Prof. Tobie van Dyk will receive the Jacques van der Elst Prize.

On 2 October, Prof. Tobie van Dyk will stand on the stage in Pretoria to receive a prestigious award in the humanities, the Jacques van der Elst Prize, presented by the Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (South African Academy for Science and Art).

For Prof. Van Dyk, who is based at the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources (SADiLaR) in the Faculty of Humanities at the North-West University (NWU), the recognition is both personal and professional. “Receiving the Jacques van der Elst Prize is a significant personal honour and, professionally, an important affirmation that this line of research is both credible and relevant in the broader scholarly community,” he reflects. 

He says it also highlights the value of sustained work in applied linguistics and language planning in the South African context.

Article explores mother-tongue education and inclusivity

The award celebrates his article, Afrikaans as akademiese taal: Verlede, hede en toekoms, which was published in 2025 in the Tydskrif vir Geesteswetenskappe. 

The article examines Afrikaans as an academic language by tracing its past, present and future in South Africa’s multilingual higher-education landscape. 

Prof. Van Dyk explains that the article is grounded in debates on mother-tongue education, multilingualism, inclusivity and language planning. It also draws on empirical evidence from the 2023 national language resource audit that was conducted by SADiLaR on behalf of Universities South Africa.

“While the findings confirm that Afrikaans remains comparatively well represented in the sector, they also point to significant challenges, including the ubiquitous dominance of English, uneven policy implementation and issues of perception and resource allocation,” he says.

Against this backdrop, Prof. Van Dyk argues that although Afrikaans is under considerable pressure, it remains resilient and continues to function as a meaningful academic language at several universities. He explains that there is, however, a need for coherent, well-informed frameworks to advance multilingualism more broadly.

“Institutional preparedness, capacity and the practical implementation of language policies and plans are essential to strengthen epistemic access and inclusivity for all,” he notes. “Alignment with national initiatives led by SADiLaR is important, as it demonstrates how conceptual work can inform practical and scalable interventions.”

For Prof. Van Dyk, the Jacques van der Elst Prize is not only recognition of a single article, but also of a sustained research trajectory that bridges theory and practice. His work underscores the resilience of Afrikaans as an academic language, while simultaneously advocating for a multilingual future that ensures inclusivity and access for all students in the higher-education system in South Africa.

To read SADilaR’s press release visit: https://sadilar.org/en/sadilars-hessp-lead-receives-prestigious-jacques…