Construals of agency in the testimony of Colin de Souza
| Title: | Construals of agency in the testimony of Colin de Souza |
| Author: | Bock, Zannie |
| Abstract: | In this paper, I analyse the testimony of Colin de Souza given before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in the mid-1990s.1 My aim is to explore how De Souza projects an identity of himself as 'agentive', as an innovative and flexible individual who is capable of outwitting and outmaneuvering his opponents despite the fact that within the TRC context, he is positioned as a 'victim' of human rights abuse. To substantiate this argument, I use a number of Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) tools to analyse the way in which this agency is encoded in the language of the testimony. |
| Subject: | Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Testimonies Narratives Identity Agency Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) Genre Appraisal Transitivity Colin de Souza |
| Citation: | Bock, Z. (2009). Construals of agency in the testimony of Colin de Souza. In S. Slembrouck, M. Taverniers and M Van Herreweghe (eds), From will to well: Studies in Linguistics offered to Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen. Ghent: Academia Press, 43-53 |
| Rights: | Copyright Academic Press. Permission was granted for inclusion of this chapter in the Repository. http://www.academiapress.be/ |
| Type: | Book chapter |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10566/281 |
| Date: | 2009 |
| Peer reviewed: | Yes |
Files in this item
| Files | Size | Format | View |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bock_Construals2009.pdf | 564.3Kb |
View/ |