According to Weber and Horner (2012:16), language ideology is the cultural system of ideas and feelings, norms and values, which inform the way people think about language.” Language ideology also expands to include ideas about how a language works, how languages are treated in social contexts and how speakers view their languages (Cameron, 2006). The focus of language ideology is to examine the cultural and historical specificity of the construal of language, and not to divorce language ideology from other ideologies of everyday lives. Language ideology is all about mechanisms of using language as a tool to acquire power.

When dealing with language ideology, ideology is “understood in its role as a (i) a promoter of one language at the cost of another language, and (ii) a political-economic weapon in the service of oppressive forces” (Zaidi, 2012). Language ideologies undergird language use (Piller, 2015) and together they serve political ends. This means language ideologies are beliefs that represent the interests of a particular group (Piller, 2015).

Studies have revealed that cultural institutions have the power to affect language practices through their language ideologies (Tseronis, 2002; Ricento, 2005; Anvi, 2012; Fitzsimmons-Doolan, 2018). They also tend to support and naturalize dominant language ideologies (Tseronis, 2002; Ricento, 2005; Fitzsimmons-Doolan, 2018).

These arguments reveal that language ideologies are present and active in cultural institutions. Furthermore, media products are deeply imbricated in relationships of power and ideology (Constantinou, 2005; Androutsopoulus, 2006). These factors should not just be treated as simply embedded within the mediated texts but seen as very powerful in even determining the message of the media product. To understand how language utilization in the media an ideological mechanism is, it is vital to understand that media spaces are a “highly complex phenomenon that requires a great deal of detailed textual, ethnographic and social deconstruction” (Milani and Johnson, 2010:5).

Moreover, the use of languages in media is shaped by (dominant) language ideologies and potentially shapes the language ideologies of the audiences (Androutsopoulos, 2012). The stylistic decisions regarding language usage in the story are highly influenced by dominant language-ideological discourses, endorsing, opposing or in some way negotiating them (Androutsopoulos, 2012). The position of the current study is that Generations: The Legacy is caught up between endorsing, opposing, and negotiating these language ideologies. The elevation of isiZulu over other indigenous languages in the soap is an endorsement of linguistic dominance. While the adoption of translanguaging is a challenge of negotiation against linguistic dominance.

Translanguaging endorses the idea that human beings speak more than one or two languages; their linguistic repertoire is rich to an extent that they can draw from it at any time, not only for the sake of communication but also for identity formation Makalela (2014). The term “translanguaging” is often traced back to the work of Williams (Wei, 2010) who first used it to describe a pedagogical practice in bilingual classrooms where the input, for example, reading and listening, is in one language and the output, speaking and writing, is in another language. Baker (2006) states that in the classroom context translanguaging has some positive effects; it has the potential to develop the learner's academic language skills in both languages. Mateus, (2014:367) further notes the politics of translanguaging by stating that it is a “complex discursive practice where all students' language practices work toward sustaining ways of communication while giving voice to new socio-political realities by interrogating linguistic inequalities.”

Building from the work of Mateus (2014), translanguaging produces certain language ideologies. According to Bagwasi (2017), Languages should not be treated as fixed, autonomous, unified, and bounded entities with linguistic boundaries. Garcia (2009), and Garcia and Hesson (2015) contend that translanguaing challenges the views of languages as separate entities.

Wei's (2010) idea of translanguaging as a language ideology comes from a different perspective. He pays attention to translanguaging from the psycholinguistic notion of languaging. In this way, language is understood as a process to gain knowledge, make sense, articulate one's thoughts and communicate using language. Language from the psycholinguistic notion of languaging means understanding language as a vehicle through which thinking is articulated and transformed into an artifactual form (Swain, 2006).

Hurst and Mona (2017) propose the view that translanguaging is a socially just language practice that involves critically questioning and resisting systems of oppression against any language. This is a form of linguistic democracy; it allows speakers to be in control of what they speak, depending on the contexts in which they find themselves. In a similar vein, Blommaert (2012) alludes to the fact that people pick up small bits of language from any available source and for the most part they are not even aware of borrowings and switches in their languages. For this reason, Garcia (2009) views language as an amorphous continuum in which speakers “soft assemble.” This means the speakers can put together (assemble), “as they see fit, sounds, words and sentences from different languages that they know to achieve communicative goals” (Bagwasi, 2017:205).

By adopting translingual practices, small-status languages that are normally not catered for in Generations: The Legacy gets to be used, they also receive some airtime. Moreover, these arguments will also reveal that translingual forms are counterstrategies against the dominance of isiZulu in soap operas.

Translanguaging is used as a broader linguistic practice in the context of this study. Therefore, it also encompasses what is locally called Tsotsitaal in South Africa. Tsotsitaal is a contact language used by black people in South Africa, it serves as a lingua franca between black people (Msimang, 1987). Tsotsitaal draws its speech community from different social and historical communities. It emerges from the freehold townships of the Western Areas of Johannesburg (Sophiatown, Martindale and Alexandra (Ntshangase, 1995). Tsotsitaal developed as an argot or criminal language among the criminal gangs of the Western Areas that were composed mainly of urban male youths (Ntshangase, 1995). However, post-1976 Soweto uprisings, Tsotsiaal's status changed, it became a language of resistance against oppression. Milani et al. (2015) also state that Tsotsitaal acquired another higher status in South Africa in 1994 when it started attracting young, educated black male and female speakers. Tsotsitaal became a sharp and clever subversive dialect (Milani et al., 2015).

In Generations: The Legacy we see a typical case of contentious language issues unfolding. With the dominance of isiZulu on one hand and the deployment of translingual forms for other indigenous languages, the soap provides a new perspective to understanding how local soap operas handle the multilingual nature of South Africa.

Television soap operas are inevitably important in our societies. However, most of the work that has been done in this field (Blommaert, 1999; O'hlfearnain, 2015; Hinton et al., 2018) does not pay attention to how soap operas can be a fertile ground for the production and distribution of linguistic dominance among indigenous languages. These scholars have looked at linguistic dominance and language ideologies from the perspective of colonial vs. indigenous languages, emphasizing that colonial languages still occupy a higher position than indigenous languages in former colonies. A few scholars have looked at the relationship between Kiswahili and other African indigenous languages. Moshi (2006), and Okombo and Muna (2017) note that Kiswahili is rising above other indigenous languages in East Africa, it is becoming a lingua franca of the region, due to political and economic factors it is used to kill other indigenous languages and make it the ultimate language.

The study intends to contribute to the current debate propelled by these scholars, however, by focusing the attention on indigenous African languages. The relationship between media, indigenous communities and language is also an imperative issue that has not been explored adequately by scholars. Unlike most of its predecessors who have written extensively on the injustice suffered by indigenous African languages against colonial languages, the current study looks at the injustices suffered by speakers of minority indigenous African languages against speakers of majority African indigenous languages.

Generations: The Legacy portrays ideologies of linguistic dominance and translanguaging through characters, their characterization, the type of businesses they own and where their businesses are located. Media products such as films, soap operas, sitcoms, and music videos have a social, political, and historical position based on the creator's sense of right and wrong. This position of the film privileges certain characters, institutions, and cultures. In this subsection, I look at how Generations: The Legacy perpetuates issues of linguistic dominance and translanguaging through some characters.

Relevant characters for this discussion include the Diale family and the Moroka family. The Diale family lives together in Alexander, one of the most impoverished townships in South Africa. In the Diale family are the following members: Gog Flo, who is the grandmother to Lucy, Cosmo/Thembinkosi and Lesedi, a teenage girl that Gog Flo adopted. Both Lucy and Cosmo run a drug operation business. Lucy runs an alcohol drinking spot, locally known as a shebeen and Cosmo also owns a barbeque/braai restaurant, locally known as Chesanyama. Both the shebeen and Chesanyama are fronting businesses used to cover up for the illicit money made from the drug business.

On the other side of town is an upmarket suburb known as Sandton. There, the Moroka family, a very wealthy advertising mogul family resides. The family is led by Mazwi Moroka. They have business interests in mining, tourism and property. However, because of greed, the family never has peace. They always want to acquire more, even if it means getting involved in illegal dealings.

All these archetypes have ideologies of linguistic dominance and elements of socio-political resistance against linguistic dominance behind them. Characters that live in the suburbs, such as Smanga, Mazwi, and Bafana speak English, isiZulu, Sesotho and Setswana. They are professional businesspeople that work in the corporate world. They also switch between these languages in their communications. Mazwi and Siphesihle use English and isiZulu, Smanga uses English and Sesotho, and Kabisi uses English and Setswana.

The people that live in suburbs have their own social, political and linguistic identities, the same way as those that live in rural areas, townships and cities. In the words of Bornman et al. (2018) suburbs and cities symbolize access to the social, cultural and economic networks. This influences the language practices of these places. The ideology perpetuated by Generations: The Legacy is that characters that live in suburbs rarely use translanguaging, they speak “homogenous languages,” and isiZulu is the dominant one among those languages. Lippi-Green (2006) states that standard or homogenous languages are just ideologies as they are imposed and maintained by social institutions such as the schools, the media, the corporate sector and language policies. Therefore, creating characters that speak homogenous languages is a way of rejecting linguistic practices that do not conform to the language rules established by social institutions.

In an episode aired on the 08th of June 2018, there was a typical example of the use of homogenous languages among characters who live in suburbs. In the extract below there are three languages used: English, Setswana/Sesotho/ and isiZulu. Tshidi's response (Eng?) in line number 3 can be a Setswana word or a Sesotho word. Each sentence has only one language used in it, hence, it is referred to as homogenous language.

This extract is from a scene that was in three languages, Setswana, English and isiZulu. When they interact, they do so in homogenous languages, they do not divert from the languages' rules of grammar and usage. The soap creates a world in which suburb characters speak homogenous languages and township characters do not. This signals the stereotype that living in suburbs is a prestige status, hence, even the languages used must reflect that. And living in townships has disreputable status and the language practices must also reflect that. The underlying meaning is that those that live in townships cannot speak homogenous languages. While the soap could be trying to be as accurately representative as possible of the linguistic realities of townships and suburbs, townships have people that speak homogenous languages and suburbs also have people that translanguage. In Generations: The Legacy we are missing that aspect.

Also, in the same scene between Jack and Tshidi, Jack speaks entirely in isiZulu, something he does all the time unless he speaks to a non-African character. Jack is represented as a character meant to uphold the Zulu culture and language even while living in the suburbs. There is no character from other linguistic groups who only speaks their language all the time as Jack does with isiZulu. This representation of Jack as a character that embodies the Zulu culture and language even while living in suburbs is a good strategy by the soap to show that cultures and languages do not only need to be preserved by those that live in the rural areas. Those that live in suburbs can also play a role in preserving their languages and cultures. However, the ideology of the dominance of isiZulu is visible by having only a Zulu character who preserves their culture and languages. In the principle of equity, the soap does not have a Sesotho-speaking character, a Setswana-speaking or a Xhosa-speaking character who are the same as Jack.

This representation of characters in Generations: The Legacy shows the dominance of isiZulu over other indigenous languages. For characters who live in the suburbs, isiZulu is the dominant language. Suburb living in Generations: The Legacy is covered with a painting that portrays the Zulu language, culture and people as dominant. This suburb life has characters such as Mazwi, Siphesihle, Jack, Bafana, Nandi, Zitha, Mpho, Zondiwe, and Hlubi. It is fact that Zulu people are the dominant group in South Africa, however, in a country that is multilingual, multicultural and a broadcaster that intends to heal the racial, linguistic and ethnic wounds of the past, it is peculiar of Generations: The Legacy to be portraying an image of one cultural group as dominant over others.

In Generations: The Legacy language usage by characters in the townships and the suburbs reveals a lot about language ideologies and identities. By contrasting language practices between characters who live in suburbs and characters living in townships, the soap is revealing language practices in urban and township spaces of South Africa. The linguistic practices of characters such as Mrekza reflect their backgrounds in communities that are linguistically diverse. Mrekza is represented as a character who comes from a township that has multiple languages. Hence his dialogue is a combination of different languages, Setswana, English, Afrikaans and isiZulu. He is a representative of communities that endorse such linguistic practices. But also, his linguistic practices are a way of negotiating identities using language. However, as much as linguistic practices such as Tsotsitaal and Sepitori have been accepted in some parts of South Africa, they often face stereotypes in other parts of the country. They are associated with gangsters, and township life (Hurst-Harosh, 2009). Therefore, Generations: The Legacy is using characters such as Mrekza (see below excerpt) to break the stereotypes associated with such linguistic practices. The soap is opening the space and allows such linguistic practices to be used without prejudice. This is a language ideology because it challenges the stigma of linguistic practices that are not the standard language formally recognized by the constitution.

Below is an example of a scene in translingual form. Here there are multiple languages used, there are elements of Sepitori, isiZulu, Sesotho and Afrikaans.

The way characters such as Lucy, Cosmo and Mrekza use language is also a way of bringing different linguistic groups together. As Bornman et al. (2018) contend, language usage reminds people of their cultural heritage, it helps to signal in-group membership, it is also a strategic tool to construct identity and negotiate the social distance. These characters are created and represented as characters that are aware of their origins, aware of their linguistic practices, and they are also aware that they live among multiple cultural and ethnic groups. Generations: The Legacy created these characters with their linguistic repertoires to narrow existing linguistic and ethnic groupings and superiority in society. For example, when listening to how Cosmo speaks (see excerpt above), inevitably, human beings do not stay in silos, they come together with other people and when that happens, languages get to influence each other.

Cultural rituals such as weddings, funerals and consulting traditional healers are often at the center of the narrative in Generations: The Legacy. In this section, I pay attention to the representation of weddings and how they portray ideologies of dominance and counterstrategies against that dominance. Generations: The Legacy has seen many weddings such as the one between Mazwi and Siphesihle, Lucy and Mrekza, and Tau and Zitha. Here I will analyse the wedding of Mazwi and Siphesihle and compare it to that of Lucy and Mrekza. The analysis will focus on how both weddings were African, but the former was only focusing on the Zulu culture, people, dances, songs, attires and location. The latter was inspired by various African cultures, it had multiple cultural attires and it had various cultural dances and songs. Both these weddings reveal the dominance of isiZulu in the soap and a counterstrategy against that dominance.

On the 27th of July 2016 Generations: The Legacy had an episode that focused entirely on the wedding of Mazwi and Siphesihle. The wedding was held in KwaZulu-Natal, which is a province where Siphesihle comes from. Siphesihle is Zulu and Mazwi is half Zulu and half Tswana. This episode showed a complete dominance of the Zulu culture, Mazwi's Tswana side was not featured in this wedding.

Both Mazwi and Siphesihle as well as the attendants of the wedding were fully dressed in attires influenced by the Zulu culture. The wedding had two parts, the traditional Zulu ceremony, and the western ceremony commonly referred to as the White wedding in South Africa. In both parts, the attendants were dressed in suits, and dresses that were influenced by the Zulu traditional attires. Even characters that are not Zulu such as Karabo Moroka and Tau Mogale were dressed in attires inspired by the Zulu culture. The performances in the ceremony were also Zulu traditional dances and songs. Mazwi as a half Tswana did not have his cultural practices performed at his wedding, especially because his Tswana identity is from his paternal side. Among Africans in South Africa when a child is born between two parents from different tribes or races, the child takes the side of the father as his identity. In this case, Mazwi is Tswana and not Zulu. But his Tswana culture was not featured in his wedding.

However, there is nothing wrong with having a pure Zulu wedding in the story. But in the history of Generations: The Legacy, even when it was still called Generations, the soap has never had a wedding of the Tswana, Sotho or Xhosa characters even though these are the present cultural groups in the soap. The soap has always had Zulu weddings. This is an ideological representation that makes it possible for the Zulu culture and language to thrive as the dominant group in the soap. The soap elevates Zulu people and their culture above other groups.

This representation of the Zulu culture is an example of cultural dominance. Mohamoud (2021) defines cultural domination as the unequal relationship between the cultures of a certain society. Therefore, when two cultures are featured in an episode, but one appears dominant to the extent that the other is not visible at all, it is cultural domination. This appears as an ideology because in such situations dominant cultures are considered superior, and more important and their principles, ideals and values are imposed on “subservient cultures.” As Salwen (1991) states, powerful nations such as the United States of America always impose their cultures on less powerful societies. Hence, the representation of Siphesihle's Zulu culture as dominant over Mazwi's Tswana is a way of imposing the dominance of isiZulu over Setswana.

A multilingual and multicultural soap opera such as Generations: The Legacy could be creating diversity by showing audiences weddings, rituals or any ceremonies of the Xhosa people, Tswana people or Sotho people. But that is not the case. The cultural events of the soap are only of the Zulu people. This representation of the Zulu culture in contrast to the representation of other cultures is an ideology. As expressed in Marxist theory, dominant cultures are used to exercise considerable control over other cultures. Generations: The Legacy promotes the values, principles, and rituals of the Zulu culture more than they do to other cultures. Such a representation creates subordination among local cultures as it naturalizes and legitimizes the cultural inequalities by promoting only one culture.

African popular cultural artifacts always claim their position as social facts. They are everywhere, they are sometimes used by hegemonic bodies to oppress the people (Barber, 1987). They penetrate political, social and economic institutions. Agwuele and Falola (2009) allude to the same argument; popular culture is a realm of politics, that is, dominant political ideologies have found expression in popular culture. Hence, the issue of language is salient in popular culture. Moody (2013) contends that language in popular culture is never spontaneous but highly edited for consumer appeal. These arguments explain why this study views the dominance of isiZulu in Generations: The Legacy as an ideology and not a mere creative product. The decision to make isiZulu a dominant language is influenced greatly by external political, economic, and cultural factors.

However, a counterstrategy against a complete dominance of the Zulu culture in Generations: The Legacy is visible in the second wedding. This was on the 4th of September 2019 between Lucy and Mrekza. The wedding was in Alexander township in Gauteng. Looking at the same elements, attire, and performances as looked at in the wedding of Mazwi and Siphesihle, this wedding was inclusive and welcoming of other cultural groups than the previous one. Lucy is Zulu and Mrekza is Tswana. The characters went with a western African-theme wedding, but local cultures were still represented. Lucy was dressed in a western African-tyle dress, and Mrekza was wearing a blue suit, with a shirt that has Setswana cultural attire imprints. He also wore Umqhele, a Zulu cultural hat worn by men. Other characters were dressed in Zulu-inspired attires while others were dressed in Tswana-inspired attires. The performances that took place at the wedding were both Zulu and Tswana cultural dances. Already this wedding was showing audiences that we carry with ourselves multiple identities, be it culture, language, or tribe. The soap is taking the view that identities should not be treated as fixed, autonomous, unified and bounded entities with boundaries.

This wedding was more inclusive than the first wedding. The second one had cultural representations of both the groom and bride. This wedding was also reflective of the location in which it is taking place, Alexander, a township in Gauteng. This township is diverse, it has many cultures, languages and nationalities. That is the reason why the attires were diverse. Generations: The Legacy has a history of not showing weddings from other cultures, but in this episode, they broke that stigma and included other cultures. Even though this is not a language ideology, it is a cultural ideology that challenges the dominance of the Zulu culture in the soap opera.

Culturally and linguistically, isiZulu has had its share of dominance in Generations: The Legacy, but the soap has also done its best to challenge this dominance. The second wedding challenges the domination of the Zulu culture as absolute or natural. From the way different cultures, ethnicities and tribes are represented in this wedding the soap employs other cultures as an accessory, an accentuation. The wedding employs cultural difference as an aesthetic effect, it elevates the importance of diversity. In doing so, Generations: The Legacy joins a wider cultural flow of mixed and shifting allegiances that aggressively intertwine ethnicities, tribes and transcend cultures.

In the second wedding, the soap challenges the orthodoxy of cultural loyalty, that is being loyal to one culture. This wedding focuses on what we choose to become like humans and not what society or culture expects us to become. This is a way of de-centring culture, tribe and ethnicity, it is showing audiences that it is fine to be Zulu and speak Xitsonga, it is fine to be Sotho and wear a Pedi traditional attire. This wedding is different from that of Siphesihle and Mazwi in that it rejects ethnic, cultural and tribal orthodoxy or powerful loyalty to a particular ethnic or historical tradition.