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World Englishes in their Local Multilingual Ecologies
Edited by Peter Siemund, Gardy Stein and Manuela Vida-Mannl
[Hamburg Studies on Linguistic Diversity 9] 2025
► pp. 20–37

Chapter 2
World Englishes and the third space

Insights from multilingual practices in Xhosa and English

 | University of Cape Town
This chapter takes as its starting point the further spread of English since the new millennium in terms of both breadth and depth. The language continues to be favored in international education, media and cross-cultural communication, even as other languages continue at more local levels, and a few others at international levels. The chapter examines the influence of English on local languages among fluent bilinguals of this era. Data comes mainly from young speakers in Soweto, South Africa, fluent in Xhosa and English (and still other languages like Zulu). The chapter argues for the existence of a third space in which the rules of Xhosa and English show mutual influences not found in monolingual varieties of either code. Focus falls on (a) the extension of prefixes under switches or nonce-borrowings of nominal elements from English, (b) the rise of a new prefix for verb switches or nonce-borrowings, and (c) and the interchangeable use of logical connectors. In all of these, the third space is a source of innovation and complexity, while also implicated in sociolinguistic issues of identity projection.
Keywords: bilingualism, code-switching, loanword adaptation, logical connectors, third space, Xhosa
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Multilingualism, bilingual modes, and third space effects
    • 2.1The bilingual mode
    • 2.2The third space
      • 2.2.1Noun class prefixes
      • 2.2.2Variation in loanword morphology
      • 2.2.3English adjectives and the extension of class 14 nouns
      • 2.2.4The use of -isha as a suffix to enhance verb borrowings
      • 2.2.5Logical and discourse connectors
  • 3.The bilingual mode and the third space
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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