Hierdie artikel beskryf 'n vertakkingsmodel wat ontwikkel is om die interaksie wat in 'n ... more Hierdie artikel beskryf 'n vertakkingsmodel wat ontwikkel is om die interaksie wat in 'n tersiere onderrigmilieu in klein groepies plaasvind, te beskryf. Gebaseer op werk in verband met Gespreksana...
Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylo... more Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylor, 2003). In children’s literature, we find a reflection of the attitudes towards gender prevalent in a given society at a particular time (Peterson and Lach, 1990). Therefore the study of how gender is represented in children’s literature can make a useful contribution to our understanding of how choices in language use support particular discourses, ‘broad constitutive systems of meaning’ (Sunderland, 2004: 6) or ‘ways of seeing the world’ (op cit: 28). These representations in turn perpetuate prevailing gendered power relations in that society, as research into children’s literature has shown (Thompson and Sealey, 2007). Corpus Linguistics offers a degree of objectivity and efficiency not possible in manual ideological analysis, as well as a set of tools particularly useful for the lexical analysis of considerable quantities of text. In this chapter, I report on my analysis of gendered discourses in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, focussing on patterns around grammatical agency in the books.
This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African m... more This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African media, including online comment sections, represent womanhood and motherhood, with reference to two prominent South African public figures, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the late Albertina Sisulu, both often referred to as “the mother of the nation”. In addition, I show how readers participate in public debate, in this case reiterating dominant views of women and positioning traditional nurturing and self-sacrificing attributes as desirable.
Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, Oct 26, 2015
The discourses of the post-apartheid South Africa embody symbols of change and promises of new le... more The discourses of the post-apartheid South Africa embody symbols of change and promises of new lessons in history. This is the first volume that brings together analyses of a variety of discourses produced in South Africa through which we follow the evolution of transitional processes in the country’s political institutions and in the opinions of its populace. The book offers to the reader a visit to the Parliament, a peek into the internet forums, analyses of the country's official papers and speeches, and the media accounts. Through all these discourses we see the burning questions – "Who Are We Now?" and "Who Do We Want To Be?" – being repetitively examined and identities cross-formed while the country deals with new, post-apartheid challenges, as well as successes
Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, Oct 26, 2015
This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African m... more This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African media, including online comment sections, represent womanhood and motherhood, with reference to two prominent South African public figures, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the late Albertina Sisulu, both often referred to as “the mother of the nation”. In addition, I show how readers participate in public debate, in this case reiterating dominant views of women and positioning traditional nurturing and self-sacrificing attributes as desirable.
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2000
This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of unive... more This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of university seminars, and compares the interaction patterns in two undergraduate seminars with those in two post-graduate seminars at Rhodes University. In the undergraduate seminars, two ...
Continued gender inequality and gendered representations in the media, broadly construed, remain ... more Continued gender inequality and gendered representations in the media, broadly construed, remain of concern because of the dialectic relationship between language and society. One source of gender cues is fiction written for and consumed by children. The characters encountered in the pages of a popular book constitute the stuff of identity building and may become role models for thousands of young and impressionable readers
Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylo... more Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylor, 2003). In children’s literature, we find a reflection of the attitudes towards gender prevalent in a given society at a particular time (Peterson and Lach, 1990). Therefore the study of how gender is represented in children’s literature can make a useful contribution to our understanding of how choices in language use support particular discourses, ‘broad constitutive systems of meaning’ (Sunderland, 2004: 6) or ‘ways of seeing the world’ (op cit: 28). These representations in turn perpetuate prevailing gendered power relations in that society, as research into children’s literature has shown (Thompson and Sealey, 2007). Corpus Linguistics offers a degree of objectivity and efficiency not possible in manual ideological analysis, as well as a set of tools particularly useful for the lexical analysis of considerable quantities of text. In this chapter, I report on my analysis of gendere...
This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of unive... more This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of university seminars, and compares the interaction patterns in two undergraduate seminars with those in two post-graduate seminars at Rhodes University. In the undergraduate seminars, two different groups of students at first year level in different disciplines were videotaped. The major difference was in terms of composition: in one seminar, there were equal numbers of male and female students, while in the other, female students dominated numerically (75%). In addition, five of the six formed a close-knit group of friends, which proved to be an important factor in the analysis. At the postgraduate level, the student participants were identical and met in the same venue and at the same time on two successive days to discuss the same topic (affirmative action in the workplace). The important difference between the two classes was the fact that the first seminar was led by a female tutor and th...
Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has c... more Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has continued to permeate many aspects of private and public life in a post-apartheid South Africa. This paper seeks to understand how youth at two South African tertiary institutions position themselves in relation to race and the apartheid past. Our data includes four focus group interviews from two universities, one which can be described as historically ‘black’ and the other historically ‘white’. Given the complex nature of the data, we elected to use a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis as our methodological approach. We explore how words such as black, white, coloured, they, we, us and them feature in the interviews. Our analysis shows that the positioning by the interviewees reflects a complexity and ambivalence that is at times contradictory although several broader discourse patterns can be distilled. In particular, we argue, that all groups employ a range of di...
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Feb 7, 2006
The extract under examination comes from a larger data set of conversations between female friend... more The extract under examination comes from a larger data set of conversations between female friends at university. At the point at which this conversation occurred, the partici-pants had known each other for approximately two-and-a-half months. As the subjects are studying and ...
Hierdie artikel beskryf 'n vertakkingsmodel wat ontwikkel is om die interaksie wat in 'n ... more Hierdie artikel beskryf 'n vertakkingsmodel wat ontwikkel is om die interaksie wat in 'n tersiere onderrigmilieu in klein groepies plaasvind, te beskryf. Gebaseer op werk in verband met Gespreksana...
Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylo... more Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylor, 2003). In children’s literature, we find a reflection of the attitudes towards gender prevalent in a given society at a particular time (Peterson and Lach, 1990). Therefore the study of how gender is represented in children’s literature can make a useful contribution to our understanding of how choices in language use support particular discourses, ‘broad constitutive systems of meaning’ (Sunderland, 2004: 6) or ‘ways of seeing the world’ (op cit: 28). These representations in turn perpetuate prevailing gendered power relations in that society, as research into children’s literature has shown (Thompson and Sealey, 2007). Corpus Linguistics offers a degree of objectivity and efficiency not possible in manual ideological analysis, as well as a set of tools particularly useful for the lexical analysis of considerable quantities of text. In this chapter, I report on my analysis of gendered discourses in the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling, focussing on patterns around grammatical agency in the books.
This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African m... more This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African media, including online comment sections, represent womanhood and motherhood, with reference to two prominent South African public figures, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the late Albertina Sisulu, both often referred to as “the mother of the nation”. In addition, I show how readers participate in public debate, in this case reiterating dominant views of women and positioning traditional nurturing and self-sacrificing attributes as desirable.
Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, Oct 26, 2015
The discourses of the post-apartheid South Africa embody symbols of change and promises of new le... more The discourses of the post-apartheid South Africa embody symbols of change and promises of new lessons in history. This is the first volume that brings together analyses of a variety of discourses produced in South Africa through which we follow the evolution of transitional processes in the country’s political institutions and in the opinions of its populace. The book offers to the reader a visit to the Parliament, a peek into the internet forums, analyses of the country's official papers and speeches, and the media accounts. Through all these discourses we see the burning questions – "Who Are We Now?" and "Who Do We Want To Be?" – being repetitively examined and identities cross-formed while the country deals with new, post-apartheid challenges, as well as successes
Discourse approaches to politics, society and culture, Oct 26, 2015
This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African m... more This study uses Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to analyse how South African media, including online comment sections, represent womanhood and motherhood, with reference to two prominent South African public figures, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and the late Albertina Sisulu, both often referred to as “the mother of the nation”. In addition, I show how readers participate in public debate, in this case reiterating dominant views of women and positioning traditional nurturing and self-sacrificing attributes as desirable.
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2000
This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of unive... more This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of university seminars, and compares the interaction patterns in two undergraduate seminars with those in two post-graduate seminars at Rhodes University. In the undergraduate seminars, two ...
Continued gender inequality and gendered representations in the media, broadly construed, remain ... more Continued gender inequality and gendered representations in the media, broadly construed, remain of concern because of the dialectic relationship between language and society. One source of gender cues is fiction written for and consumed by children. The characters encountered in the pages of a popular book constitute the stuff of identity building and may become role models for thousands of young and impressionable readers
Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylo... more Gender is an all-pervasive and extremely influential construct in the lives of individuals (Taylor, 2003). In children’s literature, we find a reflection of the attitudes towards gender prevalent in a given society at a particular time (Peterson and Lach, 1990). Therefore the study of how gender is represented in children’s literature can make a useful contribution to our understanding of how choices in language use support particular discourses, ‘broad constitutive systems of meaning’ (Sunderland, 2004: 6) or ‘ways of seeing the world’ (op cit: 28). These representations in turn perpetuate prevailing gendered power relations in that society, as research into children’s literature has shown (Thompson and Sealey, 2007). Corpus Linguistics offers a degree of objectivity and efficiency not possible in manual ideological analysis, as well as a set of tools particularly useful for the lexical analysis of considerable quantities of text. In this chapter, I report on my analysis of gendere...
This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of unive... more This paper focuses on the effect of the gender of participants on the discourse patterns of university seminars, and compares the interaction patterns in two undergraduate seminars with those in two post-graduate seminars at Rhodes University. In the undergraduate seminars, two different groups of students at first year level in different disciplines were videotaped. The major difference was in terms of composition: in one seminar, there were equal numbers of male and female students, while in the other, female students dominated numerically (75%). In addition, five of the six formed a close-knit group of friends, which proved to be an important factor in the analysis. At the postgraduate level, the student participants were identical and met in the same venue and at the same time on two successive days to discuss the same topic (affirmative action in the workplace). The important difference between the two classes was the fact that the first seminar was led by a female tutor and th...
Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has c... more Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has continued to permeate many aspects of private and public life in a post-apartheid South Africa. This paper seeks to understand how youth at two South African tertiary institutions position themselves in relation to race and the apartheid past. Our data includes four focus group interviews from two universities, one which can be described as historically ‘black’ and the other historically ‘white’. Given the complex nature of the data, we elected to use a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis as our methodological approach. We explore how words such as black, white, coloured, they, we, us and them feature in the interviews. Our analysis shows that the positioning by the interviewees reflects a complexity and ambivalence that is at times contradictory although several broader discourse patterns can be distilled. In particular, we argue, that all groups employ a range of di...
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Feb 7, 2006
The extract under examination comes from a larger data set of conversations between female friend... more The extract under examination comes from a larger data set of conversations between female friends at university. At the point at which this conversation occurred, the partici-pants had known each other for approximately two-and-a-half months. As the subjects are studying and ...
Uploads
Papers