Masters Degrees (General Linguistics)

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Browsing Masters Degrees (General Linguistics) by browse.metadata.advisor "Deumert, A."

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    An investigation of discriminatory language used in communicating with South Africans born in Tanzania and Zambia
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2013-03) Mtonjeni, Thembinkosi; Anthonissen, Christine; Deumert, A.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper was to investigate the language used in communicating with South Africans born in Zambia and Tanzania during the years of "the struggle" and now repatriated – the returnees. From 1991 the children of the freedom fighters that migrated into exile in the 1960s to avoid the apartheid rule, returned. Some settled with their children in Khayelitsha near Cape Town, but they have found it difficult to fit in. The surge of foreign nationals from Africa who subsequently encountered xenophobic attitudes and allegations of corruption, drug smuggling, contributing to unemployment of South African born citizens and being carriers of HIV/AIDS has contributed to the returnees "new struggle" for integration and adaption as they often share common ancestry, linguistic and physical attributes with foreign nationals. They are denigrated as "amakwerekwere", "my friendoh" or "amagweja". This has happened despite them learning the local indigenous language, isiXhosa. Since the study is phenomenological, a qualitative research was appropriate. In data-collection, interviews were arranged with the returnees in their homes. Critical Discourse Analysis, sociological and historical accounts and sociolinguistic research revealed complex socio-cultural issues of the Xhosa world, which may have complicated the returnees‘ integration experience. The returnees seem to be leading a secluded solitary life as if exiled at home. The study found that in exile the returnees were at times tagged as outsiders, as "wakimbizi", "the Mandelas", "amagorila". On arriving home in the country of their exiled parents, they were again, painfully and unjustifiably, subjected to discrimination and marginalisation. The Xhosa speakers who form the majority of those formerly disenfranchised and marginalised in the Western Cape, and who were expected to be the hosts if not guardians of the returnees, seem not to understand and appreciate the role of the newcomers. That they were instrumental in the mobilisation of objections worldwide against apartheid, racism and human injustice seems to be forgotten. Rather than using their power and heritage to end xenophobia and ensure returnees are part of the future South African social fabric, they are found to be hostile and discriminatory.
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    Positioning in Somali narratives in the Saldanha bay municipality area on the west coast of South Africa
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2011-12) Swanepoel, Lehahn Searle; Deumert, A.; Anthonissen, Christine; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of General Linguistics.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study is interested in discourses of displacement in which migrants articulate the experience of seeking improved life chances in a community considerably removed from their place of origin. Not only physical and environmental distance, but also distance related to cultural, linguistic and religious differences distinguish the (im)migrants from the local indigenous population, which is already a culturally and linguistically diverse community. This study investigates how histories of displacement and experiences of alienation or integration may be discursively managed among a group of young Somali males aged between 15 and 35 who entered South Africa in their late teens or early twenties. Specifically, this thesis considers how young Somali men who relocated to a rural Western Cape town and make a living through trading, present themselves in English-language narratives elicited during informal interviews. The study was conducted in Vredenburg, the administrative centre and economic hub of the Saldanha Bay Municipal area on the West Coast of South Africa. The data for the study was collected by means of audio recorded interviews. To supplement this data and gain more perspective on the situatedness of the discourses, the researcher further relied on field notes as well as additional informal conversations with the participants. The data was collected over a period of five months in 2007. To analyse the data, the researcher draws on the theoretical frameworks of Labov's structural analysis of narratives and Wodak and Reisigl's (2001) discourse-historical approach, and Bamberg's (1997) narrative constructivist perspective. The research aims to determine (i) how the narrators construct themselves in their narratives, and (ii) how speakers position themselves towards the content of their narratives, and towards their actual and imagined audiences. This study shows that displacement brings about new contexts characterised by uncertainty, conflict and inequalities, and this influences the way narrators orient themselves. The Somali narrators, in interviews conducted in English with a community outsider, position themselves as displaced and marginalised. During their narratives, the participants used several linguistic strategies to present themselves in various ways to actual or imagined audiences, which lead to negative otherpresentation and positive self-presentation and construction of in-group and out-group membership.