English in the multilingual ecologies of Botswana

• Applicant: Dr. Sheena Shah
• Subject Area: Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 528506225

The project investigates the significance of English in Botswana by examining its status, function, and societal attitudes within the country’s multilingual ecologies. Despite English being the sole de-facto official language of Botswana, its everyday usage is confined to a small minority of the educated elite. Setswana, in contrast, is the de-facto national language and is widely spoken as a first language. In addition, it is acquired as an additional language by most Botswanan citizens who speak other languages at home. In this language ecology, the two languages compete, with English offering social and economic advancement while Setswana creates national unity and social cohesion. Several dozen other languages spoken in Botswana are officially labelled “minority” languages and are primarily home languages. Their use in public domains, such as government offices, is discouraged. English within Botswana’s multilingual ecology has received little scholarly attention, and “Botswana English” does not yet appear adequately in the World Englishes paradigm. The project broadens the scope of previous investigations of English in Botswana, which have focused on the urban educated elite in Gaborone, the capital city, in several respects. First, the study will include a diverse sample of English speakers representing various social strata, educational backgrounds, and age groups. Second, it will include two further urban centres, Maun and Ghanzi, which add different demographic profiles with distinct language repertoires of their inhabitants. This geographic expansion will allow for a more solid comparative analysis of English use and acquisition across Botswana. The sociolinguistic methodologies employed comprise 180 online questionnaires and 60 semi-structured interviews. The data collection, conducted primarily in English, aims to capture participants’ language repertoires, proficiencies, usage patterns, underlying language ideologies, and attitudes towards other languages spoken in Botswana. The data, which will be audio recorded and subsequently transcribed, will serve as the basis for creating the first publicly available digital corpus of “Botswana English”. The overarching goal is to reconstruct Botswana's multilingual ecology (Haugen 1972) and identify the Dominant Language Constellations (Aronin 2016) among its speakers. Significant variations in language usage based on the socio-demographic profile of speakers, as well as substantial engagement in hybrid multilingual practices, such as code-switching, across all speaker groups, are anticipated. As part of a larger Research Unit, project findings will be compared with those from Cyprus, Northeast India, Tanzania, the Kurdistan Region, Lagos, and the Philippines, contributing to a broader understanding of language dynamics in and of diverse sociocultural contexts.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 5728: Convergence on Dominant Language Constellations: World Englishes in their local multilingual ecologies (CODILAC)
• International Connection: Botswana
• Cooperation Partner: Dr. Naledi Kgolo-Lotshwao