New book: The Language Web. Essays in Honour of Victor Webb / Fyn Net van die Woord. Huldigingsbundel vir Victor Webb. (fwd)

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Title	The Language Web. Essays in Honour of Victor Webb./
	Fyn Net van die Woord. Huldigingsbundel vir Victor Webb.
Editor	Mariana Kriel
Series title	UPE Research Series, no. C33
ISBN	0-86988-817-X
Size	205mm x 150mm
Extent	c. 250 pages
Format	Soft cover
Price	R130 (incl. VAT and postage)
Available	April/May 2004


About Victor Webb

Victor Webb is director of the Centre for Research in the Politics of
Language (CentRePoL) and professor of linguistics at the University of
Pretoria. He has published widely in the fields of language planning,
language policy and language politics, focussing specifically on the
African context. In addition to numerous articles in international
academic journals, he is most recently author of Language in South Africa:
The Role of Language in National Transformation, Reconstruction and
Development (John Benjamins, 2002). His major publications as editor and
co-editor include African Voices (OUP, 2000), the first linguistics
textbook with an explicitly African orientation, as well as The LiCCA
(South Africa) Report (University of Pretoria, 1995) and Afrikaans ná
Apartheid (J.L. van Schaik, 1992).

	From 1991 to 1996 Vic Webb was president of the Linguistics
Society of Southern Africa, and in 1995 he was invited by the then
Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology to become a member of
LANGTAG, a committee which had to advise the government about the
framework within which a national language plan could be developed for
post-apartheid South Africa. Foreign recognition of his work is apparent
from his receipt of invitations from various European and African
universities as visiting researcher. In cooperation with experts from both
Europe and Africa, Vic Webb founded, established and expanded the
international research project Languages in Contact and Conflict in Africa
(LiCCA) which was directed at the economic, educational, political and
social consequences of the conflict between the dominant languages of
Africa (English, French and Portuguese) and the inadequate knowledge of
these languages among the general public on the continent.

	Language-related social problems - especially those facing the
post-colonial states of Sub-Saharan Africa - have become the focal point
of Webb's theoretical and empirical inquiry and the contributions to this
Festschrift are united around the same theme. In most cases, contributors
are pragmatic and normative in their approach as they defend, explicitly
or implicitly, language policy options which they believe may provide some
solution to these language-based problems. Ultimately the issues that are
addressed, in the present volume like in Webb's work, are questions of
language and power.  Table of Contents


I	THE QUEST FOR A LINGUISTIC RENAISSANCE IN AFRICA

1 The Role of Minority Languages in Education and Development in Africa
Herman Batibo

2 Linguistic Renaissance for an African Renaissance: Language Policy and
Language Planning Nkonko Kamwangamalu

3 Suba Ethnolinguistic Vitality and Ethnic Revival Kembo-Sure


II	LANGUAGE POLICY AND LANGUAGE PRACTICE IN SOUTH AFRICA

4 Language and Solitude, Language and Integration: Ernest Gellner and the
National (Language) Question Mariana Kriel

5 Meertaligheid en Regering in Suid-Afrika: 'n Ondersoek na die
Implementering van die Taalklousule in die Staatsdiens [Multilingualism
and Government in South Africa: An Investigation into the Implementation
of the Language Clause in the Civil Service] Theo du Plessis

6 Minderheidstale in Suid-Afrika: Stand en Prognose
	[Minority Languages in South Africa: State of Affairs and Prognosis]
Ernst Kotzé

7	The Development of Afrikaans as a Language of Science
	Fritz Ponelis


III	ENGLISH IN EDUCATION: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES

8	About English and the Swiss Labour Market
François Grin

9	Three Interviews on South African Englishes
Christa van der Walt


IV	LANGUAGE BARRIERS TO ACCESS AND SUCCESS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

10	Waar 'n Renaissance kan begin...
[Where a Renaissance can begin...]

Christo van Rensburg
11	Assessing Language Proficiency in Vocational Training Programmes
Julia Read

12	Improving the Quality of Examination Papers: Perspectives from Document Design
Adelia Carstens


V	AFRIKAANS: HISTORIOGRAPHY REVISITED

13	Swellendams - 'n Subvariëteit van Oosgrensafrikaans?
[Swellendams - a Sub-variety of Eastern Border Afrikaans?]
Heinrich Grebe