A local discursive dimension in a specific historical context: Students’ narratives of police experiences during South Africa’s #FeesMustFall protests

Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-450
Author(s):  
Lynn Mafofo ◽  
Sinfree Makoni
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Private Policing ◽  
African Higher Education ◽  
South African Higher Education

AbstractMost studies on campus and private policing take on political, anthropological, sociological, and criminological perspectives. Although there were investigations on policing in South Africa during apartheid, scant research has focused on how students in South African higher education (SAHE) relate their experiences of campus policing. Due to recent unrest on SAHE campuses and radical changes that include the militarization of police forces, examining how students perceive the legitimacy and integrity of campus policing is vital. As such, this paper presents a discourse analysis focused on descriptions of students’ campus experiences in the aftermath of the #FeesMustFall (#FMF) protests. Combining critical discourse analysis (CDA) with systemic functional linguistics, through transitivity, it offers insight into the ideological power struggles between students and police. It shows the types of voices students reveal as an aggrieved group in the hope of identifying non-aggressive approaches to address emotionally charged events (such as protests). Adding transitivity analysis to CDA provides a solid framework for decoding radical meanings at the peak of chaotic situations in which social change in post-apartheid South Africa can be facilitated by understanding marginalized groups.

scholarly journals Axing the Rainbow

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Irina Turner
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
African Nation ◽  
Current State ◽  
Systemic Discrimination ◽  
Social Disparity

Today, the Rainbow Nation as the central metaphor for postapartheid South Africa falls short of serving as a unifying identification marker due to its tendency to gloss over contrasting living realities of diversified identities and ongoing systemic discrimination. The South African Fallism movements – the student-driven protests against neocolonial structures in academic institutions – spearheaded public criticism with the current state of ongoing social disparity in South Africa and revived the critique of so-called rainbowism, i.e., the belief that a colour-blind society can be created. In an application of Critical Discourse Analysis focusing on mythical metaphors, this article asks to what extent the new president Cyril Ramaphosa in his maiden State of the Nation Address projected a post-Zuma South African nation and answered to the challenges posed by Fallists.

scholarly journals A critical discourse analysis of selected news reports of South Africa xenophobic attacks of Nigerians

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 62-69
Author(s):  
Gideon Abioye Oyedeji ◽  
◽  
Nabila Idoko Idris ◽  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
News Media ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Colonial Experience

The incessant xenophobic attacks of Nigerians and other foreign nationals in South Africa have generated a unique discourse in the Nigerian media and in fact, other mainstream media on the African continent and international scene. These attacks are viewed by the international community as incompatible with 21st century civility. This paper therefore, engages the reports of selected news media in Nigeria, South African and other media houses with a view to explicating the ideologies that underpin each report seeing through the insight of Van Dijk, Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak’s models of Critical Discourse Analysis. A total of 10 report on the 2015-2019 xenophobia were purposively selected from the online outlets of these media houses. The study therefore found that the use of language by the Nigerian media shows that the polarisation tilted towards emphasising the positive ‘in-group’ description of the heinous acts visited on innocent Nigerians in South Africa whereas the South African and other news media brought to perspective the negative ‘out-group’ description of “some” Nigerians who are engaged in illegal businesses in their South Africa. The lexical choices contribute in significant ways to show the ideologies each reporters represent. The study submits that, these attacks by South Africans on fellow African Nationals are nefarious, iniquitous, atrocious and roguish perhaps because of their colonial experience.

scholarly journals Legitimation of Poverty in School Economics Textbooks in South Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jugathambal Ramdhani ◽  
Suriamurthee Maistry
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
Function Analysis ◽  
Further Education ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Value Systems ◽  
Critical Knowledge ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Selection Of

In South Africa, the school textbook remains a powerful source of content knowledge to both teachers and learners. Such knowledge is often engaged uncritically by textbook users. As such, the worldviews and value systems in the knowledge selected for consumption remain embedded and are likely to do powerful ideological work. In this article, we present an account of the ideological orientations of knowledge in a corpus of school economics textbooks. We engage the tenets of critical discourse analysis to examine the representations of the construct “poverty” as a taught topic in the Further Education and Training Economics curriculum. Using Thompson’s legitimation as a strategy and form-function analysis as specific analytical tools, we unearth the subtext of curriculum content in a selection of Grade 12 Economics textbooks. The study reveals how power and domination are normalised through a strategy of economic legitimation, thereby offering a “legitimate” rationale for the existence of poverty in the world. The article concludes with implications for curriculum and a humanising pedagogy, and a call for embracing critical knowledge on poverty in the South African curriculum.

The Development and Establishment of Technology in South Africa

1998 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-26
Author(s):  
N.P. du Preez ◽  
P. van Eldik ◽  
M. Möhr ◽  
H.H. van der Watt
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Importance Rating ◽  
Higher Education System ◽  
Diffusion Of Technology ◽  
African Higher Education ◽  
High Level ◽  
South African Higher Education

In a two-part analysis (Part 2 follows on pp 27–31), the authors discuss the key results of a South African project conducted during 1996 which focused on the factors relating to the development and establishment of technology in a country. The study investigated through a detailed questionnaire survey and a literature survey the various factors that promote the development and establishment of technology by comparing their perceived importance with the actual role they currently play in South Africa. This paper, Part 1, concentrates on the role of higher education. The importance of academic institutions in supplying high-level human resources was rated very highly (90.47%) but the role it is currently playing in reality was rated at 52.8%. Closely connected with this, the availability of high-level skilled technological people was given an importance of 89% while the current reality was rated at only 43%. This clearly shows that the South African higher education system is performing poorly in addressing these vital needs. The availability of entrepreneurs with innovative and creative skills to participate in the development and diffusion of technology was given an importance rating of 84.3% against a current situation of 42.2%, again indicating South Africa's weak performance. The results of the survey and the consequent recommendations are important to all developing countries with newly industrial economies.

EMBODIED BLACK RAGE

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Canham
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Body ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Black Rage ◽  
Affective Consequences

AbstractExamining two sets of archived materials that include a corpus of narratives that reflect on the period of apartheid in South Africa and posters used by anti-apartheid activists, the paper teases out the operations of racism and the manifestations of rage on the Black body. Critical discourse analysis and affect as theory and method are applied to trace the work of racism and its affective consequences and resistances. Here affect is deployed to read the terrain of the corporeal and the discursive. Black rage is seen as a response to White supremacy and it has the following outcomes: it can have destructive consequences, can enable psychological release of pent up anger, and can simultaneously be an expression of self-love.

Exploring Higher Education Students’ Technological Identities using Critical Discourse Analysis

2013 ◽  
pp. 181-198
Author(s):  
Cheryl Brown ◽  
Mike Hart
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
South African ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Education Students ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Analytical Device

This chapter applies a critical theory lens to understanding how South African university students construct meaning about the role of ICTs in their lives. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) has been used as a theoretical and analytical device drawing on theorists Fairclough and Gee to examine the key concepts of meaning, identity, context, and power. The specific concepts that inform this study are Fairclough’s three-level framework that enables the situating of texts within the socio-historical conditions and context that govern their process, and Gee’s notion of D(d)iscourses and conceptualization of grand societal “Big C” Conversations. This approach provides insights into students’ educational and social identities and the position of globalisation and the information society in both facilitating and constraining students’ participation and future opportunities. The research confirms that the majority of students regard ICTs as necessary, important, and valuable to life. However, it reveals that some students perceive themselves as not being able to participate in the opportunities technology could offer them. In contrast to government rhetoric, ICTs are not the answer but should be viewed as part of the problem. Drawing on Foucault’s understanding of power as a choice under constraint, this methodological approach also enables examination of how students are empowered or disempowered through their Discourses about ICTs.

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