African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 13 August 1984Language -- or labels -- is a prime site of ideological struggle
in South Africa. The tussle for meanings, images and sounds
occurs at every level within the media. Because the media are
owned and controlled by the politically and economically ascendant
classes within the social formation, it is inevitable that
the media will accredit a dominant reality over subordinate ones.
In South Africa, the state not only defines the hegemonic construct
of reality, but it perpetuates and delineates the ethnic,
racial, political, historical and geographical content of what
it calls 'nation-states' and the racially segregated 'communities'
which fall outside the homelands
