A historical development of a Botswana variety of English

This dissertation analyzes the variety of English found in Botswana government circulars, letters and newspapers written between 1885 (when Botswana was ruled by the British) and 2000 (thirty four years after British rule). A comparison of the documents written between 1884 and 1970 and documents written between 1971 and 2000 provides evidence of a development and acculturation of English in Botswana. The first part of the dissertation synthesizes and analyzes the ways in which English in Botswana is acculturating to the linguistic and cultural patterns of the local environment. In pursuing the above concerns, the analysis focuses on three important factors---lexical innovation, proverbial use and the pragmatics of letter writing---that are believed to have played a major role in the acculturation process. The study reveals that lexical innovation is the most common type of linguistic change in these documents.; The second part of the dissertation focuses on the developmental stages that English in Botswana has gone through from 1884 to 2000. In order to determine these stages, the documents were divided into three categories; those written in the early colonial period (1884--1940), those written in the late colonial and independence era (1940--1970) and those from the modern period (1970--2000). Each stage was then described not only in terms of what type of changes occurred but also in terms of the extent of the changes. Social, historical and educational factors were used to account for the degree of linguistic changes found in each period. The early colonial period (1884--1940) was found to have the most linguistic changes and the modern period (1970--2000), the least number of changes suggesting that the English used in Botswana government circulars, letters and newspapers is moving from a mesolectal variety to an acrolectal variety. Using qualitative, quantitative, synchronic and diachronic approaches to sociolinguistics analysis, the dissertation contributes to debates about the history and development of non native varieties by shedding some light on language change and language acquisition in a language contact situation.