Humanities lecturer wins Young Linguist Award

University of KwaZulu-Natal linguistics lecturer Muhle Sibisi recently won the Young Linguist Award at the prestigious 20th annual International Congress of Linguists, held for the first time on African soil since its inauguration in 1928. The congress, which meets every five years, took place at the Cape Town ICC and was attended by esteemed linguists from around the globe.

"Such an award is both motivating and challenging one to work even harder. As a budding linguist, it is an honour to be recognised for the work I do. It gives me confidence to soldier on, now that my foot is at the door. It gives me a sense of belonging in linguistics as a field of study on the one hand and to the international community of linguists on the other hand," said Sibisi.

"I am blessed to have a very enthusiastic and motivating supervisor with high work ethics. Prof Heike Tappe believes in unleashing potential in all her students, not just me. She motivated me to submit an abstract and guided me along the way."

Sibisi was given the award based on her presentation, entitled "Exploring attitudes towards the use of poetry in the presentation of academic content in isiZulu", in which she conducted an exploratory study wherein poets recited a linguistics academic concept as a poem in isiZulu.

Sibisi, whose research interest lies in language policy, believes isiZulu and other African languages are 'under-used' in accessing knowledge, including academic knowledge. "The use of African languages in higher education would enhance opportunities of access and success for the speakers of these languages," she claims.

Sibisi always loved languages, thus choosing linguistics as a field of study to investigate how languages work as well as the politics and power dynamics underlying language use was inevitable. Her current PhD study is on the attitudes of isiZulu-speaking students towards the use of discipline-specific terminology in isiZulu and isiZulu as an academic language.

She hopes to engage in future studies that impact on people's lives, such as research on the use of isiZulu (and possibly other African languages) to disseminate knowledge in the education sector and in the public sphere.

"To the student fraternity I would like to say - hang in there. We need to work hard, not just for ourselves but for the future generations and the betterment of our world," advised Sibisi.