Professor Quentin Williams. Image: Shelley Christians/UWCAcclaimed University of the Western Cape linguist, Professor Quentin Williams, has been nominated for his work in promoting diversity, spearheading the campaign for the recognition of the Kaaps language.
Prof Williams was nominated for the Language Development Award by the Western Cape’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Sport for his work in promoting Kaaps in literature and education.
The Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research (CMDR), of which Williams is the director, has been nominated for the Neville Alexander Multilingualism Award.
The Cultural Awards ceremony will be held at 5.30pm on October 7 at the Artscape Theatre.
Prof Williams said the CMDR is one of four centres in the Faculty of Humanities, and the work it does is to re-think multilingualism “and how to develop new discourses, knowledge about language through inter-disciplinary work in the humanities and educational sciences”.
“A lot of our work concerns interrogating contemporary and historical intellectual knowledge about language and multilingualism in South Africa, but also to provide a critical review of language and multilingualism from colonialism all the way up to our contemporary times. For us, it is about probing, asking questions that can fundamentally transform how we think about multilingualism and multilingual speakers, especially those historically marginalised speakers who speak historically marginalised languages,” said Prof Williams.
He said the Neville Alexander Award nomination is a significant moment in the life of the CMDR.
“Since the establishment of the Centre, we’ve been hard at work in developing multilingualism - in raising up the image of isiXhosa and Kaaps, for example, which are historically marginalised languages. Being nominated for the Neville Alexander Award for Multilingualism is significant because it honours the Centre’s work, for one, but also our colleagues in the Centre. It makes it meaningful for our colleagues who work on advancing multilingualism.
“This is what Neville Alexander did during his career. Being nominated for this award, which he endowed, is extremely humbling for the CMDR and offers a proper recognition for the Centre and the excellent work that we do. We hope that we win the award, but the nomination itself is also very important,” said Prof Williams.
Neville Alexander, a freedom fighter and former Robben Island detainee who was born in Nxuba (formerly Cradock), advanced the framework for multilingualism.
Apart from raising the image and prestige of Kaaps, Prof Williams said the CMDR has recently concluded work on the first big-format dictionary which will be released next month. The Centre has also developed Kaaps-English bilingual learning curriculum materials which are currently being tested out in a school, along with work on a grammar guide which should be published in the new year.
The CMDR has also been presenting its work at workshops and conferences, along with contributing to debates on how Kaaps should be developed.
Prof Williams said he hopes that UWC will formalise the use of Kaaps in a significant way. But the academy for Kaaps will also contribute to such formalisation in other contexts too. “Recently we’ve established our own academy, The Societie virrie Advancement van Kaaps (or Society virrie Advancement van kaaps),” said Prof Williams.
