Linguistics
http://hdl.handle.net/10566/183
2024-03-29T09:18:34ZA critical discourse analysis of maphalla’s selected poems: South Africa’s pre-democratic election messages
http://hdl.handle.net/10566/9303
A critical discourse analysis of maphalla’s selected poems: South Africa’s pre-democratic election messages
Motinyane, Mantoa
The years 1990 to 1994 were the most critical years in the lives of all South Africans. For writers, this period presented an opportunity for expressions that have long been suppressed due to the censoring of writers in South Africa. Poetry was one of the ways in which a writer was able to reveal and express his or her thoughts about what they see, hear and the general events that are related to their lives and society at large. Maphalla is also one of the writers who used the pen to spread the messages of death, pain, love, hope and peace, whilst also being very critical of the socio-political environment at the time. As his name (the peaceful one) implies, Kgotso Maphalla was a writer Mwho was able to rebuke, criticise and give hope in a peaceful manner. This article analyses four of Maphalla’s poems from his poetry book called Seitebatso [Oblivion]. The four poems were selected to address the themes of freedom, hope and injustice.
2023-01-01T00:00:00ZFrom eco-jihad to politicization: A corpus-based eco-linguistic discourse analysis of the arab media coverage of the safer floating oil tanke
http://hdl.handle.net/10566/9281
From eco-jihad to politicization: A corpus-based eco-linguistic discourse analysis of the arab media coverage of the safer floating oil tanke
Mohammed, Tawffeek A S
This study attempts a corpus-based discourse analysis of the coverage of the FSO Safer in Arabic media to determine the main recurrent categories and themes in the coverage produced by outlets associated with conflicting/warring parties, as well as reports from more neutral media. This study, therefore, provides analysis of media coverage on the FSO Safer starting with the first report from Aljazeera on the issue in 2019, until June 2022. This study utilized Sketch Engine to compile a digital corpus of Arabic news articles. The corpus consists of 47,317 tokens. Additionally, this study explores how the word al-bī’ah (environment) is represented in the corpus by conducting a transitivity analysis of each concordance line or clause that included the word or one of its variants. This study also examines the various manipulative strategies that media outlets associated with conflicting parties used to determine how each presented the 'other', holding them accountable should the catastrophe strike. The findings of this study indicated that the themes recurrent in the corpus include the scale of catastrophe, environmental damage in the event of a spill, economic consequences, the UN emergency plan, echo-jihad, and 'we' vs 'them', among others. The presence of the word al-bīah in the corpus clearly shows that human beings are represented as the most active of beings; those who think, do and act in the world and those who behave and speak. Inanimate objects, on the other hand, are represented as passive participants; things are done to them
2023-01-01T00:00:00Zdalawhatyoumust: Kaaps, translingualism and linguistic citizenship in Cape Town, South Africa
http://hdl.handle.net/10566/8834
dalawhatyoumust: Kaaps, translingualism and linguistic citizenship in Cape Town, South Africa
Toyer, Zaib; Peck, Amiena
In 2016 Wayde Van Niekerk, a South African athlete of mixed-race heritage won an Olympic gold medal. In South Africa, his win caused hashtags such as #proudlysouthafrican, #blackexcellence and #colouredexcellence to trend online. By and large, these hashtags index the ongoing competitive discourses regarding nationalism, race and culture in Cape Town (cf. Author, 2018). Amongst these hashtags, however, was #dalawhatyoumust, a Kaaps hashtag generally meaning to “do what needs to be done”. Unlike the aforementioned hashtags, this one seems to cross the linguistic and racial divide despite its strong associations with Coloured1 people on the Cape Flats. The seemingly effortless uptake of this hashtag by diverse South Africans suggest that it has somehow become unmoored of its ethnic and linguistic inception. We explore the use of this Kaaps hashtag as a form of translingual practice which is affect-laden and trans portable across and between diverse users online and which promotes a particular “cool Capetonian” culture. Analyzing select posts from the #dalawhatyoumust thread on Facebook, we provide a nuanced look at #dala whatyoumust as an uplifting genre which proleptically advises nameless viewers of the importance of selfactualization, determination and aspiration. Additionally, we include Goffman’s (1974) framing foundation to investigate how positivistic discourse has been rhizomatically taken up by a ‘realm’ of implicit collective users online. This research interrogates long-held ideological boundaries between Kaaps and legitimized Standard Afrikaans and standard English. We conclude with a focus on Kaaps hashtags as semiotic acts of Linguistic Citizenship (cf. Williams and Stroud, 2013) which allows for the conjoining of Kaaps with diverse audiences, complex trajectories, and an assortment of accompanying semiotics. Following Stroud (2018:3) we argue that this Kaaps hashtag has become a form of languaging that facilitates “…the building of broad affinities of speakers that cut across…divisions and borders, and that negotiate co-existence/co-habitation outside of common ground in recognition of equivocation”. In South Africa, division was the order of the day and when we explore contemporary ordinary moments posted by heterogenous users using #dalawhatyoumust (henceforth #dwym) we aim to explore the ordinariness of languaging which brings people together despite their race, linguistic background, and ethnicity, that is to say an affinity of ‘cool Capetonian’ style.
2023-01-01T00:00:00ZThe centre for multilingualism and diversities research at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
http://hdl.handle.net/10566/8720
The centre for multilingualism and diversities research at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa
Stroud, Christopher
There is an urgency in theorising how
diversity is negotiated, communicated,
and disputed as a matter of everyday
ordinariness that is compounded by the
clear linkages between diversity, transformation,
voice, agency, poverty and
health. The way in which difference is
categorised, semiotised and reconfigured
in multiple languages across quotidian
encounters and in public and media forums
is a central dynamic in how poverty
and disadvantage are distributed and reproduced
across social and racial categorisations.
In the South African context,
finding ways of productively harnessing
diversity in the building of a better society
must be a priority.
The South African context with
its history of apartheid and on-going
contemporary post-apartheid transformation
is a veritable laboratory for the
study of forms of conflict and conviviality
in diversity. South Africa is a society
characterised by historical displacements
and contemporary mobilities, both social
and demographic, where a large part
of people’s daily life involves negotiating
diversity, dislocation, relocation and
anomie, while at the same time attempting
to pursue aspirations of mobility in a
context of continuing inequity.
2014-01-01T00:00:00Z