THE DEVASTATING PROCESS OF IDENTITY LOSS IN BOTSWANA

Abstract

Many foreigners, who are not familiar with Botswana, assume that the country is monolingual, as they equate the name of the country with the main ethnic group, namely, Batswana. But Botswana is a typical multilingual country, with no less than 30 languages, most of which are highly diverse in form, structure and lexicon. This misconception of Botswana’s linguistic and cultural reality, both locally and internationally, has given rise to several devastating consequences. This article examines the devastating process of identity loss of the marginalized minority language groups of Botswana. The article identifies the main killer factors and proposes ways of alleviating the situation. The Lamy-Pool Identity Loss Model is evoked to determine the fate of the helpless languages. The study is based mainly on secondary data obtained from several sociolinguistic surveys carried out on the minority languages of Botswana. The findings of the study show the seriousness of ethnic identity loss and how it is affecting the whole country.