TY - JOUR
T1 - "In hell you hear only your mother tongue"
T2 - Afrikaner nationalist ideology, linguistic subversion, and cultural renewal in Marlene van Niekerk's 'Triomf'
AU - Devarenne, Nicole
PY - 2006
Y1 - 2006
N2 - This article returns to the original Afrikaans version of Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf (1994), proposing that we read the novel as radically subverting Afrikaner nationalist thought on a textual as well as thematic level. Van Niekerk's use of dernotic language and pervasive code-switching is crucially linked to her antinationalist project, which radically interrogates related ideas about white Afrikaner racial "purity" and the linguistic "purity" and racial designation of "high" Afrikaans. To contextualize van Niekerk's distinctive and subversive linguistic play, I briefly show how nineteenth-century Afrikaans nationalists viewed the relationship between land ownership and language. Also, in contrast to a widely held view that has seen Afrikaans as of chiefly European extraction, I review sociolinguistic debates about the ways in which it has been influenced by African languages. Ultimately, I argue that van Niekerk's fiction holds out the possibility for "white" Afrikaans to escape the cultural stagnation of Afrikaner nationalism.
AB - This article returns to the original Afrikaans version of Marlene van Niekerk's Triomf (1994), proposing that we read the novel as radically subverting Afrikaner nationalist thought on a textual as well as thematic level. Van Niekerk's use of dernotic language and pervasive code-switching is crucially linked to her antinationalist project, which radically interrogates related ideas about white Afrikaner racial "purity" and the linguistic "purity" and racial designation of "high" Afrikaans. To contextualize van Niekerk's distinctive and subversive linguistic play, I briefly show how nineteenth-century Afrikaans nationalists viewed the relationship between land ownership and language. Also, in contrast to a widely held view that has seen Afrikaans as of chiefly European extraction, I review sociolinguistic debates about the ways in which it has been influenced by African languages. Ultimately, I argue that van Niekerk's fiction holds out the possibility for "white" Afrikaans to escape the cultural stagnation of Afrikaner nationalism.
U2 - 10.1353/ral.2006.0085
DO - 10.1353/ral.2006.0085
M3 - Article
SN - 0034-5210
VL - 37
SP - 105
EP - 120
JO - Research in African Literatures
JF - Research in African Literatures
IS - 4
ER -