Editorial

Abstract

From a sociolinguistic perspective, Namibia is a fascinating country. Under the peace agreement following World War I, South Africa was given a mandate to govern the former German colony of Southwest Africa. During this period of South African hegemony, Afrikaans became entrenched as the country’s dominant language. After independence, one of the steps in the attempt to bring Namibia, the former satellite state of South Africa, into the global arena was to change its language policy radically by introducing English as the only official language of the country and of education. Despite these changes, the roots of the historical legacy of Afrikaans are deeply embedded in the country’s language ecology. Another significant aspect of Namibia’s linguistic legacy is that it boasts a number of still-thriving indigenous languages from a language family that long ago became extinct in South Africa. For this reason, it seems appropriate to foreground Gerald Stell’s article on code-switching practices in Namibia, which can be read against this sociohistorical backdrop. His article takes the form of a case study involving informal intra-ethnic interactions featuring five Namibian ethnicities. He addresses the question of whether these multilectal behaviours can become stylistically functional and, subsequently, whether this stylistic potential translates into sociolinguistic indexicalities.