(Re)Constructing Identities: South African Domestic Workers, English Language Learning, and Power

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

During the summer of 2014, I was invited to visit an English language literacy program designed for predominately Zulu-speaking female domestic workers. As I began observing these classes, I was immediately struck by a curious phenomenon: these black African women, predominantly ages 45 to 70 years old, all of whom lived with their white employers, and all of whom had received an inequitable education under apartheid, were spending what little free time they had learning English. At first mention, primarily due to the internationalization of English and its emergence as the lingua franca of globalization, many might not find this surprising. For example, some might assume that these women needed English to communicate with their employers; however, many had effectively communicated with their employers for several decades and some employers spoke languages such as Afrikaans in the home. Current research on adult literacy and language learning might suggest that these women were studying English in the hopes of improving their future job prospects, but many were nearing or of retirement age, which is 60 in South Africa, and expressed little interest in finding new positions. Moreover, at present, only 12% of the population uses English as a main language of communication, whereas Zulu is the strongest and most frequently used language in the country, with almost 25% identifying as native Zulu speakers and over 50% speaking Bantu languages (Heugh, 2007). With eleven official languages, including Zulu, implemented post-apartheid, national policies and education programs emphasize the importance of mother-tongue education for both youth and adults. And yet, despite the growing role of mother-tongue education and the fact that these women live and work in environments in which English is not always necessary for daily communication, they continue spending the little free time they have learning English.

In search of understanding this phenomenon, I returned to South Africa in the summer of 2015 for pre-dissertation research, and returned again in 2016 for a five-month stay to conduct qualitative ethnographic dissertation research including daily observations and interviews with 30 South African domestic workers. Drawing from this research, my dissertation centers on the intersections of the largely political trajectories of both language and adult education in South Africa and the tumultuous history of South African domestic work. It links these intersections to socially inscribed gender roles and centers on the English language learning of female South African domestic workers and the ways in which these women use English to recreate both their personal identities and re-narrate social histories. Drawing from these intersections while concurrently using poststructuralist theories of identity, language, and power (Bourdieu, 1991; Butler, 1997; Norton, 1997; 2013; Weedon, 1997) as well as Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1992; 2015), my research suggests that this population’s desires to learn English parallel larger desires of Black South Africans to associate English with the ability to reconstruct their own identities in post-apartheid South Africa. More explicitly, it makes three main arguments.

Author

• Anna Kaiper, The Pennsylvania State University