In South Africa, the township or sub-economic state housing development has achieved a very significant position as a site for sociolinguistic research. The Semiotics of New Spaces - Languaging and Literacy Practices in one South African Township looks at the ways in which people are responding, through their semiotic practices, to the intense socio-historical changes taking place in post‑apartheid South Africa. The study is set against the backdrop of Wesbank - one of the first racially mixed housing developments in the Western Cape. The result is a range of related topics, such as how cross-cultural and cross-linguistic families influence the language practices of their younger members
the impact of translingual friendships on language practices and attitudes
the ways in which older people use their existing literacies to negotiate the multilingual realities of the township and aspects such as identity, voice and agency as markers of a developing participatory citizenship.