Workplace Communication
the use of African languages by banks operating in the Free State Province, South Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36950/lpia-01-01-2025-8Keywords:
African languages, banking, language policy, legal documents, multilingualism, workplace communicationAbstract
Workplace communication plays a pivotal role in addressing the issues of language of communication in the workplace, particularly in multilingual settings. Most scholars have contributed extensively to this field of research and their focus has primarily been on issues of communication in business and legal contexts, health and academia. This article proposes workplace communication as an effective approach that can be adopted by banks to incorporate the use of African languages as languages of communication and business. The issue of language of communication in the multilingual bank settings of the Free State Province is a central one in this article. The main argument of this article is that English continues to be the main language of communication and business, particularly pertaining to the written communication in banks, while African languages such as Sesotho, Setswana, isiZulu and isiXhosa are excluded. Qualitative research methods were employed in this article, and interviews and qualitative observations were conducted to collect data. The findings of this study suggest that most banks use English in meetings and legal documents such as loan contracts, while most banking customers are speakers of African languages such as Sesotho, Setswana, isiZulu and isiXhosa, particularly in the townships and rural areas where the majority of black people reside. Therefore, banks operating in the Free State Province do not promote multilingualism in the workplace; instead, they promote monolingualism.
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