Abstract
The South African Coloured identity has undergone a transformation from its pre-democratic, apartheid-based categorisation to a more emancipated state, warranting a contemporary re-examination of its construction. This transformation has shifted the understanding of Coloured identity away from externally imposed classification towards a more dynamic, negotiated and context-dependent expression of identity. Within this changing socio-political landscape, social media discourse provides a context in which identity is negotiated and evaluated through everyday interaction. Accordingly, this article presents a sociolinguistic investigation into the construction of Cape and Durban Coloured identities within South Africa’s multilingual and multicultural Rainbow Nation. Within the broader South African Coloured context, Cape and Durban Coloured identities represent regionally specific variations associated with distinctive historical, cultural and linguistic practices. The study, therefore, examines how these identities are constructed and evaluated through commentary on TikTok, with particular attention to how language is used to reflect on, negotiate and construct social identity. The pragmatic concept of face is employed alongside metalinguistic reflection as the study’s theoretical framework. Face provides a lens through which the positive and negative evaluation of an individual’s social image can be examined within a specific interaction, while metalinguistic reflection offers insight into how individuals think and talk about language and use it to construct, affirm and evaluate identity. Bringing these concepts together makes it possible to examine how Cape and Durban Coloured identities are asserted and evaluated, as well as how reflection on language contributes to broader processes of identity construction. The investigation is guided by the following research question: How does metalinguistic commentary on social media contribute to the construction and evaluation of Cape and Durban Coloured identity?
The study follows a qualitative, exploratory and descriptive research design. More specifically, the dataset comprised 16 TikTok videos by Durban and Cape Coloured content creators, along with 1 431 comments associated with Durban Coloured content and 3 458 comments associated with Cape Coloured content. The data were coded in Atlas.ti24™ using a codebook based on theoretically informed concepts identified in the literature review. Coding was organised around four primary categories: identity, face, metalinguistic reflection and emerging themes. Identity was examined through explicit self-identification and identity assertion, regional and sub-regional identity, and identity markers such as language, accent, clothing, food and social behaviour. Face was analysed through positive and negative evaluations of the asserted identity, while metalinguistic reflection captured instances in which content creators or commentators reflected on language use, its appropriateness or its role in identity construction. The analysis focused on code frequencies and code co-occurrences to identify recurring identity markers and the relationships between concepts emerging from the data. Although code frequencies and co-occurrences provide a quantitative representation of patterns within the dataset, these outputs are used descriptively to support the qualitative analysis rather than as a basis for statistical inference. This approach enabled recurring patterns and relationships within the data to be identified while retaining the study’s focus on the sociolinguistic construction and evaluation of identity.
The findings indicate that Durban Coloured identity is more explicitly affirmed through self-identification, whereas Cape Coloured identity is expressed more strongly through implicit identity markers such as language use, style and cultural practices. Explicit identity assertion and self-identification were particularly prominent in the Durban Coloured data. Durban Coloured content creators and commentators frequently asserted their regional identity directly, whereas Cape Coloured identity was more often communicated through locally recognisable linguistic and cultural markers. Expressions such as regional slang functioned as implicit indicators of Cape Coloured identity, while clothing, style and brands were also prominent identity markers. In the Durban Coloured group, social behaviour and food emerged as particularly important markers. Accent, dialect and pronunciation were significant for both groups and further demonstrated the relationships between regional linguistic variation and identity. References to other South African regions also revealed awareness of a broader, more complex spectrum of Coloured identities beyond Cape Town and Durban.
The evaluation of face constituted an important component of identity construction. Positive evaluations substantially outnumbered negative evaluations and were commonly associated with expressions of pride, affirmation and group solidarity. Negative evaluations occurred less frequently and were particularly associated with disagreement over representations of accent, dialect or pronunciation, as well as, in some instances, physical characteristics. The data also demonstrated awareness of differing interpretations of the term Coloured across cultural contexts, particularly its historically negative associations in the USA. Within the South African dataset, however, positive evaluations of Coloured identity predominated and were associated with pride, solidarity and group belonging.
Metalinguistic reflection further revealed significant differences in the relationship between language and Coloured identity. In the Durban Coloured data, commentators repeatedly reflected on the fact that Afrikaans is not necessarily spoken as part of their regional variety, while competence in Zulu and code-mixing with Zulu emerged as recognisable features of Durban Coloured linguistic identity. By contrast, Afrikaans and Afrikaans-English code-mixing were strongly associated with Cape Coloured identity. These contrasting practices demonstrate that language cannot be treated as a uniform marker of South African Coloured identity. Rather, the relationship between language and identity is regionally and culturally situated, with different linguistic resources acquiring identity significance in different communities.
The code co-occurrence analysis reinforces these findings by demonstrating the interconnectedness of identity assertion, evaluations of face and metalinguistic reflection. Explicit identity assertions showed important relationships with both positive and negative evaluations of face and with metalinguistic reflection. Accent was similarly evident as both an identity marker and an object of linguistic reflection and evaluation.
These findings demonstrate that identity markers, evaluations of face, and metalinguistic reflection do not operate independently, but intersect in the construction and evaluation of Coloured identity in social media discourse. Moreover, the study contributes to a more contemporary understanding of South African Coloured identity by illustrating how metalinguistic commentary on digital platforms reflects both shared and locally specific identity practices. Ultimately, the findings demonstrate that South African Coloured identity is neither uniform nor static, but is dynamically constructed through regionally specific cultural, social and linguistic practices.
Keywords: Coloured identity; face; identity construction; metalinguistic reflection; reflection
- This article’s featured image was created by Amani Nation and obtained from Pexels.