"In hell you hear only your mother tongue": Afrikaner nationalist ideology, linguistic subversion, and cultural renewal in Marlene van Niekerk's 'Triomf'

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 -