The science of Kaaps: Reflections on the 3rd Kaaps Symposium

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Download the booklet with abstracts of the 2024 Kaaps Symposium here.

The science of Kaaps: Reflections on the 3rd Kaaps Symposium

A scientific community does not spring into being overnight. It takes the efforts of like-minded individuals who have studied one problem from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary positions to tread a path that defines its future. This is what happened, in part, at the recent 3rd Kaaps Symposium on 15-16 August 2024.

Reflecting back on the history of the Kaaps Symposia, I am reminded that when the first Kaaps Symposium was held in 2012 at UWC, the question was asked: why focus now on Kaaps? Many of the papers that emerged were published in Afrikaans in Hendricks and Dyers (2016) and in English in the journal Multilingual Margins, all providing a clear picture of what the state of the scientific art looked like. At the 2nd Kaaps Symposium in 2022, this time convened at Rhodes University and over a decade later, a gathering of like-minded writers – actually almost all the creative writers who write in Kaaps – raised searching questions about standardisation (where the suggestion was formalisation), the need to capture all the varieties of Kaaps, and what we can do in the short and long term to raise the functions of Kaaps in schools and universities.

Both symposia then hosted path-breaking discussions and papers about the political future of Kaaps. But what about its scientific, epistemic future? And how have researchers, activists, teachers and scientists actually mapped the future study of Kaaps? These questions formed the basis of the call for papers for the 3rd Kaaps Symposium, and for the first time in its history we received a variety of submissions that covered research on Kaaps in basic and higher education, bilingualism/multilingualism, language contact and change, lexicography, linguistic citizenship, standardisation, general linguistics, translation studies, Kaaps variation studies, religion, identity, race, migration, nationalism, decoloniality, language activism, Kaaps food and security, and the intellectualisation of Kaaps.

To say that we were delighted is an understatement, because when we sent out the call for papers, published generously by LitNet, we were immediately attacked after posting a Kaaps version of the call for papers – one reader, incensed, called that version sordid and claimed that the symposium was in fact part of the cancel culture that wants to erase the likes of Adam Small. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

What was true was this: we received over 30 submissions, rejected four (the focus was not on Kaaps), and still received more submissions once we had finalised the programme. Our problem was not worrying about the sordidness of Kaaps, but that we suddenly had too many speakers, too few days and too few time slots to fill. Presenter times went from 30 minutes to 20 minutes, placing time pressure on even the most seasoned of presenters. We asked some of our most brilliant speakers not to present; they would have presented topics that form important general linguistic analysis of Paarl Kaaps and Kuils River Kaaps, including two historical linguistic studies of Kaaps that would have finally set aside the archaic, outdated studies that have come to define historical Kaaps linguistics, for example. It pains me to this day that we couldn’t find space in the programme or a breakaway venue. So, when you read the programme and abstract booklet below, just know it does not tell the full tale.

What was also true was that the symposium brought together next generation scholars, senior researchers, activists and teachers to critically discuss and reflect on the state of the art and the future of Kaaps studies. Many of the papers raised difficult questions with no easy answers. The opening keynote by Michael le Cordeur set the tone right away, beautifully presented in Kaaps and standard Afrikaans. The contents of his paper was a strategy for including Kaaps in the school curriculum, on which he has spent much ink and for which he has often had to bear unfair critique steeped in scientific ignorance and irrationalism.

The papers that followed provided significant insight into the postcolonial theorising of Kaaps in the basic education system and what teachers outside the Western Cape think about the inclusion of Kaaps in the curriculum. The presentations piqued the scientific interest of all immediately. And guess what those teachers said about Kaaps? Yep, that Kaaps should be included.

The first day of the symposium was dedicated to these topics: how we implement emancipation for Kaaps, understanding and analysing how Kaaps speakers themselves define their language as a language to enact their linguistic citizenship, the lessons of the dictionary codification of Kaaps in the WAT and the Trilingual dictionary of Kaaps, the debates around standardisation, and the concrete advances we are making towards the intellectualisation of Kaaps through terminology and bilingual learning materials development in higher education contexts. This last theme on intellectualisation was the contents of my own keynote speech, and is one of the many projects I am advancing to develop Kaaps.

To be sure, the intellectualisation of a language such as Kaaps is about reaching a point in history where Kaaps is finally used in any context where knowledge is valued and taken up, from when a child enters a crèche and leaves university, for example. A lower function language such as Kaaps has been ready for intellectualisation for decades. In fact, we are already busy with such an endeavour, but we have to take a few more steps to prepare it for subjects such as science, technology, mathematics, humanities, engineering, astronomy, medicine, philosophy and so on. Not to intellectualise Kaaps is to refuse a Kaaps speaker’s participation in South Africa’s knowledge economy.

These are just some of the points I raised before we moved to the most consequential 45 minutes of the programme: establishing the executive committee of the Society for the Advancement of Kaaps (SAK). A historic moment for a very old language.

Executive committee, Society for the Advancement of Kaaps (SAK) / Vereniging virrie Bevordering van Kaaps (VBK). Front row (left to right): Quentin Williams (UWC) (chairperson), Theodore Rodrigous (Unisa) (deputy chairperson), Erin Pretorius (UWC) (treasurer). Back row (left to right): Adam Haupt (UCT) (ordinary member), Zaib Toyer (UWC) (assistant secretary), Chevãn van Rooi (UWC) (secretary), Kãmilah Kalidheen (UWC) (webmaster). Not in picture: Chànde van der Westhuizen (UWC) (ordinary member), Gaireyah Fredericks (Kaaps writer, translator and researcher, CMDR, UWC) (ordinary member). Photo credit: Jason Richardson (CMDR/SAK).

The second day of the symposium opened with another brilliant keynote speech delivered by Nathan Trantraal. Trantraal’s talk asked us to guard against the creation of colonial and apartheid hierarchies and differentiations between various ways of speaking Kaaps. We all nodded in agreement; we were all on one page. But equally importantly, also, his talk provoked us to take seriously the notion that a continuum of Kaaps and its varieties may already exist implicitly among Kaaps and non-Kaaps speakers, and linguists may want to tease this out into the open and demonstrate the implications it holds for the logographic and orthographic choices we may make for a grammar and spelling guide.

Trantraal was followed by a series of brilliant talks and panel discussions that are hard to summarise in a few paragraphs: a range of intellectual insights on translation from Dutch into Kaaps, the decolonial language activism of Afrikaaps activists, what is happening with Kaaps in diasporic contexts such as Australia, path-breaking research in general linguistics at UWC and elsewhere, and equally consequential work in schools and universities that we implore the authorities to support. These were topped off with a number of talks on Kaaps, food and religion, and an excellent closing keynote by Erin Pretorius (UWC) on grammar and Kaaps.

All the speakers and participants of the 3rd Kaaps Symposium form part of SAK. We have collectively established a scientific network through which we will advance Kaaps through the mandate of our society, which is, simply put, to advance the science of Kaaps.

But you’re probably wondering whether the symposium was a family affair or a kumbaya moment, and whether we took seriously what we meant by scientific engagement and debate. We did.

Hein Willemse, writing recently in Die Burger under the title “Afrikaans deur stofpad geskei”, got it spot on: Kaaps is more than just about developing linguistic infrastructures, dictionary making and a grammar, or about the ontological refashioning of identities and making it into a decolonial project.

We asked all the serious and hard scientific questions. We disagreed passionately and scientifically speaking on several things: what to name Kaaps? Why should it be called a language? Why does the WAT insist on marking Kaaps as an “informal variety” in their corpus when they know full well it is not? Our brilliant colleague from the WAT, Gerda Odendaal, wrestled with this question. But also: what will the Trilingual dictionary of Kaaps look like when it is published? Should we call for talk about formalisation instead of standardisation? Which orthographic markers represent which words best? When will we develop our grammar and spelling guide? And when, ultimately, will Kaaps learners in school and university get to read and write in Kaaps? These are some of the challenging and provoking questions that were raised throughout the two days – critical questions, at least for me.

Just take the notion of whether we should call Kaaps, Kaaps, Afrikaaps or Kaapse Afrikaans. We know that there must be subtle – or even explicit – general linguistic and scientific differences in the system, or holdovers of variation sociolinguistics and dialectology. But we also know that of all the labels, the label Afrikaaps does the most decolonial work by far.

Or here’s a harder question to answer: will we do orthographic planning or development for Kaaps? And what sort of orthographic choices must we make? Answering all these questions will involve all the Kaaps experts and, importantly, teachers, parents and key government stakeholders.

But you should also know that, for the moment, we do not have clear answers, but we are building towards making the right choices based on logic and sound science. In the coming year, SAK will establish various subcommittees responsible for providing the fora necessary to answer all of the above questions. This will be achieved through: (1) bringing into existence the first journal of Kaaps, (2) advancing the general linguistics of Kaaps, (3) establishing a Kaaps literacy, literature and education subcommittee, and (4) establishing a subcommittee focused on Kaaps lexicography, orthography and the question of formalisation.

There will be a 4th Kaaps Symposium. This last one clearly was a resounding success.

In a previous article published on the LitNet platform, I suggested openly and candidly that Kaaps is the future of Afrikaans. I take that back: Kaaps has its own future; it is now in the hands of us all. Help us secure the future of this historically marginalised and indigenous language.

Quentin Williams

Chairperson, Society for the Advancement of Kaaps (SAK)
Director, Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research (CMDR)
Professor, Linguistics Department, University of the Western Cape (UWC)

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