Reflections on the Challenges of Researching Language Maintenance and Language Vitality in South-western Zimbabwe

Abstract

Based on my experiences of field research carried out from October 2005 to May 2006 in south-western Zimbabwe, this article highlights some problems associated with conducting oral interviews in speech communities where ethnic language loyalty is under threat from politically imposed languages. Of major interest to this paper are issues to do with the politicization of the language question in postcolonial Zimbabwe; the researcher's ethnolinguistic affiliation (my mother tongue is Ndebele, which is believed to be one of the 'killer' languages in south-western Zimbabwe); as well as the researcher's lack of fluency in some local languages (resulting in some submissions being in one or more of the perceived 'oppressor' languages). Together with detailing lessons from my personal experiences, the paper also discusses implications of these methodological challenges for researching language maintenance and vitality in marginalized speech communities. The article concludes by observing that the well-known research challenges of being an 'outsider' are not unique to non-native researchers. Rather, the politicization of ethnic and linguistic issues (as is the case in postcolonial Zimbabwe) may as well result in some native residents of multilingual speech communities falling into the category of 'foreign' researchers.