How multilingualism and socioeconomic status shape the identity of Cape Town teenagers – an exploratory study

This study explores the relationship between multilingualism, socioeconomic status (SES), and identity in Cape Town teenagers. Participants (N = 73) were multilingual students from low SES at a public secondary school where English is the language of instruction. We collected data on language background, SES, linguistic, social and future identities by means of a comprehensive questionnaire that students completed anonymously at school. Our results demonstrate that participants’ linguistic and socioeconomic profiles are strongly associated with their classification group in the South African population classification system, a remnant of the Apartheid regime. Our data show that in the low SES strata, teenagers are coping with enormous toxic stress that is negatively related to their perceived language proficiency, and social and future identities. Moreover, multiple regression analyses reveal that participants’ experience of their multilingual reality shape their linguistic, social and future identities differently as a function of the classification group they identify with. Importantly, our study provides evidence that even subtle variations within the low SES-stratum may result in significantly different outcomes. For example, somewhat less toxic stress may lead to higher perceived/self-reported multilingual proficiency, a more inclusive social identity, and a more optimistic future identity regardless of participants’ respective population classification groups.