This article was downloaded by: [The Library, University of Witwatersrand] On: 04 June 2012, At: 02:38 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK African Identities Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cafi20 Embracing the mobile phone technology: its social and linguistic impact with special reference to Zimbabwean Ndebele Dion Nkomo a & Langa Khumalo b a School of Languages, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa b Department of Linguistics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa Available online: 24 Feb 2012 To cite this article: Dion Nkomo & Langa Khumalo (2012): Embracing the mobile phone technology: its social and linguistic impact with special reference to Zimbabwean Ndebele, African Identities, 10:2, 143-153 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2012.657832 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

RESEARCH ARTICLE Embracing the mobile phone technology: its social and linguistic impact with special reference to Zimbabwean Ndebele Dion Nkomoa* and Langa Khumalob aSchool of Languages, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa bDepartment of Linguistics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa (Received 30 March 2011 final version received 2 June 2011) Mobile phone technology has revolutionised the art of communication across all societies. Access to this form of communication has made personal contact much easier than before, with mobile phone networks in many countries now reaching rural areas where fixed telephones were rare. However, the popularity of mobile phones and mobile text messaging has come to evoke excessive hype and hysteria about the kinds of cultural, social and psychological impacts that the new technology is having. Central among these is the concern about the way that standard use of language and conventional linguistic and communicative practices are affected. The mobile phone presents one area of study in which language change is evident. This article highlights how the mobile phone has been embraced among the Ndebele speaking people of Zimbabwe by discussing, among other things, the SMS language, turn-taking in telephone conversation and naming around the mobile phone. Having done that, it argues that the gadget is not solely responsible for all the undesirable linguistic and communicative developments mainly because mobile phone users are at times able to control technology. Keywords: mobile phone SMS communication Ndebele language culture Introduction The advent of the mobile system of communication has had a tremendous effect on the life styles of many people in the global community (Turkle 1995, Thurlow 2003a, 2003b, 2006). In Zimbabwe, the inception of the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) towards the end of the 1990s has made the mobile phone the most popular gadget and a vehicle for interactive communication. It has provided the young and the old as well as the urban and the rural, with a useful, affordable and convenient alternative to the erstwhile fixed phone system. As something that comes with so much aplomb and permeates throughout the social order, mobile phones have had a telling effect in Zimbabwean society. Cultural rules that pertain to communication and language use have changed in mobile phone communication. This holds true, no doubt, across many cultures, languages and contexts (Cameron 1995). In this article, we discuss the linguistic and socio-linguistic developments following the emergence of mobile phones particularly among the Ndebele speaking community.1 We argue that while the use of mobile phones has made linguistic change evident, the gadget is not solely responsible for all the undesirable linguistic ISSN 1472-5843 print/ISSN 1472-5851 online q 2012 Taylor & Francis http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14725843.2012.657832 http://www.tandfonline.com *Corresponding author. Email: d.nkomo@ru.ac.za African Identities Vol. 10, No. 2, May 2012, 143–153