Discourse-Pragmatic Borrowing in South African English

This paper explores five borrowed discourse-pragmatic features—wena, mna/mina, yazi, phela, and ke—which are transferred from indigenous South African languages into South African English, with the objective of investigating their frequency, position, collocational patterns, and discourse-pragmatic functions. The data, which are taken from the South African component of the Global Web-based English corpus, are analysed quantitatively and qualitatively, from a postcolonial corpus pragmatic framework. The results show that the discourse-pragmatic features are generally infrequent, orthographically stable, and prefer the clause-initial position. The paper indicates that wena is used as an address term to call for the addressee’s attention, mna/mina is used to emphasise personal identity, while yazi seeks confirmation of and signals shared knowledge. Phela is an emphasis marker, while ke indicates contrast, textual coherence, and emphasis. This study underscores the contributions of indigenous South African languages to the discourse-pragmatic features of South African English.