Learning a supervernacular: Textspeak in a south african township

Abstract

This chapter engages with an ethnography of learning, i.e., a moment in which ethnography becomes an active learning process of a particular linguistic and literacy instrument, ‘textspeak’ in a local variety of the supervernacular of mobile phone texting code in a township around Cape Town. In the context of research on the use of mobile phones, the ethnographer found herself frequently in the role of apprentice vis-à-vis the informants, and this chapter documents one such instance in which the researcher is being taught the rules and features of locally relevant and valid ‘textspeak’.