Graduation - 2024 - December (Open Access)

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Browsing Graduation - 2024 - December (Open Access) by Author "Basson, Eleonore"

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    ’n Multimodale en kritiese diskoersanalise van die uitbeelding van die vrou in drie Afrikaanse vrouetydskrifte: Die Boerevrou (1919), Sarie Marais (1949) en Sarie (2019)
    (Stellenbosch University, 2024-12) Basson, Eleonore; Marais, Amanda; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Afrikaans and Dutch.
    Ever since the well-known feminist Betty Friedan published The feminine mystique in 1963, the influence of magazines – especially women’s magazines – on the normative construction of gender and identity has become generally known, as well as the impact thereof on the consumer’s culture (Holmes, 2007:510). This study links up with this claim and investigates what the normative identity construction of the “ideal” Afrikaans woman from 1919 to 2019 entails, as well as how it positioned women with regard to the consumer’s culture, as is evident from three Afrikaans women’s magazines, Die Boerevrou (1919), Sarie Marais (1949) and Sarie (2019). Die Boerevrou was the first, and back then the only, Afrikaans women’s magazine until publication ceased in 1931. Eighteen years later it was succeeded by Sarie Marais, with the first cover page paying tribute to Die Boerevrou: a stylish woman in a modern version of the traditional Voortrekker outfit, with the shadow image of Die Boerevrou’s Voortrekker cover girl in the background (Die Boerevrou Gedenkboek, 2019:104). Seventy years after that the cover of Sarie (2019) depicts Rolene Strauss, former Miss South Africa and Miss World 2014, in a modern version of the blouse worn by the woman on the Sarie Marais (1949) cover, behind her the shadow image of the 1949 cover girl. Clearly, the three Afrikaans women’s magazines are closely linked. The main problem statement guiding this study investigates what “ideal” Afrikaans femininity entails over the span of a century, as constructed in the three selected Afrikaans women’s magazines. Four secondary research questions are formulated in order to gain a comprehensive glance at the identity construction of this ideal Afrikaans woman. First, I ask what the identity construction of ideal femininity for Afrikaans women involves. After that I investigate which icons are used in depicting this femininity, and which roles they present. The third secondary research question focuses on other existing depictions of the ideal Afrikaans woman, besides those of the icons, and what roles are presented by them. Lastly, the role of consumerism in depicting the ideal Afrikaans woman is explored. Two issues of each magazine are chosen for analysis, with specific focus falling on articles featuring references to looks, fashion and beauty; however, other articles addressing identity are also taken into consideration. Articles discussing female icons and role models also receive attention. A critical discourse analysis, based on Van Dijk’s (1993) discourse structures analysing the traits of texts and context, is performed on the written texts. Since magazines consist of written as well as visual texts, a multimodal discourse analysis is performed on the articles. Kalantzis and Cope’s (2020) transpositional grammar based on the forms and functions of meaning, is employed. The study finds that the “mother-of-the-nation discourse” which established itself in Die Boerevrou in 1919, is still valid for the identity of the “ideal” Afrikaans woman of both 1949 and 2019. Regardless of this stable gender identity, the roles and responsibilities of women have expanded so that in 2019 they constitute the identity construction of the “super woman” as the female ideal to be pursued.