A visual and linguistic comparison of features of Durban and Cape Town tsotsitaal

Tsotsitaal is a South African language phenomenon spoken in urban centres around South Africa which involves the use of a range of linguistic and semiotic resources as part of a process of styling an urban identity. The tsotsitaal phenomenon originated in the urban context of Johannesburg's racially mixed townships in the 1940s and it can now be found in all provinces. Although there are calls to recognise it as a ‘national language’, it is not clear what features the different regional varieties share. This article considers two regional examples of tsotsitaal – from Durban and Cape Town – to unpack their common features. The data analysed here was gathered in 2012, and involves video recordings of 22 young adults, aged between 16 to 25, speaking tsotsitaal together. The data was analysed to determine: the grammatical framework of each example; the lexical items both common to, and unique to, the two sites; topics areas of relexicalisation; and the use of gestures and other semiotic markers. The article demonstrates that tsotsitaals in geographically distant Cape Town and Durban share lexicon, gestures and relexicalised topics, but cautions that regionally and contextually specific features need to be taken into account in broad claims about, and descriptions of, tsotsitaals.