practice)
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Browsing Masters Degrees (Linguistics and Language Practice) by Subject "Commemoration"
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Item Open Access A toponymical study of place name heritage in Mossel Bay (Western Cape)(University of the Free State, 2015-07) Steenkamp, Joan-Marié; Du Plessis, L. T.; Raper, P. E.English: After 1994, name changes in South Africa have formed an important part in the reflection of the new democracy. The semiotic landscape needs to be representative of South Africa’s diverse inhabitants. The importance of this is that it creates a sense of belonging to previously marginalised groups. It is also a way to show political change from a previously hegemonic regime. This study set out to determine if in a typical South African town such as Mossel Bay the toponymic corpus reflect the heterogeneous community. This reflection does not only focus on the post-1994 era, but also on representation throughout the town’s history, i.e. the study aimed to see if the town’s heritage is captured in the toponymic corpus as well. To determine this, a database of toponyms was created using maps, books, archive documents, interviews and fieldwork. The study used both intensive and extensive methods of research. Intensive methods refer to the micro-study of each individual toponym – the name, previous names, approximate dates, language, type of name and additional information (origin). The extensive method focuses on pattern analysis. In this case, more emphasis was placed on the extensive approach, as the aim of the research was to get an overall view of the naming practices of Mossel Bay. Demographic factors such as ethnic and language groups were also included in the findings, as this was needed as a background against which to test the heterogeneity of the toponymic corpus. The findings show that Mossel Bay’s toponymic corpus does largely reflect its inhabitants. The findings also show that English and Xhosa toponyms have increased in the past few decades, as opposed to Afrikaans toponyms. The correlation between spoken language and the language of the toponym shows that 1) to some degree, Afrikaans is underrepresented in the toponymic corpus, as the majority of the inhabitants are Afrikaans speaking; 2) Xhosa has the closest correlation between the spoken language and language of toponym; and 3) English is overrepresented, although some of the names that make up the aggregate percentage stem from the English era of occupation. The new trend to name places in English thus has the potential to undermine representation in future. Further analysis showed that even though Mossel Bay’s toponymic corpus is overall representative, it is not universally representative. In other words, toponyms are still closely linked to the previously demarcated areas under the segregation policy. This is an area where reparation might be necessary. However, in order not to lose the heritage inherently bound to toponyms, it is recommended that places of high visibility be created with names commemorating previously marginalised groups. Furthermore, Mossel Bay has a naming policy that encourages politically neutral names that commemorate important figures in Mossel Bay’s history. The conclusion of the study is that Mossel Bay represents its heterogeneous community, but there are areas where reparation is needed to enhance the prestige and representation of previously marginalised groups. Resultant from this it is recommended that naming authorities in South Africa adopt the kind of corpus-based approach demonstrated in this study for further toponymic management in order to balance the tension between heritage conservation and representivity in name change.