Doing things with “nothing”: the pragmatics of democratic multilingualism in South African parliamentary debate

Abstract

This paper engages the weaponisation of democratic multilingualism in South African parliamentary debate on the part of opposition political party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). It focuses on the mobilisation of English language performatives like “calling points of order” during televised parliamentary debates. Such moments, I demonstrate, engender multilingual interactions that can become heated, even leading to physical confrontation. As a result, the EFF’s parliamentary presence has been described by many political analysts and casual observers alike, as deliberately “disruptive” or “chaotic” degenerations of public order. For many, including the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA), as well as many liberal analysts, the EFF’s political ascent via the media, has been dismissed as purely the result of populist or even “fascist” appeal, lacking any political motivation beyond the explicit sabotage of public order and reckless perpetuation of the EFF brand. In engaging some of the pragmatist concerns of Austinian language performativity (1975), this paper presents an alternative to the dominant narrative of dysfunction through which the EFF’s relationship to South African mass-mediated political discourse has been described.