Article published in:
Language, Culture and Society
Vol. 1:1 (2019) ► pp. 31–58

Language and (in)hospitality

The micropolitics of hosting and guesting

| Simon Fraser University
Based on a long-term ethnography of Sub-Saharan African migrants in Cape Town, South Africa, this article examines how language as ideology and practice shapes the rules of guesting and hosting and helps (re)configure the on-going positionalities of both the nation-state-defined-host and the foreigner-guest, making murky the distinction between the two. The key notion of hospitality developed here is examined as practices rather than as identities. I argue that this theoretical shift makes it possible to unsettle the host and guest positions by not positing them a priori or conceptualizing them as immutable. It likewise makes it possible to deconstruct the categories imposed by the State and by which scholars and policy makers alike abide, such as the dichotomy between migrants and locals. At a broader level, the paper draws attention to the Occidentalism that has plagued academia, particularly in the work done on migration. I show how the South African case challenges many scholarly assumptions on language and migration overwhelmingly based on the examination of South-to-North migrations, which do not adequately represent worldwide migrations.
Keywords: migration, hospitality, language practices and ideologies, South Africa, Occidentalism


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 12 April 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/lcs.00003.vig

Full-text

Language and (in)hospitality
References

References

Ahmed, S.
(2000) Strange encounters. Embodied others in post-coloniality. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bhabha, H. K.
(1983) The other question. Screen 24 (6), 18–38. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bauman, Z.
(1997) Postmodernity and its discontents. New York, NY: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Bell, D.
(2007) Moments of hospitality. In J. Germann Molz & S. Gibson (Eds.), Mobilizing hospitality: The ethics of social relations in a mobile world (pp. 29–46). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Bouillon, A.
(Ed.) (1999) Immigration africaine en Afrique du Sud. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Butler, J., Rotberg, R. I., & Adams, J.
(1977) The black homelands of South Africa: The political and economic development of Bophuthtswana and Kwa-Zulu. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Chan, W. F.
(2005) A gift of a pagoda, the presence of a prominent citizen, and the possibilities of hospitality. Environment and Planning Development: Society and Space 23, 11–28. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Conklin, A.
(1997) A Mission to civilize. The republican idea of empire in France and West Africa, 1895–1930. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Courtine, J.-J.
(1981) Quelques problèmes théoriques et méthodologiques en analyse du discours. À propos du discours communiste adressé aux Chrétiens. Langages 62, 9–128.Google Scholar
Croom, A. M.
(2013) How to do things with slurs: Studies in the way of derogatory words. Language & Communication, 33, 177–204. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Crush, J., & Ramachandran, S.
(2014) Xenophobic violence in South Africa: Denialism, minimalism, realism. SAMP, 66.Google Scholar
Danso, R., & Mcdonald, D.
(2000) Writing xenophobia: Immigration and the print media in post-apartheid South Africa. SAMP, 17.Google Scholar
Dean, W. H. B.
(1978) A citizen of comparative and international law. Journal of Southern Africa 11, 57–67.Google Scholar
Derrida, J.
(1997) Adieu. À Emmanuel Lévinas. Paris: Galilée.Google Scholar
(2000a) [1997]. Of hospitality. Anne Dufourmantelle invite Jacques Derrida to respond. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
(2000b) Hostipitality. Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities 5(3), 3–18. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2005) The principle of hospitality. Parallax 11(1), 6–9. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Dubow, S.
(1992) Afrikaner nationalism, apartheid and the conceptualization of ‘race’. The Journal of African History 33(2), 209–237. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 56 ]
Duranti, A.
(1997) Linguistic anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Egero, B.
(1991) South Africa’s Bantustans. From dumping grounds to battlefronts. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet.Google Scholar
Extra, G., Spotti, M., & van Avenuaet, P.
(Eds.) (2009) Language testing, migration and citizenship. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Foucault, M.
(1975) Surveiller et punir. Paris: Gallimard.Google Scholar
Gal, S., & Irvine, J.
(1995) The boundaries of languages and disciplines: How ideologies construct difference. Social Research 62(4), 967–99.Google Scholar
Germann Molz, J., & Gibson, S.
(Eds.) (2007) Mobilizing hospitality: The ethics of social relations in a mobile world. Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
(Eds.) (2007) Introduction: Mobilizing and mooring hospitality, In J. Germann Molz & S. Gibson (Eds.), Mobilizing hospitality: The ethics of social relations in a mobile world (pp. 1–26). Aldershot: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Geschiere, P.
(2009) The perils of belonging. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E.
(1963) Stigma. Notes on the management of spoiled identity. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
(1981) Forms of talk. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hall, E.
(1989) Inventing the barbarian. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Harries, P.
(1988) The roots of ethnicity: Discourse and the politics of language construction in South-East Africa. African Affairs 87(346), 25–52. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Herzfeld, M.
(1987) ‘As in your own house’: hospitality, ethnography, and the stereotype of Mediterranean society. In D. D. Gilmore (Ed.), Honor and shame and the unity of the Mediterranean (pp. 75–89). Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Hlatshwayo, M.
(2012) COSATU’s attitudes and policies towards external migrants. In S. Buhlungu & M. Tshoaedi (Eds.), Cosatu contested legacy (pp. 228–258). Cape Town: HRSC Press.Google Scholar
Hogan-Brun, G., Mar-Molinero, C., & Stevenson, P.
(Eds.) (2009) Discourses on language and integration: Critical perspective on language testing. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, N.
(2004) ‘Hottentots’ and the evolution of European racism. Journal of European Studies 34(4), 308–332. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hall, E.
(1989) Inventing the barbarian. Greek self-definition through tragedy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Inoue, M.
(2003) The listening subject of Japanese modernity and his auditory double: Citing, sighting, and siting the modern Japanese woman. Cultural Anthropology 18(2), 156–93. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Irvine, J. T.
(1993) Mastering African languages: The politics of linguistics in nineteenth-century Senegal. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 33, 27–46.Google Scholar
Kriel, M.
(2010) Culture and power: the rise of Afrikaner nationalism revisited. Nations and Nationalism 16(3), 402–422. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, C.
(1987 [1952]) Race et histoire. Paris: Folio.Google Scholar
Lory, G.
(1998) L’Afrique du Sud. Paris: Karthala.Google Scholar
Martin, D.-C.
(1998) What’s in the name ‘coloured’? Social Identities 4(3), 523–540. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 57 ]
Maryns, K.
(2006) The asylum speaker: Language in the Belgian asylum procedure. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Mauss, M.
(1934) Les techniques du corps. Journal de psychologie XXXII(3–4), 271–93.Google Scholar
McNamara, T.
(2005) 21st century shibboleth: Language tests, identity and intergroup conflict. Language Policy, 4, 351–370. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Molteno, F.
(1977) The historical significance of the Bantustan strategy. Social Dynamics, 3(2), 15–33. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Papastergiadis, N.
(2000) The turbulence of migration. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Neocosmos, M.
(2006) From ‘foreign natives’ to ‘native foreigners’: Explaining xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa: Citizenship and nationalism, identity and politics. Dakar: CODESRIA.Google Scholar
Posel, D.
(2001) Race as common sense: Racial classification in twentieth-century South Africa. African Studies Review 44(2), 87–113. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Reitzes, M.
(1995) Insiders and outsiders: The reconstruction of citizenship in South Africa. Policy Review Series, 8(1). Centre for Policy Studies, Johannesburg.Google Scholar
Raven-Hart, R.
(1971) Cape of good hope 1652–1702: The first fifty years of Dutch colonization. Cape Town: A. A. Balkema.Google Scholar
Rosa, J., & Flores, N.
(2017) Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society 46, 621–647. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Rosello, M.
(2001) Postcolonial hospitality: The immigrant as guest. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sichone, O.
(2002) The making of Makwerekwere: East Africans in Cape Town. SAPEM 14(8), 35–40.Google Scholar
Tobias, S.
(2012) Neoliberal globalization and the politics of migration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of International & Global Studies 4(1), 1–16.Google Scholar
Valentine, G.
(2008) Living with difference: Reflections on geographies of encounter. Progress in human geography 32(3), 323–337. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Van Rensburg, C.
(1999) Afrikaans and apartheid. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 136, 77–96. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vigouroux, C. B.
(2005) “There are no Whites in Africa”: Territoriality, language and identity among Francophone Africans in Cape Town. Language & Communication 25, 237–255. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2008) “The smuggling of La Francophonie”: Francophone Africans in Anglophone Cape Town (South Africa). Language in Society 37, 415–434. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2017) Rethinking (un)skilled migrants: Whose skills, what skills, for what and for whom? In S. Canagarajah (Ed.), Routledge handbook of migration and language (pp. 312–329). London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(2018) Toward a sociolinguistics of modern Sub-Saharan African South-South migrations. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Vigouroux, C. B., & Mufwene, S. S.
To appear). Do linguists need economics and economists linguistics? In C. B. Vigouroux & S. S. Mufwene Eds. Bridging linguistics and economics Cambridge Cambridge University Press
Wimmer, A., & Glick Schiller, N.
(2002) Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks 2, 301–334. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
[ p. 58 ]
Wolff, E. H.
(2017) Language ideologies and the politics of language in post-colonial Africa. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus 51, 1–22. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 5 other publications

Ciribuco, Andrea
2021. Okra in translation. Language, Culture and Society 3:1 ► pp. 9 ff. Crossref logo
Holmes, Luke
2021. Language, hospitality, and internationalisation: exploring university life with the ethical and political acts of university administrators. Current Issues in Language Planning ► pp. 1 ff. Crossref logo
Ladegaard, Hans J. & Alison Phipps
2020. Intercultural research and social activism. Language and Intercultural Communication 20:2 ► pp. 67 ff. Crossref logo
Mohr, Susanne
2020. Language choices among South African migrants in the tourist space of Zanzibar. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 38:1 ► pp. 60 ff. Crossref logo
Vigouroux, Cécile B. & Salikoko S. Mufwene
2021. Commentary: Sociolinguistics of diaspora. Journal of Sociolinguistics 25:5 ► pp. 754 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 january 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.