"Speak out" - issues in participatory materials development

This article outlines the development of a beginner English course called 'Speak Out' for adults in Adult Basic Education and Training classes in the early 1990s. The course uses an innovative roleplay methodology which builds on the experiences and language knowledge of the adult learners. It was conceptualised and developed within a participatory approach to adult learning and materials development. The article explores the tension between the ideals of the participatory approach and the constraints exerted by contextual and other factors. The article begins with an introduction of the context within which the materials were conceptualised, then offers a brief overview' of the participatory approach, and then considers the following aspects of the 'Speak Out' course; the language learning methodology, issues of teacher competence and development, and lastly, the materials development process itself

Construals of agency in the testimony of Colin de Souza

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

Cyber socialising: emerging genres and registers of intimacy

The popularity of digital media networks for socialising among the youth is well documented. Much has been written on the emerging norms of textese, the global shorthand for chatting. However, becoming a proficient user involves more than simply mastering this code: it requires knowing the appropriate genres and registers for chatting. This article aims to explore these conventionalised genres and styles from a discourse analytical perspective. It analyses data collected by first-year students in the Linguistics Department at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) who use an application called MXit for chatting with their friends. The analysis shows how, despite the seemingly unrestrained and non-standard nature of MXit chatting, it is highly conventionalised and structured and requires a particular ‘register of intimacy’ which relies heavily on evaluative language and affective markers. However, it is simultaneously fluid and innovative thereby enabling users to ‘style’ for themselves identities which combine elements of global sophistication with local situatedness.Web of Scienc

Code-switching: An appraisal resource in TRC testimonies

This article analyses the function that code-switching plays in selected testimonies given at South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission which followed the country's transition to democracy in 1994. In a number of testimonies, victims of human rights abuse under Apartheid code-switched into Afrikaans when recalling particularly offensive uses of language by the police. Within the code-switching literature, it is well recognised that a speaker's choice of code, particularly for quoted speech, is a strategy for performing different kinds of local identities which index a range of social meanings and relationships (Alvarez-Caccamo 1996, Koven 2001). Thus code-switching may serve a complex evaluative function although the meanings it generates are very context- dependent. In order to explore this role in the testimonies in this paper, I use the appraisal theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (Martin & White 2005). I argue that on a number of occasions, code-switching into a particular variety of Afrikaans is used by testifiers as a strategy to invoke negative judgement: it has the effect of associating the police with a particular racist ideology and positioning them for our sanction. Further, it works together with other engagement resources to insert a recognisable historical voice into the text, thereby expanding the heteroglossic nature of the discourse while simultaneously allowing the speakers to signal their rejection of that voice and the ideologies it represents. In the current SFL literature, however, code-switching has not been noted as an appraisal resource. In the light of the examples from the TRC testimonies, I argue that, in multilingual contexts, code-switching has the potential to invoke complex evaluative meanings and should be included in the appraisal framework as an evaluative resource.Flemish Inter-University Council (VLIR); National Research Foundation (NRF)

‘Why can’t race just be a normal thing?’ Entangled discourses in the narratives of young South Africans

Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, race as a primary marker of identity hascontinued to permeate many aspects of private and public life post-apartheid. For young people growing up in the ‘new’ South Africa, the terrain of racial positioning is difficult and uneven. Referred to as the ‘born frees’, they aspire to be liberated of the past yet are themselves shaped by and positioned within its legacy. While a number of scholars have explored the racial positioning of students in historically white institutions (or partly white in the case of the merged institutions), little research has been conducted on racialised discourses in institutions which can be described as historically black. This paper seeks to address this gap by reporting on the racial positioning in the discourses of students at the University of the Western Cape (UWC), South Africa. The data consist of six focus group interviews held on campus between 2009 and 2014. Working with Nuttall’s (2009) notion of ‘entanglement’, and using a focus on narrative, in particular ‘small stories’ (cf. Bamberg &Georgakopoulou 2008), this paper explores how their stories provide insight into the complex and dialogic ways in which they discursively negotiate the racialised identities and discourses of both the past and the present and seek to imagine the future

Multimodality, creativity and children’s meaning making: drawings, writings, imaginings

This paper uses a case study of two children’s drawings, early writings and imaginative role play to illustrate how children use a variety of modes to make meaning in ways which are creative and beyond the design and expectation of adults. It aims to valorise the kinds of practice which children routinely engage in but which are often overlooked and de-valued by adults, both parents and teachers. Framed by social semiotic theories of communication, multimodal pedagogies and cognitive accounts of children’s drawings, it illustrates how the children in this study work easily and seamlessly across a variety of materials and modes, using the semiotic resources available in their environments, to create imaginary worlds and express meanings according to their interest. In profiling these children, this paper lends support to the claim of multimodal pedagogies that it is the shifting across modes, as well as the freedom to choose the mode of expression, that engages the children’s affect and creativity and builds agency and voice

Negotiating race and belonging in a post-apartheid South Africa: Bernadette’s stories

Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, race as a primary marker of identity has continued to permeate many aspects of private and public life in a post-apartheid South Africa. This paper explores how race is discursively constructed through narrative, particularly the quoted speech of others. It focuses on the stories told by a single participant, Bernadette, in a focus group at a South African tertiary institution and argues that despite the fact that she overtly rejects racist ways of thinking and talking, her talk is still structured according to the apartheid logic of racial difference and hierarchy. The analytical framework draws on Labov's seminal work on narrative structure and more recent work by De Fina, Bamberg & Georgakopoulou to explore how she uses narrative to perform her identity both in the interactional moment as well as in terms of the broader social discourses which constitute her context

Transitivity and the narrator's role in selected TRC testimonies

This paper seeks to explore how two different narrators at a hearing of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) represent the same set of events. With the use of analytical concepts and frameworks drawn from Systemic Functional Linguistics, we show how the different narrators' roles and perspectives on the events shape their choice of genre and their construal of experience. The narrators in question are Mr Colin De Souza, a young activist from Bonteheuwel, and his mother, Mrs Dorothy De Souza. Both describe events in the 1980s when Mr De Souza and his family suffered at the hands of the then Security Branch of the South African Police Force.Department of HE and Training approved lis

Negotiating race in post-apartheid South Africa: Bernadette’s stories

Contemporary scholarship on race investigates how racism is deeply embedded in everyday norms and practices in ways which subtly, even unwittingly, serve to reproduce white domination. In South Africa, like many other postcolonial societies, racial constructs continue to be particularly salient. This paper focuses on how a young South African, Bernadette, navigates the complex terrain of racial positioning in a focus group interview with her peers. Drawing primarily on Labov’s seminal work on narrative, as well as more recent interactional approaches, it investigates how Bernadette uses the reported speech of others in her stories as a key narrative strategy for racial positioning. The analytical findings suggest that despite her efforts to distance herself from what she perceives as racist talk, she slips into a racializing discourse which is much less overt than that which she rejects, and which has the effect of reassembling the apartheid hierarchy as an explanatory framework. This paper argues that a narrative lens enables the researcher to begin uncovering the multilayered complexities of racial positioning and the subtle ways in which racial discourses circulate in contemporary talk

Applying linguistics: Developing cognitive skills through multimedia

This paper examines the effectiveness of linguistic analysis in developing scientific thinking skills and scientific attitudes. It reports on a project established at a South Africa university in South Africa which engaged students in the analysis of code-mixed data. Students who participated in the project showed gains in being able to analyze linguistic data using problem solving skills. While transfer of such skills to mainstream science teaching was not investigated, the study confirms the effectiveness of linguistic analysis in engaging students in the activities associated with the development of skills for science