Intellectualisation of African languages: isiXhosa as a research language

The interest of researchers in African languages is inclined towards the intellectualisation of African languages. Research reveals African languages’ capacity to be used as languages for teaching and learning in higher education. Although there is research on the intellectualisation of African languages, there is a paucity of research on intellectualising these languages as research languages, especially isiXhosa. This article collated and evaluated research terminology used in Master’s and Doctoral research reports written in isiXhosa. Several researchers who wrote their reports in isiXhosa are linguists, making it easy to coin research terms. Nevertheless, the absence of standardised isiXhosa research terminology limits researchers in other scientific fields in writing in isiXhosa. To analyse data, the article used terminology development as a conceptual framework, which is based on Wüster’s terminology theory. Terminology development refers to the process of extending language terminology to new domains. This article used a systematic literature review as a research design, reviewing Master’s and Doctoral research reports. The results reveal that researchers differ on the research terms they use, showing the need for a standardised isiXhosa research terminology. This article adds to the intellectualisation debate by proposing that isiXhosa research terminology that can be standardised. Similarly, it speeds up and strengthens the project of decolonising higher education.